Neurodiversity and social change
your dreams will be reduced down to breathing, and you will be grateful
The thing about not-being-a-person is: They will say those people and the price of being a person is to nod and agree that yes, those people aren’t people at all. They will have no idea who they are talking to. You yourself will start to forget, too. They will say a million small things that sow the seeds for violence done against you, and you will smile and let them. You will do math, constantly. How much do I want to be a person today? How much do I want this project to succeed? How much honesty can I afford? How much dishonesty will kill me? What is the cost of coming out? Is there a way to delay, soften, transmute? How long can I survive as half a person? Ever since the world ended ... I don't go out as much. People that I once befriended, just don't bother to stay in touch. Things that used to seem so splendid, don't really matter today. It's just as well the world ended -- it wasn't working anyway. Your dreams will be reduced down to breathing. [Read More]
Julia Bascom on 03/5/12 | 2 Comments | Read More
Predictions (regarding aspects of autism)
Writing these daily entries, I discover something new almost as often as I record something I’ve earlier discovered. A year ago this is what I collected connected to the hypotheses or predictions of...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/23/12 | 3 Comments | Read More
Emergence (Shift Journal Inaugural Keynote)
On the autism rights and neurodiversity blogs in July last year, fury erupted around the radio show host Michael Savage’s comments that autistic kids were brats. Savage said that autism was a “...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/16/12 | No Comments | Read More
Autism, Alloparents and Human Evolution
It seems that the Sarah Blaffer Hrdy book, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, is blowing my mind. I am discovering a new, yet established, researched human evolu...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 04/5/10 | No Comments | Read More
"Comparing the rates of violence in chimpanzees and humans gives support to the idea that male-male physical competition over females within the social group is vastly less important in humans. Wran...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 04/1/10 | No Comments | Read More
The idea of evolution is often confused with Darwin’s theory of natural selection. This is in no small part because science representatives of evolutionary biology, such as Richard Dawkins, ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/29/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
That I might have featured Asperger’s when I was young never crossed my mind until this year. I’d been studying autism for 12 years. Working for 12 years with the thesis that testosteron...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/22/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Bill Wallauer is a videographer, a colleague of Jane Goodall. Click here to read Bill’s observations of chimpanzees behaving in ways that are fascinating to consider. Bill observes males displ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/10/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
I’d been studying Asperger’s and autism in connection to human evolution for maybe ten years before it dawned on me, after reading Michael Fitzgerald’s Autism and Creativity, that Asperge...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 03/8/10 | 4 Comments | Read More
Light moves at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Speed as a concept is also integral to biology. I hypothesize that the speed with which information passes between the two cerebral hemisphe...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/24/10 | 3 Comments | Read More
There is this thesis that I’ve been playing with. Like the experience physics theorists have described, it seems too beautiful to not be true. Nevertheless, Stephen J. Gould has described th...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/22/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism, Diet and Sexual Hormones
I’m still trying to grasp the concept that testosterone and estrogen and their associated hormones are together managing ontological, social and biological evolution by adjusting to changes in t...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/18/10 | No Comments | Read More
Autism and Societal Individualism
"The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems, and social organizations of the agriculturally based societies has been that of suppressing the manifestations of individuali...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/17/10 | No Comments | Read More
Creoles, Aboriginal Identity and Autism
“We have now surveyed a wide range of creole structures across a number of unrelated creole languages. We have seen that even taking into account the, in some cases, several centuries of time th...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/11/10 | No Comments | Read More
On page 575 of the May 1 issue of Science there is an article, “Africans’ Deep Genetic roots Reveal Their Evolutionary Story.” Examining the blood of 3,194 Africans from 113 populations, res...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/9/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Corpus Callosums, Autism & Aboriginals
“I have found the midsagittal area of the corpus callosum to be larger in mixed and left handers, referred to as non-consistent-right-handers (nonCRH), than among CRH subjects (Witelson, 1985). ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/3/10 | No Comments | Read More
Emergence of a Universal Language
There is a phenomenon in linguistics where language complexity is directly related to how isolated a particular language is from its neighbors. A new language is difficult to learn for adults. ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 02/1/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Social Media and Environmental Integration
