building Trust and Human Scale: Neurodivergence, Mutual Aid, and the Critique of Homo Economicus
Beneath the complex layers of internalized ableism lies a fundamental human truth: no one truly desires to be seen and heard by the masses. Instead, people yearn to be understood and loved deeply by a select few, while possessing an innate drive to love and assist others. This relational orientation is what defines us as sacred human animals. Continuous dialogues regarding shared commitments make life sacred, providing the mechanism through which humans create meaning for and with one another. This dynamic embodies the very experience of life as an ongoing process of becoming.
Following recent discussions surrounding the inability of many autistic individuals to think in terms of rigid social hierarchies, a timely submission arrived in the AutCollab inbox ahead of the upcoming NeurodiVerse Days of Intersectional Solidarity. The submission, penned by the founder of a neurodivergent community who also works as a therapist and identifies as indigenous, posed a critical question for modern social organizing: how can mutual aid be effectively promoted within communities heavily impacted by interpersonal trauma and deep-seated challenges with trust?
The social challenges highlighted in this inquiry echo the dystopian futures foreseen in the works of Guy Debord and George Orwell. Today, these warnings have materialized into a disturbing reality, disproportionately affecting cultural minorities and intersectionally marginalized populations. Early societal indoctrination into the belief systems surrounding homo economicus attempts to transform living human beings into soulless, transactional machinery. For autistic people—and arguably for humanity as a whole—the capacity to genuinely relate to other living beings, both human and non-human, inversely correlates with the ability to engage in sterile, transactional busyness. As researchers and community advocates note, when individuals reconnect with their capacity for authentic relationality, they become fundamentally unsuited for the demands of a hyper-capitalist market economy.
Underneath the pervasive veneer of internalized ableism, a simple baseline observation remains true for all sober individuals: no one wants to be a spectacle for the many. People universally prefer the deep, resonant understanding of a trusted few, alongside a foundational desire to love and care for others. This capacity for deep connection is the cornerstone of human existence.
Commitments Make Us Uniquely Human
There is a healthy, viable path forward, rooted in mutual trust and shared values. This trajectory involves a decisive shift toward shared beliefs that represent sacred commitments operating strictly at a human scale.
Sacred commitments between specific individuals or within small, human-scale groups can be articulated either verbally or in writing. Crucially, these commitments only scale up to the limited number of relationships that an individual human brain and nervous system can genuinely maintain. As circumstances change, communities can jointly update these commitments to reflect evolving needs or external constraints within their broader ecological context. For those who identify as autistic, a significant portion of their held beliefs naturally falls into this category, particularly agreements established with family members, friends, and trusted colleagues.
In contrast, the massive trust deficits generated by the dominant homo economicus model stem from cultural beliefs absorbed subconsciously from the surrounding social environment—assumptions and dogmas whose origins are often entirely untraceable. For individuals who do not identify as autistic, the majority of their operating beliefs may unfortunately fall into this externalized, culturally conditioned category. Meanwhile, unilateral commitments made with oneself act as a deeply personal spiritual covenant with life and with Gaia.
Breaking these commitments exacts a heavy toll, rendering individuals physically, mentally, and spiritually unwell. Human beings evolved as cultural organisms through this exact web of accountability. Bilateral commitments offered by one party function as sacred invitations to another, honoring the sanctity of relationships with all living entities. Both parties can extend these sacred invitations, subsequently bringing them together through deliberative dialogue, mutual respect, and love, ultimately crystallizing them into a shared spiritual commitment.
Unlike the standardized, industrial factory model of society, there are no simplistic, cookie-cutter commitments in this framework. Every commitment is meticulously tailored to a specific relationship—whether with oneself and the broader natural world, or with specific peers. By sharing the commitments made both internally and within an immediate ecology of care, individuals can better understand, trust, and rely on one another. Achieving this, of course, is considerably more difficult in a wider cultural context dominated by extreme individualism and systemic mutual distrust.
