Open Society

Recognizing soil as a form of life reframes our perception of another interconnected, self-regulating system: Earth. We owe many of Earth’s defining features — its breathable atmosphere, blue sky, mineral diversity, ocean chemistry and wildfires — to life. Over time, Earth and life, much like soil and the organisms that maintain it, formed a single evolving system that has endured for billions of years. The living earth beneath our feet mirrors our larger living planet. The challenge before us, then, is not simply to amend Earth’s soils, but to revitalize them before they’re lost forever. Modern agriculture must respect soil as a wondrous yet vulnerable living entity. Two core principles can guide this shift: minimizing soil disturbance and emphasizing biodiversity. In practice, this entails significantly reducing tillage; rotating crops; prioritizing organic inputs over synthetic fertilizers; integrating crops, trees and livestock; and shielding soil from erosion with cover crops, among other interventions.

Running my fingers through the soil, I understood, more clearly than ever before, that it was not simply a layer sitting atop the planet, but an extension of Earth itself — that soil, like all life, is not so much an inhabitant of the planet as an expression of a living world.

Throughout the nearly seven-hour hearing, masked attendees were subjected to ongoing harassment. Some immunocompromised individuals were intentionally coughed on. Ban supporters told mask-wearers they couldn't wait for their masks to be removed. Ban supporters pointed at, laughed at, and filmed disabled attendees. They made discriminatory remarks, even yelling out to arrest those in masks. Ban supporters harassed at least one speaker on their way out of the building. Law enforcement and government officials made minimal attempts to curb the vitriol, which only emboldened those perpetuating it.

The sight of a disabled person being manhandled in a government building was shocking and deeply traumatic. These actions sent a clear message: the Mask Transparency Act is already a health hazard, but in the hands of biased law enforcement, it becomes deeply dangerous.

The hearing fostered the very hate and vitriol the bill claims to combat, targeting disabled individuals and others who dared to oppose it. It was not just a debate over a mask ban; it was a chilling display of hatred, intolerance, and disregard for vulnerable people. We commend the courage of those who stood up and spoke out under such hostile conditions.

In a participatory universe, the creative potential is the deity that supplants objectivity and rational thinking; the machine is replaced with wondrous meaning. This description evokes a spirit of perpetual movement, uncertain yet full of potential and inspiration. States of being are but temporary as the primary process is the phenomenon of becoming. "Becoming what?" you might ask. But that very question is seeking a “thing” type of answer. What are the waves in the ocean becoming? For all conscious entities (and there is a reasonable argument that all matter is indeed sentient, a belief known as panpsychism), the process of becoming puts us squarely in this new paradigm of personal evolution and participatory change. Much of my work is devoted to catalyzing and enabling people to change.

The process of becoming is forgiving. In the flow of becoming, we are no longer rooted in the hardship of fear, insecurity, or the notions of mistakes. A fuller participation in our unfolding life assists us in the art of living well. Becoming is open and unlimited; being is structured and limiting.

As the artist crafts their art, so might we look at our life. Learning to live artfully has us see our lives as a process open to inquiry and learning, always receptive to new meaning. Thus, we are always becoming.

It would also be helpful if we looked at our relationships from this flow of becoming. Our tendency is to see one another as fixed, and hence our relationship is stuck as well. As two individuals, each devoted to their becoming, engage one another, we have a relationship that is indeed evolving. Contrast that with two beings, locked in a relationship burdened by their states of being.

My students, regardless of their identities, are in the beautiful and terrifying process that is becoming. I have the great honor of intersecting with their journeys, sometimes in small and nearly imperceptible ways, in the work that I do each day. And as I do this, I myself am reminded of the journey still ahead of me.

Really existing capitalism – RECD for short (pronounced “wrecked”) – is radically incompatible with democracy. It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it.

Markup is structure visible to all.

