Another Spectrum

Personal ramblings and rants of a somewhat twisted mind

Category Archives: autism


by 2 Comments

The Worlds We Think Through — Reflections on Enquiry, Culture, and Perspective

I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the claim that “the only reliable source of knowledge is empirical evidence.” It’s a neat sentence, tidy in the way Western categories like to be tidy, but it has always felt too small for the world I actually inhabit. My reality — and I use that word deliberately — is not a universal one. It is the reality I live inside, shaped by my culture, my neurology, my relationships, and the particular path I’ve taken through the world. What feels empirically solid to me may be invisible, or irrelevant, or simply unrecognisable to someone else.

This isn’t a rejection of science. It’s a recognition that experience is never neutral, and that what we call “evidence” is already filtered through the lenses we carry. I’ve learned, sometimes awkwardly, that my way of perceiving the world doesn’t automatically align with the neuronormative expectations around me. That mismatch has taught me something important: reality is not a single shared landscape but a terrain of many vantage points, each shaped by the ground beneath our feet.

Perhaps that’s why I find myself uneasy when enquiry is funnelled into narrow channels — when we insist that only certain kinds of questions are legitimate, or that only certain methods can lead to truth. It’s not that those methods are wrong; it’s that they are partial. They illuminate some things beautifully and leave other things in shadow.

And so this reflection begins not with a grand theory, nor with a tidy definition of “what is,” but with a simple recognition: the way we frame enquiry shapes what we are able to see. If we begin with categories, we end with categories. If we begin with openness, we may end somewhere we didn’t expect.

This piece is an attempt to follow enquiry where it wants to go — not where Western habits of thought tell it should go. It begins with the limits of those habits, moves through the spaciousness I’ve found in Māori and Quaker worlds, and opens finally into a possibility that feels truer to my lived experience: that diversity, not uniformity, is the natural state of enquiry.

How Western Categories Limit What We Can Ask

I’ve come to realise that the questions we ask are never neutral. They arise from the categories we inherit, the assumptions we absorb, and the quiet expectations of the cultures we move through. Western thought, for all its brilliance, has a habit of tidying the world into boxes: science here, religion there, philosophy over in the corner, and “mythology” somewhere on the bottom shelf. These boxes are useful, but they also narrow the paths enquiry is allowed to take.

One of the clearest examples is the Western insistence on falsifiability as the gold standard for meaningful knowledge. It’s often presented as a scientific principle, but it is, at heart, a philosophical stance. Falsifiability cannot justify itself by its own criterion — it isn’t falsifiable. It simply reflects a cultural preference for certainty, clarity, and testability. There’s nothing wrong with that preference, but it is a preference, not a universal truth.

And once you see that, you begin to notice how much of Western enquiry is shaped long before any experiment begins.

Take autism. If autism is assumed to be a disorder, then the “scientific” questions that emerge — the ones that seem testable, measurable, falsifiable — will all orbit around deficit. What causes autistic impairments? What abnormalities can be detected? How can autistic behaviour be normalised? These questions feel empirical, but they are built on a philosophical foundation: the belief that there is a single “normal” way to be human.

Shift the worldview, and the questions shift with it. If autism is understood as a form of human diversity, then the falsifiable questions become entirely different. What cognitive strengths correlate with autistic perception? What environments support autistic wellbeing? How does sensory diversity contribute to creativity? The method hasn’t changed — the worldview has. And with it, the entire landscape of enquiry.

A similar dynamic appears in the long‑running discussion about including Māori epistemology in science education. For international readers, this refers to the proposal that students learn science not only through a Western lens but also through mātauranga Māori — Māori ways of understanding the natural world. From a strictly Western perspective, this can look like confusing fact with fiction. But that reaction reveals an assumption: that Western science is the only valid framework for understanding reality.

In practice, what was proposed was not replacing science, but expanding the lens — helping students see that all science is taught from within a worldview, and that Western categories are not the only way to make sense of the natural world. The Ministry of Education continues to support Māori‑centred STEM learning, including resources for pūtaiao (science in Māori‑medium contexts), teacher capability building in te reo Māori, and the development of Māori‑centred STEM pathways in the curriculum. The current government has eased back the pace of the broader curriculum refresh, but these Māori‑centred approaches remain part of the Ministry’s ongoing work.

This example, like the autism one, shows how preconception shapes what we think is “scientific.” If Western science is assumed to be the only valid lens, then mātauranga Māori appears “non‑scientific.” But if we recognise that all knowledge systems arise from cultural worldviews, then the question shifts from “Is this science?” to “What does this way of knowing reveal that another might miss?”

Western thought also draws a sharp line between the “objective” and the “subjective,” as if the world can be neatly divided into facts on one side and feelings on the other. But this split is cultural, not universal. In Māori cosmology, knowledge is relational — woven through whakapapa (genealogy and interconnectedness), land, and community. In Quaker practice, truth emerges through collective discernment, not detached observation. And in my own life, shaped by autistic perception, the boundary between inner and outer experience has never felt as rigid as Western categories suggest.

Another Western habit is to treat knowledge as something individual — the lone thinker, the solitary scientist, the detached observer. But many cultures, Māori and Quaker among them, understand knowledge as something that arises in relationship. Enquiry is not a solo performance; it is a communal unfolding.

And then there is the Western preference for linear enquiry: question → hypothesis → test → answer → progress. It’s a tidy model, but it doesn’t reflect how most of life actually works. Enquiry, in my experience, is cyclical, emergent, and often surprising. It loops back on itself. It wanders. It listens. It changes direction when something unexpected appears. It is more like a conversation than a pipeline.

All of these habits — the insistence on falsifiability, the objective/subjective split, the elevation of the individual, the linear model of progress — are not universal features of human thought. They are cultural patterns. And like all patterns, they illuminate some things beautifully while leaving other things in shadow.

What they leave in shadow, I’ve found, are the relational, the contextual, the mysterious — the very qualities that make enquiry feel alive.

Why Māori and Quaker Worldviews Feel Spacious

If Western categories tend to narrow enquiry, then Māori and Quaker worlds have done the opposite for me: they have opened it. Not by offering answers, but by offering a different way of being with questions. A way that feels less like navigating a system and more like entering a relationship.

I’ve often wondered why I feel so at ease in these two communities, despite coming from neither. Part of it, I think, is that both traditions begin with an assumption that Western thought often forgets: people arrive with different realities, and that is not a problem to be solved. It is simply the world as it is.

On a marae (a Māori communal meeting place), this is made explicit. Before any formalities begin, the kawa (protocols) and tikanga (customs) of that particular place are explained — not only for Pākehā like me, but for Māori from other iwi (tribal groups) as well. There is no expectation that anyone should “just know.” The explanation is not a concession; it is an act of manaakitanga (hospitality and care), a recognition that each person carries their own background, their own way of being, their own reality. The marae does not demand assimilation. It offers orientation.

This explicit hospitality feels like oxygen to me. Perhaps because, as an autistic person, I’ve spent much of my life navigating spaces where the rules are unspoken and the expectations invisible. On the marae, nothing is hidden. The structure is clear. The welcome is genuine. And the diversity of those present is assumed, not treated as deviation. It is a worldview grounded in whakapapa, where relationships, not categories, define the shape of reality. It is a world where enquiry begins with connection, not classification.

Quaker practice offers a different kind of spaciousness, but one that resonates in a similar way. A Quaker meeting begins with silence, but not an empty silence. It is a shared listening, a communal attentiveness to whatever might arise. Newcomers are gently told what to expect — not because Quakers believe their way is the only way, but because they know that silence without context can feel disorienting. Again, the norms are named. The expectations are clear. And the diversity of experience within the room is welcomed rather than managed.

What I find most spacious in Quakerism is its refusal to collapse mystery into doctrine. Truth is not a proposition to be defended but a presence to be encountered. Ministry arises not from authority but from leading. Discernment is not a debate but a collective listening. It is a way of being that treats mystery as a feature of reality, not a flaw in our understanding. And in that sense, it aligns closely with Māori cosmology, where the world is alive with relationships, presences, and meanings that cannot be reduced to categories.

Both traditions, in their own ways, resist the Western urge to tidy the world into boxes. They do not divide knowledge into “objective” and “subjective,” or “scientific” and “spiritual.” They do not assume a single centre from which all meaning radiates. Instead, they begin with plurality. They assume diversity. They treat difference as relational rather than hierarchical.

And perhaps this is why I feel at home in both spaces. They do not ask me to pretend that my reality is the same as everyone else’s. They do not require me to absorb unspoken norms. They do not treat my way of perceiving the world as deviation from a standard. Instead, they offer a place where enquiry can unfold without being funnelled — where questions can arise from lived experience rather than from inherited categories.

In Māori and Quaker worlds, enquiry feels less like a method and more like a conversation. Less like a search for certainty and more like a deepening of relationship. Less like a narrowing and more like an opening.

And it is from within that opening that the next part of this reflection emerges: the possibility that diversity, not uniformity, is the natural state of enquiry.

Diversity as the Natural State of Enquiry

The more I sit with these questions, the more I realise that what feels spacious in Māori and Quaker worlds is not simply their hospitality or their clarity of practice. It is something deeper: a worldview in which diversity is assumed, not explained. A worldview where plurality is the starting point, not a complication to be managed.