Deliberative Dialogue and Cultural Wisdom
Continuous, open-ended dialogues regarding commitments form a vibrant part of lived Māori culture, demonstrating how communities can continuously honor life and the natural world. This practice represents the essence of sacred existence, illustrating how humans generate mutual meaning and experience life as an ongoing process of becoming.
Explicit social agreements that attempt to scale far beyond human dimensions possess severe structural limitations. This reality underpins the collective action practices developed by indigenous cultures, such as the Māori, to push back against overreaching institutional mandates. In hierarchically structured societies, laws and regulations issued by distant regional or national authorities apply to vast populations, inevitably crafted with minimal input from those directly affected. Such agreements invariably inflict untold harm that remains largely invisible to the authorities imposing them. Humans simply did not evolve to inhabit hierarchically structured, super-human-scale societies. Pretending that humanity can sustain these structures without generating catastrophic harm is a manifestation of anthropocentric hubris.
Trauma is frequently propagated across generations, necessitating deliberate efforts to break the cycle without harming the most sensitive members of society—the very individuals capable of nurturing ecologies of care that reject power and manipulation. The corrupting nature of coercive power is a foundational issue; coercive power serves as the root of systemic harm. Those who routinely wield coercive power are actively destroying planetary ecosystems. Across human history, timeless wisdom has warned against the emergence of social power gradients. When civilizations erase this protective norm, profound suffering inevitably follows.
Autistic people frequently make sacred commitments to themselves at an early age to minimize cognitive dissonance. However, when extending these sacred commitments to others, they often encounter a sobering reality: not everyone honors their commitments, and many navigate life entirely devoid of sacred commitments or firm convictions. In a modern, socially hyper-competitive landscape, practical experience with de-powered, egalitarian deliberative dialogue is scarce. Consequently, a life devoid of sacred commitments is frequently experienced as empty and meaningless. The prevailing religion of homo economicus systematically generates lost souls searching for purpose without a solid foundation upon which meaning can be built.
Co-Creating Ecologies of Care
Sacred commitments grounded in deep mutual trust and shared values serve as the foundational bedrock of all healthy cultures. De-powered dialogue aimed at deepening shared understanding provides the essential tool for maintaining and evolving these commitments over time, nurturing love, compassion, and trust in a virtuous cycle even through turbulent periods. Indigenous cultures have understood this dynamic for millennia.
This relational wisdom is precisely what Māori culture continues to offer the world during a time of global crisis—a crisis that humanity has collectively inflicted upon Gaia through cultural ignorance and arrogance. Intersectional solidarity spanning indigenous rights movements, the neurodiversity movement, and disability rights advocacy sits at the core of healing from the cultural pathologies that have driven the current metacrisis.
This perspective is not merely theoretical; it is actively validated by lived experiences within de-powered, egalitarian worker cooperatives. Daily practices within these spaces are shaped by de-powered dialogue, omnidirectional learning, and consensus-based decision-making. For many navigating a world dominated by the metrics of homo economicus, participating in these spaces marks the first step toward healing. Similarly, hunter-gatherer societies have long engaged in deliberative dialogue and reached decisions through consensus, showcasing the enduring beauty of living at a human scale as integrated cultural organisms.
Engaging in de-powered deliberative dialogues within safe, co-created environments allows individuals to truly understand one another’s minds. Through these conversations, participants share not just what they think, but how they think and what they fundamentally believe. Whether conducted verbally or in writing, the essential element is the ongoing commitment to dialogue and the sharing of inner worlds. While this approach stands in direct opposition to the transactional ethos of the modern economic system, it aligns precisely with what human nervous systems evolved to do. It is unsurprising that many autistic individuals find themselves operating at or beyond their emotional limits in a society hostile to these needs.
Furthermore, as society spends increasingly more time trapped in digital realms mediated by impersonal interfaces, the capacity to extend deep trust becomes an increasingly rare gift. Human nervous systems are deeply interconnected; humans are embodied spirits rooted in physical presence. Technological interfaces tend to limit full humanity, functioning as non-living, anthropocentric machinery. Humans evolved to be fully present with one another—a truth felt deeply within the human heart.
Co-creating resilient ecologies of care remains essential, sacred work that can only be accomplished collectively.
