Neurodiversity

As I started reading Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy today, I was delighted to discover the whole book is framed by the concept of neurodiversity — specifically, the notion that autism shouldn’t be conceived strictly as an impairment, but as one cognitive style among many, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

From the book:

I prefer the word “learning” to “recovery”; many autistics learn how to overcome their cognitive disadvantages. Would we say that a non-autistic person, as he or she grows, “recovers” from having the disabilities of a four-year-old? Or would we say that the person has learned a lot?

Personally, I started learning a lot more — and with a lot less anxiety, guilt, resentment, depression… I became a lot happier — when I came to terms with my autism-like cognitive style and worked with it rather than against it.

Developing practices and ideas that nurture these characteristics has always been part of Open/Conceptual’s fundamental purpose. That should be evident by reading a lot of what I’ve written in the past two years (especially here).

I suppose I’m “out of the closet” now. I can’t figure out how high-profile I should be about this aspect (which is itself a manifestation of a characteristic from the autistic spectrum). Regardless of how much self-disclosure I use, watch for neurodiversity to come up more often in the discussion here.

Oh, and also, why don’t you get the book and read along?

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Tags: asd, asperger's, autism, brain, neurodiversity