ND/Lo-TEK
manifesto 1
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Societal and environmental collapse is imminent Neurodivergent people are at high risk of mental illnesses. They have lower life prospects.
6. The mythologies and ritual practices contained in these cultures are an inherent part of the technologies. They hold maps, plans, frameworks for understanding, histories, scientific theories, farming principles, ecological principles, extremely local understandings of plant, soil, taxonomies, forgotten mathematics, design principles (colour, pattern etc), sustainable practices.
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AND SO I PROPOSE
11. Indigenous communities bear the brunt of climate change.
*Potentialities* - A class of behaviours or processes that have latent possibilities that could come to fruition if only accepted
By Nwando Ebizie
We must honour both the neurodivergent brain and indigenous technologies as potentialities*. We must not seek to control, colonise or appropriate them.
Western Science with its evidence based methodologies is a process for discovery and a gift to humanity.There are other gifts. Buried processes for discovery. Both can be used to explore, define, capture, observe, understand and build.
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Equally, indigenous technologies have been maligned, buried, dismissed, appropriated in favour of a Post Enlightenment Western hierarchy of what progress and technology means.
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4. These two suppressed potentialities* could save the world
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7. A NEURODIVERGENT CENTRED, indigenousfuturistic mythology to supersede the Westerncentric, Capitalistic mythology of technoprogress
8. A natural philosophy of design at the intersection of neurodiversity, indigenous technologies, ecology and innovation to solve the most pressing problems of our time.
Neurodiversity is evolution’s gift to problem solving. Diversity of our species - in ways of perceiving, problem solving and experiencing - can give solutions only if those who are divergent are given space, acceptance, acknowledgement and support in order to bring forth what has been suppressed.
13. We kill both groups with our active, self-serving complacence.
The framing of Neurodivergency as super power can only be true if the individual is allowed really and fully to tap into the entirety of their being. One issue is that Neurotypicals want a pick and mix of neurodivergency. E.g. They want an idiot savant without the non-verbal communication. There is a lack of understanding about the brain, its complexity and how the facets of one’s character, personality and psychology are intertwined with their divergent brain. To take an anecdotal example of somebody I know: A brain belonging to a massively impulsive person might also be the brain that can shoot out hundreds of ideas in a minute. One of those ideas might be amazing. Much of what they say and do in that minute might seem manic, impulsive, rude, disorganised. But you can not slice off the part of the brain that you want. Rather I would recommend you create the environment in which the person can safely function.