In Western thought, diversity is often treated as variation from a norm — a scattering of points around a central line. But in the natural world, diversity is not deviation. It is the fabric of life itself. Ecosystems thrive on variation. Evolution depends on it. Cultures grow through it. Even within a single person, experience is layered, shifting, and relational. Nothing is ever just one thing.

Enquiry, I’ve come to realise, is no different.

When enquiry begins with the assumption of a single correct method, or a single valid form of evidence, or a single universal truth, it becomes narrow. It becomes a search for confirmation rather than a movement toward understanding. It becomes a funnel. But when enquiry begins with diversity — with the recognition that reality is experienced differently by different people, cultures, and communities — it becomes something else entirely. It becomes relational. It becomes ecological. It becomes alive.

This is where my own lived experience has been an unexpected teacher. Being autistic means I have never been able to assume that my way of perceiving the world is the default. I’ve always known, sometimes painfully, that my reality is not everyone’s reality. But that awareness has also been a gift. It has taught me that there is no single centre from which all meaning radiates. There are only vantage points, each shaped by culture, neurology, history, and relationship.

From that perspective, diversity is not a challenge to enquiry. It is the condition that makes enquiry possible.

Māori cosmology expresses this through whakapapa — the understanding that everything exists in relationship, and that those relationships are layered, dynamic, and alive. Quaker practice expresses it through communal discernment — the recognition that truth emerges not from a single voice but from the interplay of many. Both traditions assume that no one person, no one method, no one worldview can hold the whole.

This is not relativism. It is humility.

It is the recognition that reality is too large, too complex, too relational to be captured by any single framework. And it is the recognition that enquiry, at its best, is not about narrowing the world into categories but about opening ourselves to the richness of what is present.

When I think about enquiry in this way, it no longer feels like a ladder to climb or a puzzle to solve. It feels more like walking through a forest — noticing patterns, listening for what is hidden, paying attention to what emerges, and accepting that the path will not always be straight. It feels like a conversation rather than a conclusion.

And perhaps this is the heart of what I want to say: diversity is not something we encounter at the edges of enquiry; it is the ground on which enquiry stands. When we begin from that ground, the world becomes larger, not smaller. Questions become invitations rather than tests. Mystery becomes a companion rather than a threat. And enquiry becomes a way of being in relationship with the world, rather than a method for controlling it.

This is the kind of enquiry that feels true to my lived experience. It is the kind of enquiry I find in Māori and Quaker spaces. And it is the kind of enquiry I hope to honour in this reflection — one that begins with diversity, moves through relationship, and remains open to whatever might unfold next.

Closing

As I come to the end of this reflection, I’m aware that nothing here resolves into a single answer. That feels appropriate. Enquiry, at least as I’ve experienced it, rarely leads to closure. It leads instead to a widening — a sense that the world is larger, more relational, more diverse than the categories I inherited ever allowed me to see.

If there is a thread running through these thoughts, it is simply this: the way we frame enquiry shapes what we are able to notice. When we begin with narrow categories, we see only what fits inside them. When we begin with diversity, we discover that the world is full of ways of knowing, each grounded in its own relationships, histories, and realities.

Māori and Quaker worlds have taught me this in different ways. One through whakapapa, the other through silence. One through explicit hospitality, the other through communal listening. Both through a humility that recognises that no single perspective can hold the whole. Both through a spaciousness that allows enquiry to unfold without forcing it into predetermined shapes.

And perhaps that is what I have been circling all along: a desire for enquiry that is not constrained by the need for certainty, nor by the categories that claim to define what counts as knowledge. An enquiry that begins with relationship rather than method. An enquiry that honours the diversity of human experience rather than treating it as deviation. An enquiry that remains open to mystery, not as a failure of understanding but as an invitation to keep listening.

My own reality — shaped by autistic perception, by cross‑cultural encounters, by the quiet clarity that comes from not fitting neatly into the expected norms — has taught me that there is no single vantage point from which the world can be fully understood. There are only perspectives, each partial, each valid, each offering something the others cannot.

If there is a closing thought, it is simply this: enquiry is at its most alive when it remains open to the diversity of realities that make up our shared world. When we allow ourselves to wander, to listen, to be surprised, we find that understanding is not a destination but a relationship — one that deepens as we move through it.

And so this reflection ends not with an answer, but with an openness. A recognition that the world is richer than any single framework can contain, and that enquiry, when freed from its funnels, can lead us into that richness with curiosity, humility, and a sense of wonder.


by 1 Comment

Walk With Me for a Moment So You Can See What I Mean

Some people say autistic folks talk about themselves too much. I’ve heard variations of that line for most of my life, usually from people who assume their own conversational norms are universal. But when I tell a story, I’m not trying to centre myself — I’m trying to build a bridge. Autistic storytelling is often an invitation: walk with me for a moment so you can see what I mean. It’s a way of creating shared context in a world where shared assumptions can’t be taken for granted.

When Autistic Storytelling Gets Misread

Neurotypical conversation relies heavily on things that don’t come naturally to many autistic people: implied meaning, shared assumptions, indirect cues, and a kind of conversational shorthand built on unspoken social rules. When those rules aren’t shared, misunderstandings bloom quickly.

Autistic communication works differently. We tend to make meaning explicit. We use concrete examples. We provide context because we can’t assume the other person has it. And when we tell a story, it’s rarely about “me” — it’s about making the abstract visible.

But to someone who expects brevity, implication, and shared social cues, a story can look like a detour. Or worse, self‑centredness.

This is the double empathy gap in action: two different communication logics colliding, each misreading the other.

Lived Examples: How Stories Carry Meaning

I’ve used storytelling all my life — long before I knew I was autistic — because it’s the most reliable way I know to help someone understand my perspective.

A Bible‑Reading Story

When my wife first became Christian, her English was still quite limited. Yet she preferred reading an English Bible over the Japanese one she also owned. I asked her why. She explained that the Japanese version was a translation of an English translation, and in the process a lot of nuance had been lost. Even with her limited English, she could sense that meaning wasn’t fixed in the surface words.

That experience has stayed with me. It taught me that translation is never neutral — and that sometimes the only way to convey nuance is through lived example.

My Father’s Court‑Martial

I’ve also told the story of my father’s court‑martial more than once. Not because I’m fascinated with my own family history, but because it illustrates something abstract: how systems can punish integrity, how authority can misread intention, and how people can be caught between rules and conscience.

Stories like these aren’t self‑focused. They’re context‑focused. They’re a way of saying: “Here is what this looks like from the inside.”

What the Research Shows

For years, autistic storytelling was dismissed as rambling, tangential, or egocentric. But research over the past decade has painted a very different picture.

Studies by researchers such as Damian Milton, Catherine Crompton, Sue Fletcher‑Watson, and Elizabeth Sheppard show that autistic narrative is often:

  • more detailed
  • more explicit about motivations
  • more attentive to fairness and moral nuance
  • more careful to avoid misunderstanding
  • more focused on helping the listener follow the thread

In other words, autistic storytelling is frequently more other‑focused than neurotypical storytelling.

Autistic–autistic conversations show this clearly: they are coherent, reciprocal, and rich in shared meaning. The breakdown happens mainly in autistic–non‑autistic exchanges, where each side misreads the other’s cues.

Autistic people tell stories not to dominate the conversation, but to make the conversation possible.

The Parallel With Universalism

This misunderstanding reminds me of something I’ve been writing about recently: the tendency to assume that one’s own interpretive framework is universal.

Universalism (in the sense I’ve been critiquing) assumes:
“My way of understanding the world is the default, and everyone else is a variation.”

Neurotypical misreadings of autistic communication often assume:
“My way of conversing is the default, and autistic communication is a deviation.”

Both mistakes arise from the same root: mistaking one’s own norms for universal norms.

And in both cases, the minority group is misinterpreted through the lens of the majority.

Autistic storytelling isn’t self‑centred. It’s simply operating from a different set of assumptions about how meaning is shared.

Reframing Autistic Storytelling

So what is autistic storytelling, really?

It’s a way of creating shared context.
A way of reducing ambiguity.
A way of inviting the listener into one’s perspective.
A way of bridging the double empathy gap.
A way of saying: “Walk with me for a moment so you can see what I mean.”

It is relational, not self‑centred.
It is generous, not indulgent.
It is a form of translation — from one way of experiencing the world into another.

Closing Reflection

Autistic and neurotypical communication styles differ, but neither is superior. They simply operate on different assumptions. When autistic people tell stories, we’re not trying to make everything about ourselves. We’re trying to make ourselves understood. And perhaps that’s the invitation at the heart of autistic storytelling: to slow down, step into my world for a moment — or ours — and walk with us just long enough to see what we mean.


by 4 Comments

Stepping Back

Every April, the familiar rhythm begins again — Autism Awareness Day, Autism Acceptance Month, Autism Appreciation posts, blue lights, hashtags, campaigns. For years I’ve tried to participate in good faith, even as something in me felt uneasy. I tried reframing the language, softening the tone, shifting the focus. But this year, after sitting with that discomfort, I’ve realised the problem isn’t the wording. It’s the frame itself.

Autism Month doesn’t centre autistic people. It centres autism — as a topic, an object, a concept to be managed, interpreted, or explained by others.

And that changes the relationship entirely.