To support this vision we have co-developed 12 overarching core commitments, each of which has a set of associated standards. Work to improve the culture of care on inpatient wards – creating the conditions where patients and staff can flourish – should focus on these core commitments. lived experience: We value lived experience, including in paid roles, at all levels – design, delivery, governance and oversight safety: People on our wards feel safe and cared for relationships: High-quality, rights-based care starts with trusting relationships and the understanding that connecting with people is how we help everyone feel safe staff support: We support all staff so that they can be present alongside people in their distress. equality: We are inclusive and value difference; we take action to promote equity in access, treatment and outcomes avoiding harm: We actively seek to avoid harm and traumatisation, and acknowledge harm when it occurs needs led: We respect people’s own understanding of their distress choice: Nothing about me without me – we support the fundamental right for patients and (as appropriate) their support network to be engaged in all aspects of their care environment: Our inpatient spaces reflect the value we place on our people things to do on the ward: We have a wide range of patient requested activities every day therapeutic support: We offer people a range of therapy and support that gives them hope things can get better transparency: We have open and honest conversations with patients and each other, and name the difficult things

At the Media Lab, I’ve been working on principles that define our DNA and our world view. One of these is Compasses Over Maps. The idea is that in a world of massive complexity, speed, and diversity, the cost of mapping and planning details often exceeds the cost of just doing something–and the maps are often wrong.

The general idea—the compass heading—was right, but the details were wrong in many ways. We knew we had to go in to listen, be humble, and not try to be top down and prescriptive, but we were surprised nonetheless.

I’ve been returning to this book often since November 2016, refreshing my memories of the good soldier’s ill fortunes, seeking guidance on what is a man to do during this unfortunate time. Many writers have turned to Švejk in dark times past. Joseph Heller did in Catch-22, as did the creators of M*A*S*H, as did Bertolt Brecht. One of his plays transported Švejk into World War II and cast him opposite one Adolf Hitler.

I propose that political progressives start an annual festival where we would repeat the story of Švejk, prompting every generation to make it their own. Call it the International Švejk Day, but make it truly international, truly secular, truly modern.

“Medicalization is premised on the idea that it is irrational and disgusting to transition, so no rational doctor would permit it except as a last resort,” the historian Jules Gill-Peterson has written. “There is a form of social and political control implemented by medicine, a way to sever an unpopular minority from their own bodies and then sell back limited access to their bodies if they will submit to a set of trials to prove they can be good people, or at least made better.”

"That is what we've been struggling with, people who are so fragile that they're literally willing to destroy the planet rather than give up controlling it. They're literally not willing to do things that are good for everyone because they're terrified of one person who they don't like maybe getting some benefit from that."

"The world is pretty unjust right now," said Jemisin to the outlet. "Those of us that have grown up on the short end of the justice stick understand this innately and want acknowledgement of that reality, because so much of American society is dedicated to weaving the illusion that what you see is not actually what is happening.… But fixing that is part of the job that science fiction and fantasy can do."

A good portion of the reason that we are dealing with this political bullshit, pardon my language, in the United States right now is because we’ve got a bunch of white people who are freaked out because demographics seem to be overwhelming them and because there was a black president and they’re suffering from the existential terror of extinction—even though there absolutely is no real logic to that terror. They’re not in any danger. And yet, they’ve allowed people to frame it as danger, as an assault, as some kind of insult to their ego or their psyche. And that is the danger. That is what we’ve been struggling with, people who are so fragile that they’re literally willing to destroy the planet rather than give up controlling it. They’re literally not willing to do things that are good for everyone because they’re terrified of one person who they don’t like maybe getting some benefit from that. That’s selfishness. If it’s not serving you and you alone, then better to get rid of it? No, that’s why we are where we are right now. And so, a little bit more willingness to acknowledge that we are a species of several billion individuals and you’re not going to like all of them and not all of them are going to do things that you agree with, but there’s no reason why they can’t all benefit and why we can’t all survive here on this planet and have a decent life. That’s where we need to go.

I often start, or while writing the bulk of, a composition will do what I call stim-listening. Or, listen repetitively to a single song. It helps get me started or gives me the dopamine(?) that seems to maintain my focus.

Steele was likely experiencing the effects of “weathering.” The term describes how repeated exposure to stressors leads to poor health outcomes. A related concept, racial weathering, points to racism as a major stressor among Black Americans, contributing to their historically high rates of chronic disease, viral infection and premature death.

A weathered body is weaker, ages faster, and is more prone to chronic disease, said Arline T. Geronimus, a public health researcher and professor at the University of Michigan who first proposed the hypothesis in 1992.

When a person experiences consecutive life-threatening situations like an eviction notice or physical violence, they become weathered. These situations trigger a fight, flight or freeze response and causes the body to work harder to help a person escape the threat or to fight back. Stress hormones are released and excess oxygen flows to major muscles like the heart. Blood thickens to prevent death from injury.

Geronimus said Black Americans are at greater risk for weathering than their white counterparts due to societal pressures. “Populations that have been racialized or stigmatized or are subject to structural and systemic, as well as interpersonal racism, are the ones that are likely to weather the fastest and the worst,” she said.

