Abuse with an Excuse

Not a typo, I’m trying to be clever.

Diversity is the first half of evolution, you don’t get selection without providing options, right? The most common versions of traits and genes, we assume are so because they match the most common environments, they have had the broadest success, but species appear to retain some diversity so that when that common environment changes, other traits and genes have their chance to shine and species carry on, changing in relation to the environmental changes, not necessarily quickly enough or without some serious trouble, but that’s the idea.

If they’re here, they did that, that species does that, right? If something had happened that a species had no capacity to deal with, then those ones are not here. Diversity is flexibility, which is viability when you know that environments change.

The human neurodivergent population knows this about themselves, that they are perhaps spare parts to some in the current environment, but crucial future spare parts for the species.

Personally, my mission in life seemed obvious at maybe six years of age, it seemed plain as day to me that the lifestyle of abuse and control I was born into couldn’t possibly be sustainable and I am spending my life ‘explaining shit to people’ about it, as young Master Hunting didn’t want to, I mean, if anyone is listening. And I mean, I didn’t know about neurodiversity until, well, now. I thought they had the same brain as me and were simply in error, and I could explain it to folks.

Hey, I think that’s nostalgia. It did look much simpler back then, and I just felt smart. I knew I was the odd one out, but perhaps from a more extreme stupidity, I never dreamed that it was me that was disabled. I was looking at adults raging out on little children, I never dreamed it was me that was broken in all of it. My moral outrage ruled me, even when I’d step on a hundred rakes, at least I wasn’t beating children. The whole world was disabled, they couldn’t seem to understand the simplest morality. I still feel the need to say this every day: everything is a crime except that, except hurting people who can’t fight back, on purpose. Only irresistible violence is not a crime to normal people.

Starting to see, demographically at least, by the numbers, this is my disability.

Crucial future spare parts for the species.

The dominant culture, and perhaps the current dominant genetic option, doesn’t think so. It’s rather conformist, hold on, that’s really not strong enough, it’s rather selective, in the deadly, evolutionary sense. Only intuition perhaps, sadly informed by a lot of Twitter propaganda, but I am fighting an awful creeping sense that the dominant thing, mainstream society, neurotypicality is a bad mutation, violently taking over the species by drift, and by fighting diversity, it is setting up to go extinct with the next crisis . . . but that the ‘next crisis,’ is it also, already here. I’ve tried to say, the fighting genes and our social strength are a conundrum. The genetic response to this hazard – humans – wait.

That’s the point, we are the primary hazard that humans face now, not tigers or freezing, and I suspect typicality describes the genetic response to that most typical hazard – strength, social control, “defensive” violence, this is the conundrum. The neighbors response, genetic and behavioural, is our environmental hazard and ours is theirs. This awful drift can be seen, heard, and felt whenever all humanist gains are jettisoned for the next war: if it doesn’t help you win a fight, lose it.

Right?

I think all genes are not “selfish,” but I worry that there are genes operating in error, that the defensive gene is also the genocide gene, that whatever genetic combination it is that wins the wars will sacrifice the crucial, God-given diversity to do it. That even if billions survive the next decades, if they are billions of warriors, that this was a genetic bottleneck where much of what was good in us is lost, because what almost kills you leaves you broken, not “stronger.”

Strength is weakness. Diversity is life.

You know what I think, that all this genetic talk is not determinism, I think the lifestyle change would change the gene options, and I think it’s a two step function, you have the gene options, so our power is to arrange not to activate the troublesome ones, not to create the environment that needs them activated and selecting themselves – stop the violent social control, most importantly stop “spanking” which is a word that means “creating an abusive environment for a child to set his genetic fighting options to “on.””

“Strength,” in the bad gene’s words.

I swear.

Jeff

June 30^th., 2022