To illustrate what I mean, imagine a “Women’s Appreciation Month” organised entirely by men. The events focus on womanhood as an abstract idea — what women are “naturally suited” for, what roles they “should” embrace, what support they “need.” Some of the messaging is even shaped by old misconceptions, like the belief that a woman’s menstrual cycle makes her too emotional or unstable for leadership. When actual women speak up and say, “This doesn’t reflect our lives,” they’re told they’re “not representative,” “too emotional,” or “confused by modern ideas.” The month becomes a performance about womanhood, not a conversation with women.

That’s the relational pattern autistic adults encounter every April. The focus shifts from autistic people to “autism,” and once that happens, our lived experience becomes inconvenient. We are treated as data points, exceptions, or disruptions to the narrative. We are expected to be grateful for being spoken about, even when we are not spoken with.

For me, relationships are the centre of everything — with people, with place, with the natural world, with meaning. Any transaction that happens in my life grows out of those relationships, not the other way around. But the relationship between autistic people and the broader “autism community” — often made up of parents, professionals, and service providers — is frequently one‑way. We are framed as broken, burdensome, or in need of correction, and the support we receive is shaped by what others find convenient or comfortable, not by what we actually say we need.

So this year, I’m stepping back from Autism Awareness, Acceptance, and Appreciation Day and Month. Not in anger, and not as a rejection of community, but as an act of honesty. The frame doesn’t fit. It doesn’t reflect the relationships that matter to me — the ones built on reciprocity, understanding, and presence.

Instead, I want to write from lived experience, in my own time and on my own terms. I want to explore what relationships mean to me as an autistic person — how I listen, how I connect, how I understand the world, and how I am understood in return. Those reflections don’t need a designated month. They need space, sincerity, and relationship.

And that’s where I’ll be.


by 1 Comment

Inner Speech, Awareness, and a New Insight into Anendophasia

When I published my January post Anendophasia and AI: Why Conversational Tools Work So Well for Me, I thought I had said everything I needed to say on the topic — at least for now. Then Janecshearer left a thoughtful comment with a link to a recent Guardian article on inner speech and consciousness. Without that nudge, I might have missed an opportunity for a deeper insight into my own cognitive landscape. So, thank you, Janecshearer — this post exists because of you.

Her comment pointed me toward a long read exploring how people experience their “inner voice.” As I read it, something unexpected happened: I realised that not only do people differ in whether they have an inner monologue, they also differ in how aware they are of it. That had never occurred to me.

For someone who has never had an inner voice at all — and only relatively recently learned that most people do — the idea that people vary in their awareness of it was genuinely surprising. It prompted a moment of self‑doubt: could I have an inner voice after all, but be completely unaware of it, in much the same way that alexithymia obscures my perception of emotions?

That question led me somewhere interesting.

Inner Speech Awareness vs. Inner Speech Capacity

The Guardian article wasn’t describing anendophasia — the inability to generate inner speech — but something quite different: inner speech awareness. Some people have a constant internal monologue; others have one that is intermittent, quiet, or backgrounded. Some barely notice it at all.

This is not the same as not having one.

My own experience is not of a quiet or infrequent inner voice. It is the absence of one altogether. My thinking is conceptual, non‑verbal, and arrives in shapes rather than sentences — what I’ve previously described as a “lava lamp” of ideas rising, merging, and reforming.

But the article made me pause long enough to ask whether I might simply be unaware of an inner voice, the way I can be unaware of emotions until they manifest physically. That pause turned out to be productive.

A New Connection: Is Anendophasia Part of the Aphantasia Spectrum?

While reflecting on the idea of inner speech awareness, something clicked. If inner speech is a form of mental imagery — specifically, auditory‑verbal imagery — then perhaps anendophasia is not a standalone trait but a linguistic subtype of aphantasia.

I live with aphantasia across all sensory modalities: no visual imagery, no auditory imagery, no tactile or pain imagery. If I cannot generate sensory imagery of any kind, why would linguistic imagery be the exception?

This line of thought didn’t emerge from a step‑by‑step analysis. It arrived as a whole — a conceptual shape rather than a verbal argument. That’s the nature of my cognition. A more linear, verbal thinker might not have seen the connection because they think in the very medium they’re trying to examine. My non‑verbal cognition lets me step outside the medium entirely.

The more I sit with it, the more it makes sense: Anendophasia may be the linguistic branch of a broader aphantasia envelope.

It’s speculation, of course — but informed speculation grounded in lived experience.

Seeing the Shape of It

This distinction — between awareness of inner speech and the capacity to generate it — isn’t widely appreciated. The Guardian article highlights the former, while my original post explored the latter. They’re related, but they describe fundamentally different cognitive phenomena.

Recognising that difference helped me see a broader pattern emerging. If inner speech is a form of mental imagery, then the absence of it may sit naturally within the wider aphantasia spectrum. That possibility opens up new ways of thinking about how different minds construct meaning, language, and self‑reflection.

It also reinforces something I’ve come to understand about my own cognition: it isn’t a variation on a typical model, but a different architecture altogether — one that shapes not only how I think, but the kinds of insights that surface when I give myself space to notice them.

Closing Thoughts

I’m grateful for the comment that prompted this reflection. It’s a reminder that conversations — whether with readers, researchers, or AI tools — can reveal connections we might not find on our own.

If others with aphantasia or anendophasia recognise aspects of their own experience in this, I’d be interested to hear from you. We’re still at the early stages of understanding these traits, and lived experience is often the first clue that research eventually catches up with.


by 4 Comments

Holding Truth Lightly — Part 2

Part One explored the childhood experiences that shaped my unease with certainty. In adulthood, those early lessons resurfaced in unexpected ways — in how I understood my own mind, in the life my wife and I built together, and in the spiritual language I eventually found for what I had been living all along.

Neurodivergence and the Habit of Questioning Perception

As I grew older, I began to realise that my way of moving through the world was not quite the same as those around me. I didn’t have the language for neurodivergence then — that understanding came much later — but I knew that I noticed things others seemed to miss, and missed things others seemed to take for granted. What I experienced as careful observation or thoughtful hesitation was often misread as confusion, indecision, or naïveté. For much of my life, I carried the sense of being slightly out of step with the rhythm everyone else seemed to follow effortlessly.

My parents, perhaps sensing this difference long before I did, took extra care to explain the “why” behind things. They didn’t expect me to accept rules at face value; they helped me understand the reasoning beneath them. That emphasis on explanation over obedience became a kind of internal compass. It taught me that perception is not the same as reality, and that people can interpret the same moment in very different ways. It also taught me to pause before drawing conclusions — not out of uncertainty, but out of respect for the complexity of what lay beneath the surface.

Over time, I came to see that this habit of questioning my own perception was not a flaw but a form of clarity. It made me cautious about easy answers and wary of anyone who claimed to see the world without distortion. Where others seemed comfortable with certainty, I felt an instinctive pull toward nuance — not because I lacked conviction, but because I understood, almost viscerally, that every perspective is shaped by the lens through which it is seen.

Living six decades without a diagnosis meant that I learned to navigate the world by building my own frameworks, often quietly and intuitively. Those frameworks were shaped by reasoning, by observation, and by a deep awareness that my experience was only one among many. That awareness didn’t make me doubt myself; it made me attentive to the limits of my own vantage point. And it reinforced something I had been learning since childhood: that truth is rarely singular, and that certainty — especially when unexamined — can be a fragile foundation on which to build a worldview.

Two Lenses, One Life — Marriage Across Cultures

If childhood taught me that truth has more than one vantage point, adulthood confirmed it in the most intimate way. When I married my wife — a woman whose early life unfolded in rural Japan, shaped by customs, rhythms, and assumptions very different from my own — I didn’t yet realise how profoundly our shared life would deepen my understanding of perspective. At the time, I simply knew that we cared for one another and that we were willing to build a life together. Only later did I come to see that our marriage would become one of my clearest teachers.

Living side by side, we discovered again and again that we could look at the same moment and see something subtly, or sometimes strikingly, different. Not because either of us was wrong, but because we were each shaped by the cultural lenses we carried with us — lenses formed long before we met, and refined over decades of shared experience. Even after more than fifty years together, we still occasionally stumble across assumptions we didn’t know we held, shaped by the landscapes of our childhoods and the stories we absorbed without realising.

What has always struck me is how naturally we learned to navigate those differences. There was no need to resolve them into a single viewpoint, no pressure to decide whose interpretation was “correct.” Instead, we learned to hold both perspectives at once, recognising that each revealed something the other could not. Our marriage became a quiet practice in humility — a daily reminder that no one sees the world directly, and that every understanding is filtered through the lens of a particular life.

This shared life has taught me that plurality is not a threat to be managed but a richness to be embraced. It has shown me that two people can inhabit the same moment with different understandings and still move forward together with respect, curiosity, and affection. And it has reinforced something I first sensed as a child and have carried with me ever since: that certainty leaves no room for the complexity of human experience, while humility allows us to see the world through more than one pair of eyes.

Finding Language for What I Had Been Living — Lloyd Geering and Quakerism

Long before I encountered Quakerism, I had already been shaped by ideas that challenged rigid belief and invited a more spacious understanding of truth. I was seventeen when Lloyd Geering first came to national attention in 1966, and eighteen when the Presbyterian Church formally charged him with “doctrinal error” and “disturbing the peace of the Church” the following year. His sermons — questioning the literal resurrection and the immortality of the soul, and asking instead what meaning these stories might hold for a modern world — spilled far beyond church walls. People were discussing theology in pubs, at sewing bees, in workplaces, in places where religion was rarely mentioned at all.