What exactly is stim-watching? If stim-listening is repetitively listening to songs, stim-watching is repeatedly watching, most often, digital media. I first recognized that I was doing this in the fall of 2004. While out Christmas shopping at an electronics store, I came across a big-screen TV that started playing the teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode III. I was mesmerized by just one viewing of it. When I got home, thanks to the advent of digital media, I attained a copy of it from the internet. I then repeatedly watched the trailer via my computer to extend the experience through as many as a dozen replays. As a recent suicide attempt survivor, it helped me relate to the character Anakin Skywalker. Stim-watching provided me with the ability to relate to his tragic downfall by repeating the video.

In the midst of this theatrical fervor, I happened upon the trailer that was released for James Cameron’s film Avatar. Stim-watching it ensured that modern film trailers would have a permanent place in my life. As would stim-watching in general. The trailer had instrumental music that really lit a passion within me. So I watched it again several times. The background music was amazing. I literally searched the internet for “Avatar movie trailer music” and found out what the tracks were. One was familiar to me from the film The Island. The other two were by a music group called Audiomachine. I would go on to create what I called opus playlists by mixing this neo-classical music according to how each track made me feel. Each playlist tells a story based on the emotions the songs generate.

Imagine the potential of stim-watching or stim-listening for your needs. I was fortunate to come up with this form of stimming despite having my needs neglected by mental health experts. Now you can explore it too. Empowering autistic people with knowledge like this is what I live for.

Research shows that self-reported autistic traits are associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviours (Cassidy et al. 2018c; Pelton and Cassidy 2017; Paquette-Smith et al. 2014; Takara and Kondo 2014; Cassidy et al. 2014), and 40% of adults who have attempted suicide meet the cut-off for clinical concern on a validated autism screening instrument (Richards et al. 2019).

Self-reported autistic traits in a non-clinical young adult sample were associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviours through thwarted belonging and perceived burdensomeness (Pelton and Cassidy 2017). This suggests that the IPTS could help explain why autistic people and those with high autistic traits are more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviours.

One potentially relevant factor, and previously unexplored in suicide research, is camouflaging one’s autistic traits, in order to ‘fit in’ in social situations. Social camouflaging was originally described by autistic people, who report actively attempting to mask and compensate for their autistic traits in social situations, in an attempt to fit in better with others socially (Allely 2019; Livingston et al. 2019; Cage and Troxell-Whitman 2019; Lai et al. 2017; Hull et al. 2017). Hull et al. (2019) developed the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q), to capture the extent to which both autistic and non-autistic adults engage in three aspects of social camouflaging: (1) “compensation” for autism-related difficulties in social situations, such as using scripts and copying others from carefully watching other people; (2) “masking” one’s autistic characteristics, by constantly monitoring one’s own behaviours (e.g., eye contact, facial expression, gesture) to present a non-autistic persona to others; and (3) “assimilation”, which captures behavioural strategies used to fit in better with others (e.g., forcing oneself to interact by putting on a performance and pretending). Hull et al. (2019) found that social camouflaging was significantly associated with poor mental health and well-being, consistent with a range of previous research (Cage and Troxell-Whitman 2019; Livingston et al. 2019; Allely 2019; Leedham et al. 2019; Au-Yeung et al. 2018; Camm-Crosbie et al. 2018; Cassidy et al. 2018c; Bargiela et al. 2016; Rynkiewicz et al. 2016; Rutherford et al. 2016).

All variables—autistic traits, camouflaging, depression, anxiety, thwarted belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness—were significantly correlated with lifetime suicidal behaviour (Table 1).

There was a significant indirect effect of autistic traits on lifetime suicidal behaviour through camouflaging and thwarted belongingness (b = .0064 BCa CI [.001, .015]). The direct effect of autistic traits on suicidal behaviour remained significant once the mediators were added (b = .045, p = .04), indicating significant partial mediation.

The association between self-reported autistic traits with lifetime suicidal thoughts and behaviours was significantly mediated by camouflaging and thwarted belonging.

Results from the current study bring together these findings, showing that the path from autistic traits to suicidality is driven by camouflaging one’s autistic traits leading to feelings of thwarted belonging.

The association between autistic traits and lifetime suicidal thoughts and behaviours was also significantly mediated by assimilation and thwarted belonging, suggesting that those with high autistic traits, tend to try and assimilate into social situations, which results in feelings of thwarted belonging and subsequently lifetime suicidal thoughts and behaviours.