Many contemporary scientists and institutional leaders fail to acknowledge the extent to which their core disciplinary paradigms remain profoundly influenced by the cultural frameworks of the colonial era. According to researchers and advocates, the modern mental health crisis is not merely an aggregation of individual biological failures, but rather a direct symptom of a terminally diseased institutional landscape. In response, a growing coalition of neurodiversity and disability activists has begun collaborating on coherent, alternative theories of human ways of being. At the heart of this collaborative movement is the evolutionary process of collaborative niche construction, framed as a vital mechanism for reducing systemic cognitive dissonance.
Completely normal ways of feeling unwell and distressed
The ways in which atomised nuclear families depend entirely on abstract, bureaucratic institutions are frequently normalized by society. Conversely, anyone who relies on assistance from others in unconventional ways is swiftly pathologised. This dynamic highlights the alienating and dehumanising social experiences generated by the global mono-cult that defines our current institutional environment.
Social power can frequently be understood as the insidious privilege of not needing to learn or adapt. As human societies navigate the current global predicament, scholars argue that capitalism should be understood as a collective learning disability that actively contributes to widespread human and non-human suffering. Modern society, much like earlier powered-up empires, is built upon the systematic hijacking of the evolved human fear response. Discussions with investors and corporate leaders often reveal a baseline assumption that human nature is driven exclusively by fear and greed. This attitude is pervasive among those who have successfully navigated their way into positions of social power within the prevailing mono-cult.
Populations that have been traumatised and driven primarily by fear and greed represent the ultimate culmination of the industrial factory model of society. This world views people as programmable human biological machines, which serves as a profound negation of the wonder and complexity of life.
Internalised ableism in the science of biology
The normalisation of internalised ableism runs deep within modern academic and scientific disciplines. Even well-known biologists frequently perpetuate the unhelpful, industrialised metaphor of human biological machines. In doing so, they confuse first-order effects—such as the innate human inclination toward mutual aid and collaborative niche construction—with second-order effects. These second-order effects, which include the culturally transmitted normalisation of steep social power gradients, are only present in societies that are deeply troubled, sick, and dehumanising.
In species with complex cultures, including whales, elephants, and humans, the traditional distinction between evolutionary survival strategies reveals clear limitations in the paradigms used by contemporary biologists and ecologists. Traditional ecological theory outlines two extremes: r-selection and K-selection. r-selection focuses heavily on reproduction, where species produce many low-effort offspring with minimal parental investment, typically thriving in unpredictable environments. At the opposite extreme, K-selection refers to species operating near their environmental carrying capacity, where parents heavily invest time, nurturing, and protection into a smaller number of offspring entering a competitive world.
However, applying the assumption that babies are entering an inherently competitive world to species like whales and elephants projects a distinctly Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and democratic cultural bias onto the natural world. No one has ever asked a whale or an elephant whether it experiences reality primarily as a competitive struggle or a collaborative network. Only culturally well-adjusted individuals embedded within hierarchically structured empires understand the entire living world through the lens of inherent competition.
Around the margins of these empires, numerous examples of egalitarian, collaborative cultural environments persist. Nevertheless, the majority of modern humans find themselves trapped within a social landscape dominated by massive, powered-up institutions. Thinkers like Vandana Shiva have correctly identified capitalist patriarchy as the cultural disease responsible for framing the living world as fundamentally competitive.
Reframing life in terms of collaborative niche construction
To fully appreciate the significant role that culture plays in gene-culture co-evolution and to arrive at a deeper understanding of evolutionary dynamics, scholars argue that traditional paradigms must be expanded or replaced. A more nuanced, less culturally biased framework must account for species with complex cultural capacities by introducing distinct categories such as c-selection and C-selection.
Under a c-selection strategy, which stands for compliance, species with a capacity for culture prioritize the production of adults who are well-adjusted to an established, often degrading cultural milieu. Little investment is made in fostering new cultural knowledge or supporting individuals who fail to fit into the standard mold. This approach reduces the emotional load on caregivers and allows societies to function even under deteriorating ecological conditions, though it often results in higher rates of mental distress and mortality among the young.