What struck me at the time was not the controversy itself, but how closely Geering’s way of thinking paralleled instincts I already carried. His insistence that truth has many vantage points, that our understanding is always filtered through the lens of our culture and experience, felt immediately familiar. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I recognised something of myself in his approach — a refusal to treat any single narrative as complete, and a willingness to ask what deeper meaning might lie beneath the surface of inherited stories.

It would be another decade before I encountered the Quaker tradition, but when I did, it felt less like discovering something new and more like finding a home for the worldview I had been quietly forming since childhood. The Quaker emphasis on lived truth rather than doctrinal certainty, on listening rather than asserting, on humility rather than proclamation, gave shape to instincts that had long been part of me. In the Meeting, I found a community that trusted silence as a form of knowing and treated discernment as a shared practice rather than an individual claim to insight.

Together, Geering’s thought and Quaker practice offered me both language and structure for what I had been living all along. They affirmed that religion, at its best, is not a set of propositions to defend but a way of being in the world — a mode of living grounded in relationship, humility, and openness to complexity. They also clarified why absolutism, whether religious or secular, has always felt so foreign to me. Certainty leaves no room for the truths that lie outside our own line of sight. Humility, by contrast, allows us to recognise that our perspective is one among many, and that understanding is something we build together rather than possess alone.

Returning to the Present

Coming back to the comments that prompted this reflection, I can see now why they unsettled me in the way they did. It wasn’t the criticism of religion itself; I’ve lived long enough, and thought long enough, to know that religion can be both harmful and life‑giving, sometimes in the same breath. What jarred me was the certainty — the sense that a single conclusion could be applied universally, without regard for context, history, or the lived experience of others.

For someone else, those comments might have passed unnoticed. But for me, they touched a thread that runs back through my entire life: the understanding that truth is always shaped by the vantage point from which it is seen. From my parents’ relational ethics, to the Kaumātua’s stories, to the quiet courage of my mother at the races, to the way my wife and I have learned to navigate our different lenses, to the insights of Lloyd Geering and the practice of Quaker discernment — all of these have taught me that the world is too complex, too layered, too full of human variation to be captured by any single, absolute claim.

So when I encounter certainty expressed without hesitation, especially from people whose values I usually share, it feels like a dissonance — not because I disagree with their conclusions, but because the confidence itself seems out of step with the humility that genuine understanding requires. It reminds me how easily any of us can slip into thinking that our perspective is the perspective, and how quickly that can close the door to the truths that lie outside our own line of sight.

This essay, then, is not a rebuttal of those comments, nor a defence of religion, nor a critique of the people who wrote them. It is simply an attempt to understand why they struck me so forcefully, and to trace the path that has shaped my own resistance to absolutism. It is a way of returning to the question that stopped me mid‑scroll: Why does this unsettle me so deeply?

A Gentle Closing — Living With Complexity

As I sit with all of this, I realise that my discomfort with certainty is not a flaw to be corrected but a thread woven through the whole of my life. It comes from childhood lessons in dignity and relationship, from stories that revealed the limits of any single narrative, from the quiet differences my wife and I have navigated over decades, from the insights of thinkers who challenged inherited assumptions, and from a spiritual tradition that trusts silence more than proclamation. These experiences have taught me that understanding is something we grow into, not something we possess.

So when I encounter certainty expressed without hesitation, it touches something deep — not because I think people shouldn’t hold strong views, but because I know how easily certainty can close the door to the truths that lie beyond our own vantage point. The world is too complex, too layered, too full of human variation to be captured by any single frame. And yet, we keep trying. Perhaps that is simply part of being human.

What I hope, for myself as much as for anyone reading this, is that we can learn to hold our convictions lightly — not weakly, but with the humility that comes from knowing they are shaped by the lenses through which we see. That we can remain open to the possibility that someone else’s experience might reveal something our own cannot. That we can resist the temptation to collapse complexity into certainty, even when certainty feels comforting.

In the end, this essay is not about the comments that unsettled me. It is about the long path that led me to pause at them, and the values that have shaped that pause. It is about recognising that discomfort can be a teacher, pointing us back to the places where our deepest commitments were formed. And it is about remembering that the world is richer, and more generous, when we allow room for more than one way of seeing.

I don’t expect everyone to share my unease with absolutism. But I do hope that, in a world increasingly drawn to simple answers, we can make space for the kind of humility that keeps us listening. Because in the end, it is in listening — to one another, to our own histories, to the quiet truths that emerge when certainty falls away — that we find the possibility of understanding.


by Leave a comment

Holding Truth Lightly — Part 1

I found myself unsettled the other day while reading a series of comments on a blog I follow. The writers were people whose values I usually share — thoughtful, evidence‑minded, wary of dogma — yet their certainty about the harmfulness of all religion struck me with unexpected force. It wasn’t the conclusion that jarred me so much as the confidence with which it was expressed, a confidence that felt strangely out of step with the humility they normally champion. That moment made me stop, mid‑scroll, and ask myself a question I’ve returned to many times over the years: Why does certainty — especially when it comes from people I respect — unsettle me so deeply?

Naming the Real Issue — Certainty, Not Religion

As I sat with that question, it became clear that what unsettled me wasn’t the criticism of religion itself. I’ve lived long enough, and seen enough, to know that religion can cause harm as easily as it can nurture compassion. What jarred me was the certainty — the sense that a single conclusion could be applied to every form of religion, in every context, without remainder. It reminded me how easily any of us, no matter how committed we are to evidence and reason, can slip into treating our perceptions as universal truths.

The more I reflected, the more I realised that the tension I felt had little to do with religion and everything to do with absolutism. I’ve encountered certainty in many guises over the years — religious, political, ideological, even scientific — and it has always made me uneasy. Not because conviction is wrong, but because certainty leaves no room for the complexity of human experience. It flattens the world into a single vantage point and mistakes that vantage point for reality itself.

That, I realised, was the real issue. Not the content of the claims, but the confidence with which they were made. And as I turned that over in my mind, I found myself remembering an unfinished draft I wrote years ago, trying to understand why absolutism — in any form — has always felt like a warning bell to me.

Sitting with that unease, I found myself thinking back to an unfinished draft I wrote years ago, an attempt to trace the roots of my discomfort with absolutism. I never completed it at the time, but the questions it held have stayed with me, quietly shaping the way I move through the world. This seemed like the moment to return to that earlier reflection — not to continue it, but to understand what it was pointing toward. To see, more clearly, how I came to trust complexity over certainty, and why that trust feels so deeply woven into who I am.

When I look back to understand why certainty makes me uneasy, I always return first to my childhood. Long before I had words like “ethics” or “pluralism,” I was shaped by a way of living that treated people as relationships to be honoured rather than problems to be solved. I grew up in a whānau where difference wasn’t something to fear, and where unfamiliarity wasn’t treated as a threat. People were met as people — not as categories, not as abstractions, not as representatives of anything larger than themselves.

My parents didn’t divide the world into right and wrong, good and bad, saved and unsaved. They didn’t punish us when we caused harm. Instead, they explained why an action mattered, how it affected someone else, and what it meant to consider another person’s experience. Looking back, I realise how unusual that was for the 1950s and 60s, when obedience was often valued more than understanding. But in our home, ethics was never about rules. It was about relationships — the living, breathing connections between people, and the responsibility we carry for one another.

One of the quiet gifts of that upbringing was the freedom to sit with the Kaumātua (a Māori elder) who lived next door — an almost blind, almost deaf woman with a moko kauae and a lifetime of stories. Many parents of the time might have kept their children away from someone they didn’t understand. Mine didn’t. They saw a neighbour, not an oddity. Because of that, I heard stories of Waitara and Parihaka years before I encountered the official versions at school. I didn’t know it then, but those conversations planted the idea that truth has more than one vantage point, and that the stories we inherit are never the whole story.

Another layer settled the day my mother — a woman barely 150 centimetres tall — stood up to a group of racegoers who were mocking two men dressed in matching pleated miniskirts. At the time, I didn’t think about their sexual orientation; it simply didn’t occur to me. What I saw were two men dressed in a way that was unconventional for the era, and, to my young eyes, rather stylish. What my mother saw, I suspect, was something more immediate: a crowd beginning to feed on its own delight in taunting difference, a mood that could so easily tip from mockery into menace.

It took tremendous courage for her to step forward in that moment. The crowd was large, loud, and moving as crowds sometimes do — toward a kind of collective unkindness that no single person would have embraced on their own. My mother broke that feedback loop with a few firm words, reminding everyone present of what it means to be decent. The effect was instant. The jeering stopped. A kind of collective shame settled over the group, as if people suddenly recognised themselves and didn’t much like what they saw.

What stayed with me was not the incident itself, but the silence that followed. My mother never lectured me about what had happened. She didn’t turn it into a lesson about tolerance or bravery. She simply acted from a place of instinctive respect, and then carried on with her day. From that, I learned something that has shaped me ever since: dignity is something you extend to others, not something you wait to have validated.

These early experiences formed the bedrock of my ethics. They taught me that strength can be quiet, relational, and grounded in empathy rather than certainty. They taught me that truth is rarely singular. And they taught me that the world is far more complex — and far more beautiful — than any rigid framework can capture.

Learning That Truth Has More Than One Vantage Point

If my parents taught me that ethics is relational, the world around me taught me that truth itself has more than one vantage point. Some of the most formative lessons came not from school or church, but from the quiet hours I spent with the Kaumātua next door. I didn’t grasp the significance of those conversations at the time. I was simply a child listening to stories — stories of Waitara, of Parihaka, of people whose experiences were absent from the official narratives I would later encounter in the classroom.

But something in me recognised, even then, that these stories were not “alternatives” to the truth. They were truths in their own right, shaped by a different history, a different memory, a different relationship to land and power. They revealed that the world looks different depending on where you stand, and that no single account can ever capture the whole of it.

Those early encounters planted a seed that has stayed with me throughout my life: the understanding that perspective is not a flaw in human perception but an inherent part of it. We do not see the world as it is; we see it through the lenses of our culture, our history, our experiences, and our place in the story. That realisation didn’t make me distrust truth — it made me wary of anyone who claimed to possess all of it.

It was in those moments, long before I had the language for it, that I began to understand why certainty feels so brittle to me. Not because conviction is wrong, but because certainty leaves no room for the truths that lie outside our own line of sight. The Kaumātua’s stories taught me that truth is not a single beam of light but a landscape — one that can only be glimpsed from many angles, none of them complete on their own.

In Part Two, I turn from these childhood experiences to the ways they continued to shape my adult life — in how I understood myself, how I navigated relationships, and how I learned to make sense of the world’s complexity.


by Leave a comment

Weather, Raynaud’s, and Other Small Miracles

I’ve lived in Aotearoa long enough to know that the weather here isn’t so much a climate as a form of improvisational theatre. Some countries have four seasons; New Zealand prefers to cycle through them all before morning tea, just to keep the population alert. Visitors think this is an exaggeration. Locals know it’s a public‑health warning.

Now, I should confess something up front. As an autistic person, I have a well‑developed tendency to “info‑dump” — a trait I’ve come to embrace. Some people collect stamps; I collect trivia. Meteorology, geology, astronomy, obscure historical footnotes — if it can be categorised, I’ve probably memorised it. So before I get to the stories (and there are stories), I should probably explain why New Zealand weather behaves like a toddler who’s had too much sugar.

It’s because we live on two narrow islands, perched in the Roaring Forties, surrounded by ocean, and angled just so that every air mass in the southern hemisphere feels entitled to drop by unannounced. Warm subtropical breezes, icy Antarctic blasts, Tasman Sea tantrums — they all arrive with the enthusiasm of relatives who don’t believe in phoning ahead. The result is a climate that can’t commit to anything for more than twenty minutes.

This unpredictability is something I’ve always secretly loved. I inherited it from my mother. While the rest of the family sensibly stayed indoors during storms, she and I would dress in raincoats and gumboots and venture out into the tempest like two slightly deranged explorers. Walking the deserted streets in the middle of a downpour, with only the occasional car hissing past, was one of my greatest childhood delights. Thunder and lightning were a bonus — nature’s own percussion section.

My Wife’s First Summer (or What Passes for Summer Here)

This is the environment into which my wife arrived from Japan. She brought with her a suitcase of Japanese‑summer clothing and the reasonable expectation that “summer” meant “warm.” The rest of her wardrobe was following by sea freight — a journey of several months — which, in Japan, was perfectly sensible. In New Zealand, it was an act of meteorological optimism.

I, having grown up here, didn’t think to warn her. It never crossed my mind that someone might interpret the word “summer” literally. I had internalised the local understanding that “summer” is more of a mood than a temperature range — a vague aspiration the weather sometimes gestures toward before changing its mind entirely.

Her first week was a masterclass in cultural miscommunication, most of it conducted by the sky. She stepped off the plane into a brisk southerly that had clearly wandered up from Antarctica in search of mischief. The next day was warm enough for short sleeves. The day after that brought horizontal rain, the kind that arrives at speed and with intent. By the end of the week she had experienced more seasons than she had packed outfits.

I remember her standing in the doorway one morning, holding a light blouse in one hand and a cardigan in the other, looking from one to the other as if the garments might offer guidance. They didn’t. They were as confused as she was. In Japan, clothing choices follow a reliable seasonal script. In New Zealand, the script is improvised, and the weather is the only one who knows the plot.

She adapted quickly, of course — she’s far more practical than I am — but that first summer was a revelation for both of us. For her, it was the discovery that “summer” in New Zealand is a negotiable concept. For me, it was the realisation that what I had always taken for granted was, in fact, deeply strange.

It was also the beginning of a long‑running household tradition: before leaving the house, one must consult not just the forecast but also the sky, the wind, the cat’s behaviour, and one’s own intuition. Even then, it’s best to take a jacket.

My Fingers, the Reluctant Employees

My relationship with cold weather has always been complicated. While some people merely “feel the chill,” my fingers treat even a mild temperature drop as grounds for industrial action. They don’t negotiate, they don’t file grievances — they simply walk off the job. One moment they’re typing away quite happily; the next, they’ve turned white and unresponsive, like tiny civil servants staging a silent protest.

This is Raynaud’s: a condition in which the blood vessels in my fingers and toes overreact to cold by shutting down entirely. Most people’s extremities get cold gradually. Mine go straight from “perfectly functional” to “Arctic expedition casualty” with no intermediate steps. It’s as if my fingers have only two settings: summer holiday and Siberian exile.

The real trouble isn’t the freezing — it’s the thawing. When the blood finally returns, it does so with the enthusiasm of a crowd rushing into a department store on Boxing Day. The nerves, having been deprived of oxygen, wake up all at once and lodge their complaints directly with the pain centres of the brain. The sensation is difficult to describe, but imagine someone driving hot needles under your fingernails while simultaneously setting your hands on fire. That gets you in the general vicinity.

For years, I delayed warming my hands because the cure hurt more than the problem. It’s the only medical condition I know where “treatment” feels like a disciplinary measure. I would sit there, fingers white and stiff, knowing full well that I should warm them — and choosing not to, because I wasn’t quite ready for the punishment. It’s a strange form of procrastination, but one that made perfect sense at the time.

Complicating matters further is my autistic tendency to be somewhat oblivious to bodily sensations until they become impossible to ignore. While other people notice their hands getting cold, I usually become aware of the situation only when my fingers stop obeying instructions. I would be typing away, wondering why my words per minute had suddenly plummeted, only to glance down and discover that my hands had quietly transformed into marble sculptures.

For now, it’s enough to say that my fingers have always been enthusiastic participants in New Zealand’s meteorological drama. While my wife was learning that “summer” is a negotiable concept, I was relearning that my hands are fair‑weather employees, loyal only to temperatures above about 15 °C — roughly 60 °F for my American readers.

The Desert Road and the Unheated Vans

If my wife’s first summer taught her that New Zealand weather has commitment issues, the Desert Road taught me that it also has a vindictive streak. For reasons known only to the gods of transport logistics, my employer in those days issued us English‑built panel vans with unlined metal cabins and, in the North Island at least, no heaters. The logic was simple: the South Island is colder than the North Island, therefore only South Island vehicles needed heaters. This was technically true in the same way that saying “the ocean is damp” is technically true — accurate, but missing several important nuances.

My territory included the Desert Road, a stretch of State Highway One that climbs to over a thousand metres and behaves, meteorologically speaking, like a small, moody alpine plateau. In midwinter it could be bitterly cold, with several inches of snow on the ground and a wind that locals cheerfully described as “lazy” because it went straight through you instead of around you. I suspect the humidity played a role, but whatever the cause, it was a wind with opinions.

Driving an unheated metal van through that environment was an experience I would not recommend. The cabin acted as a kind of mobile refrigerator, efficiently conducting the outside temperature directly to the driver. My Raynaud’s, always eager to participate in any climatic drama, would seize the opportunity to stage a full‑scale shutdown. My fingers would turn white and stiff, locking onto the steering wheel like frozen claws. Changing gear became a negotiation between willpower and physiology. By the time I reached my destination, the thawing process — that delightful sensation of hot needles under the fingernails — awaited me like a punishment for having survived the journey.

One winter, I was tasked with transporting the company’s managing director of engineering from our Whanganui branch to Turangi, where he was to be collected by an engineer from the Hamilton branch. He was dressed in typical business attire, which is to say: entirely unsuited to the conditions. The Desert Road had recently been blanketed in snow, and the temperature inside the van hovered somewhere between “meat locker” and “cryogenic storage.”

He said nothing during the journey, but his silence grew increasingly frosty — in both senses of the word. By the time we reached Turangi, he looked as though he had been lightly refrigerated. He stepped out of the van with the quiet dignity of a man who has just experienced something he will never speak of again.

He never mentioned the cold. He didn’t need to. Over the following summer, all our North Island vans were retrofitted with heaters. No memo was issued, no explanation offered. The decision had been made somewhere far above my pay grade, presumably by someone who had recently endured a long, silent, sub‑zero journey through the central plateau and decided that perhaps, just perhaps, the North Island could get cold after all.

The Heat Pump: The Unexpected Hero

After decades of cold offices, unheated vans, and fingers that treated winter as a personal affront, the solution to my Raynaud’s arrived not in the form of medical advice or specialised gloves, but as a floor‑mounted heat pump installed halfway along our long central hallway. It wasn’t glamorous — a beige box about the size of a small suitcase — but it had two vents, one at the top and one near the floor, and together they did something miraculous: they warmed the house properly.