Conversely, C-selection, which stands for culturally adaptive, occurs when populations near their local carrying capacity welcome new cultural knowledge and wisdom. These societies invest heavily in protecting and nurturing all offspring, including those who do not conform to traditional norms. Young individuals are encouraged to learn from both their cultural milieu and their surrounding ecological environment, yielding a higher probability of survival during times of rapid ecological change. This strategy is more commonly observed in small-scale societies, such as whale pods or human hunter-gatherer groups, where curiosity is nurtured within a diverse ecology of care.
This expanded evolutionary framework helps explain the observed diversity within and between cultural species. The traditional rK-selection paradigm obscures a hypernormative cultural bias against both biological and human cultural diversity. Historical analysis demonstrates that the life-denying ideology of capitalist patriarchy was shaped during the colonial era by figures whose worldview subsequently influenced modern scientific disciplines.
In species capable of complex culture, stable environments with abundant food resources can gradually push populations toward c-selection over multiple generations. However, this strategy fails rapidly when the environment becomes unpredictable. Dynamic and volatile environments, on the other hand, favor C-selection adaptive strategies. Throughout human history, adaptive cultures have allowed human populations to survive ice ages and outpace other primates in various bioregional ecosystems. At the same time, hypernormative cultures have enabled the construction of massive empires that divert human cognitive capacity away from communal survival and toward resource exploitation and social competition.
The big cycle of life
In a dynamic ecological context, enduring relationships built on mutual trust are far more stable than abstract indicators of social status. They constitute the essential ingredients of a life-affirming ecology of care integrated into the regenerative, cyclical flow of life. Mutual trust serves as the true currency of living systems, encompassing the joy of birth, the art of living well, and the process of dying in a way that nourishes the planet.
Unlike the global mono-cult of capitalist patriarchy, this cyclical understanding is deeply embedded within Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Hindu cosmology, for instance, conceptualises history in terms of cyclic ages, or Yuga cycles. This stands in stark contrast to the linear arc of progress typically assumed by Western frameworks, which uses periodic setbacks to reinforce the narrative of life as an unyielding competitive struggle. Framing life through collaborative niche construction aligns far more closely with these Eastern traditions, indigenous worldviews, and scholarly analyses of civilisational collapse. Cultural species that maintain dominance hierarchies inevitably divert energy away from the regenerative flow of life and toward in-group competition and the suppression of diversity.
Omni-directional sensing and learning
The collapse of spurious cultural complexity often proves to be a liberating experience for the majority of a population. For decades, neurodiversity and disability activists have worked to expose the internalised ableism that locks societies into suicidal paradigmatic inertia, collaborating on coherent theories of human ways of being. Cultures that treat the acknowledgment of culturally prescribed cognitive dissonance as taboo are inherently life-denying.
Most individuals living in Westernised societies are driven not by greed, but by the pervasive fear generated by a toxic cultural environment. Those who confront this fear often experience intense cognitive dissonance regarding wealth inequality, class divides, and the artificial normalisation of preventable human suffering. In healthy, balanced cultures, the human capacity to detect cognitive dissonance serves as a catalyst for collaborative niche construction and the co-creation of supportive ecologies of care.
This evolutionary process relies on omni-directional sensing and learning, which can only emerge within de-powered, non-overwhelming, and life-affirming environments. Observers have also drawn parallels between human social structures and the externalised collective intelligence observed in natural systems, such as ant colonies. These biological systems efficiently manage logistics and ensure that no resources go to waste, offering lessons for human societal organization.
Taking stock and moving toward ecological wellbeing
Data from the Global Footprint Network highlights the ongoing ecological crisis, with humanity continuing to consume natural resources significantly faster than Earth’s ecosystems can regenerate them. Daoist philosophers warned millennia ago that social power over others inevitably corrupts, a warning largely ignored by modern industrial societies.
Rather than continuously experimenting with new configurations of powered-up institutions, scholars and activists suggest practicing de-powered dialogue and learning to de-power interpersonal relationships without seeking permission from traditional authorities. Recognizing human cognitive and emotional limits as immutable boundaries—much like the laws of physics—is essential for fostering true ecological wellbeing. Numerous human-scale initiatives and indigenous traditions continue to offer alternative models rooted in compassion, community trust, and a deep appreciation for the regenerative capacity of the planet.