Before the heat pump, our home relied on two wood burners located at opposite ends of the house. They were excellent at producing intense, localised heat — the kind that makes you feel as though you’re being slow‑roasted — but they had very little interest in warming any room they couldn’t directly see. The rest of the house remained stubbornly cold, including my office, where I spent much of my time working from home. It was the perfect environment for Raynaud’s to flourish. My fingers would quietly stage their walkouts while I typed, and I would only notice when my words per minute dropped to a level normally associated with Victorian telegraph operators.

The heat pump changed all that. Positioned in the hallway, it sent warm air drifting evenly into every room, including the ones that had previously behaved like refrigerated storage. We set it to 22 °C during the day, and it maintained that temperature with a kind of quiet competence I had never before associated with household appliances. At night, we switched it to economy mode, which allowed the temperature to drift down to around 16–18 °C — cool enough for comfortable sleeping, but not cold enough to provoke any physiological rebellions.

The effect on my Raynaud’s was immediate and dramatic. The episodes that had once been a regular feature of my winters simply stopped happening. For the first time in my life, I could move from room to room without my fingers interpreting the change as a threat. I could type without interruption. I could even make a cup of coffee without worrying that the journey from kettle to desk might involve a minor circulatory crisis.

It was, in its own quiet way, a revelation. I had spent most of my life accepting Raynaud’s as an unavoidable fact — something to be endured rather than solved. It never occurred to me that the problem wasn’t my physiology so much as my environment. Once the house stopped behaving like a series of refrigerated compartments, my fingers stopped behaving like disgruntled employees.

Looking back, I realise that the heat pump didn’t just warm the house. It warmed the rhythm of daily life. It brought a kind of stability that New Zealand weather rarely offers, and in doing so, it gave me a sense of ease I hadn’t known I was missing.

Closing — Weather, Adaptation, and Other Small Miracles

Looking back over the years, I realise that weather has been one of the great characters in my life — unpredictable, occasionally cruel, often hilarious in hindsight, and always ready to teach me something, usually the hard way. It shaped my childhood adventures with my mother, wandering the streets in raincoats while the rest of the family sensibly stayed indoors. It shaped my wife’s first summer, when she discovered that New Zealand’s seasonal labels are more aspirational than descriptive. It shaped my working life, freezing my fingers to the steering wheel of an unheated van on the Desert Road while corporate policy insisted the North Island was “not that cold.”

And, of course, it shaped my Raynaud’s — or perhaps Raynaud’s shaped my relationship with the weather. My fingers have always been early adopters of winter, eager to stage walkouts at the slightest provocation. For decades I accepted this as simply part of who I was, a quirk of physiology to be endured rather than questioned. It never occurred to me that the real culprit wasn’t my circulation so much as the environments I kept finding myself in.

Then along came the heat pump — a modest beige box that quietly rewrote the script. It didn’t just warm the house; it warmed the rhythm of daily life. It brought a kind of stability that New Zealand weather rarely offers, and in doing so, it gave me something I hadn’t realised I was missing: ease. The kind of ease that comes from not having to brace yourself every time you move from one room to another. The kind of ease that lets your fingers stay on the job without staging a protest.

It’s funny, in a way. After a lifetime of storms, cold snaps, southerly changes, and meteorological surprises, the thing that finally made peace between me and the climate wasn’t a grand revelation or a heroic act of endurance. It was a quietly competent appliance humming away in the hallway.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson here. Weather will always do what weather does. It will surprise us, confound us, and occasionally freeze us to the steering wheel. But every now and then, we stumble upon something — or someone — that makes the world just a little warmer, a little steadier, and a little easier to live in.

And in a country where the forecast can change three times before breakfast, that feels like a small miracle.


by 1 Comment

Asking Different Questions: A View From the Other Side of “Normal” — Part 2 of 2

Having explored the assumptions beneath the article in Part 1, I want to begin this second part by looking at the questions that never appear, and the meaning carried in their absence.

As I sat with the article, I found myself returning not to what it said, but to what it left unsaid. Sometimes the most revealing part of a piece is the space around its arguments — the questions that never appear, the assumptions that go unchallenged, the possibilities that remain unimagined. In this case, the omissions felt as significant as the claims.

The article never asks whether the rise in diagnoses might reflect reduced stigma rather than increased fragility. It never considers whether more people are being recognised because fewer are being dismissed. It never wonders whether students are seeking help not to avoid difficulty, but to survive it. These are not small questions; they reshape the entire conversation.

Nor does the article ask whether the system itself might be part of the problem. Universities are not neutral spaces. They privilege certain sensory environments, social expectations, and cognitive styles. They reward speed over depth, performance over reflection, uniformity over divergence. Yet the article treats these structures as fixed and unquestionable, as though the only variable worth examining is the student.

It also never asks what accommodations actually do. They are not shortcuts or exemptions. They are counterweights — small adjustments that help balance a scale that has been uneven for a very long time. To frame them as indulgence is to overlook the invisible labour neurodivergent people perform daily simply to participate.

And perhaps most strikingly, the article never asks what it feels like to be neurodivergent in a world that assumes you are the problem. It does not consider the cumulative weight of misunderstanding, the exhaustion of constant adaptation, or the quiet relief that comes from finally having a name for an experience you have carried alone. Without these questions, the analysis remains abstract, detached from the lives it describes.

These omissions are not unique to this article. They reflect a broader pattern — a way of thinking that centres institutions and decentrers the people within them. When certain questions are never asked, certain answers become inevitable. Difficulty becomes a personal failing. Accommodation becomes a threat. Diagnosis becomes a loophole. And the system remains untouched.

What the article never asks, then, is not a list of oversights but a map of its worldview. It reveals where attention is directed and where it is not. It shows which experiences are considered legitimate and which are rendered invisible. And it reminds me how important it is to widen the frame — not to win an argument, but to make room for realities that have too often been left out of the conversation.

Offering a Lived Alternative

When I think about alternatives to the assumptions in the article, I don’t begin with theory. I begin with the texture of everyday life — the quiet negotiations, the constant calibrations, the ways in which neurodivergent people learn to move through a world that was not built with us in mind. These are not dramatic stories. They are the small, persistent realities that accumulate over a lifetime.

Living as a neurodivergent person means carrying a different sensory landscape, one that can be rich and vivid but also overwhelming in environments designed for speed, noise, and constant social navigation. It means a different rhythm of attention — not less capable, but differently patterned, sometimes intensely focused, sometimes scattered by demands that pull in too many directions at once. It means a different way of processing social cues, often more literal, more attuned to patterns, more sensitive to inconsistencies that others overlook.

None of these are deficits in themselves. They become difficult only when the environment insists on a single correct way of being.

What I wish the article had asked — and what I hope readers might consider — is what life looks like from the inside. Not the caricature of avoidance or fragility, but the lived reality of someone who has spent decades adapting to systems that rarely adapt in return. The effort is constant, often invisible, and almost always taken for granted.

For many of us, the real “life skills” have been learned not in spite of neurodivergence, but because of it. We learn how to mask when necessary, even though it costs us. We learn how to navigate sensory overload in workplaces and classrooms that assume everyone experiences the world the same way. We learn how to translate our communication style into something more palatable to others, even when it feels like speaking a second language. We learn how to endure misunderstanding without letting it harden into bitterness.

These are not signs of fragility. They are signs of resilience — the kind that grows quietly, without recognition, in the spaces where accommodation is scarce and understanding is rarer still.

When I read articles that frame diagnosis as avoidance or accommodation as indulgence, I am reminded of how much of this labour remains unseen. The assumption is that neurodivergent people are being excused from difficulty, when in reality we have been carrying difficulty for so long that it has become part of the background noise of our lives.

My alternative, then, is not a counter‑argument but a counter‑presence. It is the simple act of saying: this is what it feels like from here. This is what the world looks like when the default settings don’t fit. This is what resilience looks like when it is shaped by necessity rather than choice.

And perhaps most importantly, this is what becomes possible when we stop treating the status quo as natural and start imagining environments that recognise cognitive diversity as part of the human condition rather than a deviation from it.

An Invitation

As I reflect on the article, and on the many others I have read in recent weeks, I am reminded that conversations about neurodivergence often begin in the wrong place. They start with assumptions about systems, standards, and expectations, rather than with the people who must navigate them. They ask how individuals can better fit the world, rather than how the world might better recognise the full range of human minds.

I don’t have definitive answers, and I’m not sure definitive answers are what we need. What feels more important is the willingness to ask different questions — questions that make room for lived experience, that acknowledge the limits of inherited assumptions, that recognise the quiet labour so many of us carry.

So I offer an invitation rather than a conclusion. An invitation to consider what difficulty looks like from different vantage points, what resilience means when it grows in unaccommodating environments, what systems might become if they were designed with cognitive diversity in mind, what understanding could emerge if we treated difference as information rather than deviation.

These are not abstract questions. They shape how we teach, how we listen, how we build communities, and how we imagine the future. They shape whether neurodivergent people are seen as burdens, exceptions, or simply as part of the human story.

If the article I’ve discussed offers one perspective, this essay offers another — not to replace it, but to widen the frame. To suggest that there is more to the conversation than deficit and discipline, more to neurodivergence than diagnosis, more to accommodation than indulgence.

And perhaps, if we begin by asking different questions, we might find ourselves imagining different possibilities.


by 1 Comment

Asking Different Questions: A View From the Other Side of “Normal” — Part 1 of 2

I was sixty years old when I first sat across from the clinicians at Massey University, trying to make sense of a burnout that felt less like a collapse and more like a lifetime of quiet compensations finally catching up with me. Their assessment was gentle, thoughtful, and — in its own way — revealing. They told me I was “most likely Asperger’s,” though they advised against seeking a formal diagnosis. Not because they doubted it, but because the diagnostic system itself wasn’t built with people like me in mind.

They explained that autism was still framed primarily as a childhood condition, and that the tools used to identify it didn’t account for the decades of coping strategies an adult might develop. A diagnosis, they said, would offer little benefit at my age. Worse, it might even compromise my autonomy. There were still assumptions — unspoken but powerful — that autistic adults were less capable of self‑care, that our reports of pain or distress were less credible, that our needs were somehow negotiable in ways others’ were not.

It was a strange moment: to be seen clearly for the first time, yet also cautioned about being seen too officially. The message was not malicious; it was structural. Autism, in the eyes of the system, was still a pathology — a list of deficits, a deviation from the norm, something to be managed rather than understood.

That conversation stayed with me. Not because it was unusual, but because it was so ordinary. It reflected the assumptions that shaped autism discourse at the time — assumptions that still echo today, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but always with consequences for those of us who live on the receiving end of them.

In the years since that conversation in 2010, I’ve often wondered how much the landscape has shifted. Autism is no longer spoken of only in hushed clinical tones, and the neurodiversity movement has given many of us a language that feels more like home than the deficit‑laden vocabulary we grew up with. There is a growing recognition that autistic people are not failed versions of some cognitive ideal, but part of the natural variation of human minds.

And yet, for all that has changed, much remains stubbornly familiar.

The medical model — the idea that autism is primarily a pathology to be identified, managed, or corrected — still exerts enormous influence. It shapes diagnostic criteria, professional training, funding priorities, and the assumptions that quietly guide clinical encounters. Even when the language softens, the underlying logic often stays the same: autism as impairment, autism as burden, autism as something that needs to be explained rather than understood.

Alongside this, the social model has gained ground. It reframes disability not as an inherent flaw but as a mismatch between a person’s needs and the environment they must navigate. It asks us to look not only at the individual but at the structures around them — the sensory overload of modern life, the rigid expectations of workplaces and schools, the social norms that reward certain ways of thinking while marginalising others.

Both models now coexist, sometimes uneasily, sometimes productively. But the balance between them is uneven. The medical model still tends to dominate public institutions, clinical settings, and — as I was reminded recently — professional commentary.

A day after reading yet another piece published since Christmas that framed difference as deficit and accommodation as indulgence, I came across an article dated 21 January 2026 titled Why do so many students have ADHD today?, published in a journal aimed at medical professionals. I invite you to read it for yourself, not to criticise the author, but because it illustrates how familiar assumptions continue to surface in contemporary discourse. The article speaks with confidence, even concern, yet it leans on ideas that rarely receive scrutiny — that the system is neutral, that students are becoming fragile, that diagnoses function as avoidance rather than understanding.

As I read it, I felt the echo of that 2010 conversation: the same framing of neurodivergence as a deviation to be corrected, the same suspicion of accommodation, the same belief that difficulty is a moral test rather than a structural mismatch. The vocabulary may have softened over the years, but the underlying worldview has shifted far less than many of us might hope.

Underlying Assumptions

What struck me most as I read the article was not any single claim, but the frame through which the author viewed the entire issue. It is a frame I recognise — one that assumes the existing system is fundamentally sound, and that the real problem lies in the people who struggle within it. When this frame is taken for granted, certain conclusions follow almost automatically: that rising diagnoses signal fragility, that accommodations dilute standards, that neurodivergent students are avoiding responsibility, that difficulty is a moral test rather than a structural mismatch.

Once these assumptions are in place, everything else becomes a matter of interpretation. A student asking for extra processing time becomes someone seeking an unfair advantage. A diagnosis becomes a way of opting out. A shift in understanding becomes a cultural fad. The system itself remains invisible — its sensory demands, its social expectations, its narrow definitions of competence all treated as neutral rather than constructed.

This is why the “tough love” paragraph in the article stands out so sharply. It suggests that diagnoses allow students to avoid learning “difficult life skills,” as though neurodivergent people have somehow escaped difficulty. Yet for many of us, difficulty has been a lifelong companion — not because we lack resilience, but because we have had to navigate environments that were never designed with us in mind. The idea that accommodations remove hardship overlooks the reality that they often simply level the ground.

The article also invokes the concept of “looping effects,” implying that diagnoses create new identities that then reinforce the diagnosis itself. But this use of the idea feels incomplete. It focuses on how individuals might internalise labels, while ignoring how institutions also loop — how systems adapt to preserve their norms, how diagnostic categories evolve in response to social pressures, how stigma shapes behaviour long before any label is applied. The looping is not one‑sided; it is relational.

Beneath all of this lies a worldview that treats cognitive conformity as a virtue and cognitive diversity as a problem to be managed. It is a worldview that sees the system as the measure of the person, rather than the person as a measure of what the system fails to accommodate. And because this worldview is so familiar, so woven into professional training and public discourse, it often goes unexamined.

Reflecting on the article, I was reminded again of how powerful these underlying assumptions can be — not because they are malicious, but because they are inherited. They shape what questions are asked, what answers seem plausible, and what experiences are dismissed as exceptions rather than evidence.

In the next part of this reflection, I want to look more closely at the questions that remain unasked, and why those absences matter.


by 1 Comment

Being Seen, Being Understood

“Autism cannot be understood without relationships.
And representation without relationships is not representation at all.”

Those two sentences have been echoing in my mind ever since I first saw the announcement of Autistic Barbie. On the surface, she looks like a welcome step toward inclusion — a doll with averted eyes, sensory accessories, and a label that signals recognition. But as I sat with the idea, I found myself returning to the same question: what does representation mean when it arrives without a story, without context, without the relationships that give a person their shape in the world? Without those threads, even the most well‑intentioned gesture risks becoming a mirror that reflects only our assumptions. And that is where my unease begins.

Solitary Barry: a child without a story

Imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical doll called Solitary Barry. His eyes are always turned slightly away — not because he is shy or evasive, but because that is how he listens. Each leg bends a little differently, a quiet echo of childhood polio. His accessories are modest: a library card, a tiny toy railway, a drawing board. The packaging explains that Solitary Barry spends most of his days alone. It notes, almost clinically, that he has never been invited to a birthday party or a sleepover. It hints that other children find him strange.

What the packaging does not say is the truth: that Solitary Barry’s solitude was never his choice. It was the result of choices made about him, not with him. His difference was interpreted as disinterest. His quietness was mistaken for aloofness. His inner world — rich, absorbing, alive — was invisible to those who never thought to ask.

And so the doll stands there, traits on display, story withheld.

If all you had was the packaging, what would you assume about Solitary Barry?
Would you imagine a child who prefers to be alone?
A child who doesn’t like others?
A child who is difficult, or odd, or uninterested in friendship?

Without a narrative, the mind fills the gaps.
Without relationships, behaviour becomes personality.
Without context, difference becomes defect.

This is how misunderstanding takes root — not through malice, but through absence.
And if this is what an adult might assume, what story would a child create with no guidance at all?

Solitary Barry stands there on his imaginary shelf — a child reduced to traits, stripped of the relationships that would explain him. His story is missing, so the mind invents one. And if adults do this, children do it even more readily, because they have fewer tools for interpreting difference. That lingering question — what story would a child create with no guidance at all — is the doorway into the next part of this reflection.

Because Solitary Barry is not the only doll presented this way.

Autistic Barbie in a world without context

Mattel’s Autistic Barbie arrives in much the same narrative vacuum. She, too, is introduced through visible cues — averted eyes, sensory accessories, stimming‑friendly joints — and she, too, is offered without the relationships that would help a child understand what those cues mean. Her packaging tells us what she is, but not who she is, or how she moves through the world, or how others move with her.

And so the same mechanism that shaped Solitary Barry’s misinterpretation is now poised to shape hers.

Before we explore why this matters — and why it affects autistic and non‑autistic children differently — it’s worth pausing to acknowledge something important. For many autistic adults, the arrival of Autistic Barbie is deeply validating. After a lifetime of being misunderstood or dismissed, seeing a doll that even gestures toward their experience can feel like recognition. That validation is real, and it deserves respect.

But validation and understanding are not the same thing. One is inward‑facing; the other is relational.

And it is in that gap — between symbolic recognition and relational understanding — that Autistic Barbie begins to falter.

How children learn about difference

Children don’t learn about disability by reading labels or analysing traits. They learn through relationships — through watching how people interact, how misunderstandings unfold, how repairs are made, and how difference is woven into the social fabric around them. A doll presented without a social world leaves children with nothing to anchor their interpretations, so they reach for the tools they have: projection, assumption, and whatever fragments of cultural messaging they’ve absorbed.

For physical disabilities, children often have enough visible cues to form a basic understanding. A wheelchair signals mobility differences. A white cane signals blindness. These cues are concrete, and adults usually provide simple explanations that help children map what they see to what it means.

But social disabilities — autism, ADHD, trauma‑shaped behaviours — are different. Their cues are behavioural, ambiguous, and deeply context‑dependent. Averted eyes might mean listening. Silence might mean overwhelm. Repetitive movement might mean joy, or regulation, or focus. Without narrative, children interpret these behaviours through the only lens they have: their own experience.

And so behaviour becomes personality.
“Doesn’t look at me” becomes “rude.”
“Doesn’t join in” becomes “unfriendly.”
“Plays alone” becomes “doesn’t like people.”

None of these interpretations are malicious. They are simply what happens when a child is given traits without relationships, behaviour without context, difference without story.

This is why narrative scaffolding is essential. Children need to see how a character moves through the world, how others respond, how misunderstandings arise and are repaired. They need to see that difference is not a moral category but a relational one — something that makes sense only when held within a web of interactions.

And this is where Autistic Barbie, like Solitary Barry, begins to falter. She is presented as a set of traits, not as a person in relationship. Without that relational architecture, children are left to invent their own explanations. And as we’ve already seen, those explanations rarely lead to understanding.

Why symbols are not enough

Symbolic representation begins with good intentions. It offers visibility, a gesture toward inclusion, a sign that difference exists in the world of play. But symbols, by their nature, stand alone. They point to something without inhabiting it. And when it comes to autism — a social, relational, context‑dependent way of being — symbols can only ever tell part of the story.

A doll like Autistic Barbie is introduced through traits: averted eyes, sensory tools, stimming‑friendly joints. These cues are meant to signal autism, but without a narrative they become floating signifiers, disconnected from meaning. A child sees the traits but not the reasons behind them. They see the behaviour but not the sensory world that shapes it. They see the solitude but not the exclusion that preceded it.

And so the mind fills the gaps.

Children, especially, interpret behaviour through the lens of their own experience. If they avoid eye contact only when they’re upset, they assume the doll is upset. If they play alone only when they’re angry or shy, they assume the doll is angry or shy. If they’ve heard adults describe certain behaviours as “rude” or “odd,” those labels slip easily into place.

Symbolic representation doesn’t challenge these assumptions — it relies on them.
It hands the child a set of cues and asks them to invent the story.

But autism is not a set of cues.
It is a way of relating to the world.

And without relationships, symbolic representation collapses into stereotype.
It reduces a complex, dynamic, deeply human experience into a handful of visible markers that can be misread in a dozen different ways.

This is not a failure of intention.
It is a failure of architecture.

Symbols can raise awareness, but they cannot build understanding.
They can say “this exists,” but they cannot say “this is what it feels like,” or “this is how to respond,” or “this is how connection is possible.”

For that, you need narrative.
For that, you need relationships.

How story humanises difference

If symbolic representation leaves children holding a handful of traits and no way to interpret them, narrative representation does the opposite. It gives those traits a home — a place within a web of relationships where behaviour has meaning, where difference has context, and where a character becomes more than the sum of their cues.

Narrative is how children learn that people are not defined by what they look like or how they move, but by how they relate — how they feel, how they respond, how they connect and disconnect and reconnect again. It is through story that averted eyes become listening, solitude becomes exclusion or preference or overwhelm, and stimming becomes joy or regulation rather than “odd behaviour.”

Narrative representation humanises difference because it shows:

  • motives behind actions
  • emotions beneath behaviour
  • relationships that shape experience
  • misunderstandings that arise naturally
  • repairs that teach empathy
  • strengths that emerge through doing, not labelling

A child watching a character navigate the world with autism sees not just traits, but patterns of interaction. They see how sensory overload feels from the inside. They see how communication differences play out in real time. They see how friendships form, falter, and deepen. They see that difference is not a barrier to connection — it is simply one of the many ways humans move through the world.

Narrative also gives non‑autistic children something symbolic representation never can: a model for how to respond.

They learn:

  • how to recognise overwhelm
  • how to offer support
  • how to interpret silence
  • how to respect boundaries
  • how to include someone whose social rhythms differ from their own

These are relational skills, not diagnostic ones. They cannot be taught by a doll standing alone in a box.

And for autistic children, narrative representation offers something equally vital: recognition without reduction.

They see themselves not as a checklist of traits, but as a person with agency, humour, preferences, frustrations, and relationships that matter. They see that their way of being is not a problem to be solved, but a story to be understood.

This is what Autistic Barbie lacks.
Not intention.
Not visibility.
But story — the relational architecture that turns a symbol into a person.

Narrative is where difference becomes humanity. Narrative is where understanding begins.

Validation for autistic adults, understanding for children

For many autistic adults, the arrival of Autistic Barbie feels like a long‑overdue acknowledgment. After years — often decades — of being misunderstood, dismissed, or told that their experiences were wrong, exaggerated, or inconvenient, seeing a doll that even gestures toward their reality can feel like recognition. It is a symbolic moment, yes, but symbols can matter deeply when you have spent much of your life fighting to be believed.

For some, Autistic Barbie offers validation:
a quiet reassurance that their way of being is real, visible, and worthy of representation. It is not the doll itself that carries the emotional weight, but what it stands for — a cultural shift, however small, toward acknowledging autistic existence without shame.

But validation and understanding are not the same thing.

Validation is inward‑facing.
It speaks to the autistic child or adult who sees themselves reflected, however imperfectly, in the world of play. It says, “You exist. You are allowed to be here.”

Understanding is relational.
It requires context, story, and interaction. It teaches non‑autistic children how to interpret difference, how to respond to it, how to build connection across divergent ways of being.

And this is where Autistic Barbie falters.

A non‑autistic child encountering the doll receives traits without meaning — averted eyes, headphones, a fidget tool — but no narrative to explain what those traits signify. Without guidance, the child fills the gaps with their own assumptions, shaped by their limited experience and whatever cultural messages they’ve absorbed. The doll becomes a canvas for projection rather than a bridge to understanding.

Autistic children may feel seen.
Non‑autistic children may feel confused.
Neither group is given the relational scaffolding they need.

This is not a failure of intention.
It is a failure of architecture — the absence of story, of relationships, of the social world that gives autism its meaning.

Autistic Barbie can validate.
But without narrative, she cannot educate.

And representation that cannot educate risks reinforcing the very misunderstandings it hopes to dispel.

From awareness to appreciation

If symbolic representation offers visibility but not understanding, and narrative representation humanises difference through relationships, then the path forward for Mattel becomes clear. Moving from awareness to appreciation is not a matter of adding more accessories or refining the sculpt of a doll’s face. It is a matter of building the relational architecture that allows a child to understand autism as a way of being rather than a list of traits.

To do that, Mattel would need to create context — the social world in which Autistic Barbie lives, moves, and relates. Children learn through stories, not symbols, and stories require relationships. Without them, the doll remains a static figure, a prompt for projection rather than a guide toward understanding.

Mattel would also need to offer perspective — glimpses into Autistic Barbie’s inner world. What does sensory overload feel like for her? What brings her joy? How does she communicate when words are hard? These are not diagnostic details; they are human ones. They help children see autism not as a problem to decode but as a lived experience shaped by emotions, needs, and strengths.

Equally important is modelling interaction — showing how others respond to her, how misunderstandings arise, and how they are repaired. Children need to see that connection is possible across different ways of being, and that inclusion is not an abstract value but a set of relational skills they can learn.

Finally, Mattel would need to give Autistic Barbie agency — goals, preferences, humour, frustrations, and contributions that have nothing to do with autism. A character who exists only to represent a diagnosis is not a character at all. She becomes a teaching tool rather than a person. Appreciation requires seeing her as someone with a life, not a label.

In short, Mattel would need to move from presenting traits to presenting relationships.
From offering symbols to offering stories.
From saying “autistic people exist” to showing “autistic people belong.”

Awareness can be achieved with a box and a label.
Appreciation requires a world.

🌾 Closing Reflection

As I trace the path from Solitary Barry to Autistic Barbie, a single truth keeps returning: understanding is never built from traits alone. It grows in the spaces between people — in the relationships that give behaviour its meaning and difference its dignity. Without those relationships, even the most well‑intentioned representation becomes a hollow outline, a figure waiting for a story that never arrives.

Autistic Barbie offers visibility, and for many autistic adults that visibility carries real emotional weight. After years of being misread or dismissed, seeing even a symbolic gesture toward their experience can feel like a small but meaningful form of recognition. That validation matters. It deserves to be honoured.

But visibility is not the same as understanding.
Recognition is not the same as relationship.

For non‑autistic children, a doll presented through traits without context becomes a prompt for projection rather than a guide toward empathy. They see the averted eyes but not the listening. They see the solitude but not the exclusion. They see the sensory tools but not the sensory world. And so they invent explanations that make sense to them, not to the child the doll is meant to represent.

This is not a failure of intention.
It is a failure of relational architecture.

To move from awareness to appreciation, representation must offer more than symbols. It must offer stories — stories that show how a character moves through the world, how others move with her, how misunderstandings arise and are repaired, how connection is possible even when ways of being diverge.

Because autism is not a set of traits.
It is a way of relating.

And representation without relationships is not representation at all. It is a silhouette — recognisable, perhaps, but empty.

If Autistic Barbie is to become more than a symbol, she needs a world to belong to. She needs friends, context, agency, and a narrative that honours her inner life. She needs the same thing Solitary Barry needed, the same thing every child needs: to be understood not in isolation, but in relation.

Only then can representation move beyond awareness — beyond the simple fact of existence — and become appreciation, a deeper recognition that autistic lives are rich, complex, and woven into the fabric of our shared humanity.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started