I saw this piece appear in March: Too Much Facebook could cause Autism in Children. A doctor in the UK suggested that social networking applications were encouraging dissociation, making it mo...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/19/10 | No Comments | Read More
Consider that those female children with low estrogen levels as they cross over into their teens may find themselves experiencing delayed puberty. This may manifest delayed testosterone surges pruni...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/18/10 | 11 Comments | Read More
Ouroboros, Autism and Future Past
I’m starting to consider that the highly ritualized environment of aboriginal matrifocal societies, along with the ways children are raised and what they are fed, are preventing the further left...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/14/10 | No Comments | Read More
Like most people I know, I had a somewhat odd childhood. I started talking when I was three. I remember spending a lot of time confused by adult communication. Speech therapy accompanied my ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/13/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Neurodiversity, Primary Process and Theory of Mind
Imagine that ten years from now autism and Asperger’s are still on the rise. It is discovered that aboriginal matrifocal societies often exhibit what Gregory Bateson described as primary proce...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/7/10 | 2 Comments | Read More
Bouncing around Pub Med looking for patterns connecting handedness, ethnicity, disease, conditions characterized by maturational delay such as autism and social structure, it seems pretty clear that m...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 01/5/10 | 1 Comment | Read More
Autism: Canary in the Coal Mine
“Nonright-handedness (NRH) has been attributed to hypoxia-induced brain changes in the fetus and associated pregnancy and birth complications (PBCs). Maternal smoking during pregnancy is known to ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/30/09 | No Comments | Read More
Neurodiversity and African Americans
Two biological processes impact the American Black population, resulting in increased learning disabilities, specific medical maladies and challenges not familiar to most other ethnicities and mos...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/23/09 | 1 Comment | Read More
A superb 25-year study in the UK by Marian Annett ending in the 1990s seemed to prove that in that part of the UK, left-handedness was not increasing over time. It’s been a difficult issue to pa...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/21/09 | No Comments | Read More
by Jennifer Johnson Autism and its lesser-known relatives in the autism spectrum of disorders has found itself on the receiving end of a generous amount of attention lately. Affecting around 3.4 ou...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/15/09 | 3 Comments | Read More
Marian Annett (Annett & Manning, 1990; Annett & Kilshaw, 1984) has hypothesized a balanced polymorphism in dyslexia that neatly fits with my theory of biological and societal evolution I am ca...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/14/09 | No Comments | Read More
Barriers to Understanding Autism
My work has proposed three primary causes of autism and conditions characterized by maturational delay. All three causes impact fluctuating testosterone levels inside a mother, which determine her...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/9/09 | No Comments | Read More
The work of scientists is not often poetry. But they do reveal patterns that are profound. “A corollary of our hypothesis is that hormonal effects on the brains of offspring may vary with the ...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/7/09 | No Comments | Read More
Before the conventions, Sarah Palin caused a stir among the parents of children with Down Syndrome. My Leftist buddy Martin has a kid with Downs. Martin was moved by this Alaskan elected offic...[Read More]
Andrew Lehman on 12/3/09 | No Comments | Read More
Autism has been here all along.
Considered as an evolutionary condition with far-reaching social implications, its full presence and impact remain hidden in plain sight, unrecognized and uncredited.
Part neurological mystery, part social construct, and part secret society unbeknownst even to its own members, autism does not lend itself to explanation by those who hold it apart from society, from themselves, or from consciousness itself. Definitions are revised, overhauled, and abandoned all while efforts to explore and examine this condition on its own terms are only now gaining momentum.
Shift Journal aims to showcase and encourage such efforts. Entertaining the notion of autistic as a legitimate way to be in the world, from the crossroads of theory, society, and personal experience, Shift welcomes relevant contributions from all comers.
Mark Stairwalt
Editor and Publisher
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Shift Journal founder Andrew Lehman's groundbreaking cross-disciplinary work Evolution, Autism, and Social Change draws from evolutionary biology, neuro-psychology and related fields to outline an evolutionary process complementary to natural selection that may explain some forms of autism as well as -- and perhaps more importantly -- long-term shifts in large-scale social structure. Download or purchase Evolution, Autism, and Social Change here.
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In a world which relentlessly demands practical advice for day-to-day, Shift Journal remains focused on promoting reflection and discovery. Readers however who are seeking useful information and how-to guidance assembled by a down-to-earth, conscientious and scientifically literate crew who once sought such information themselves and found it difficult to come by may find The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism to be just what they are looking for:
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New or established writers wishing to contribute original or previously published posts may use the submissions page or contact us directly.
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Autism and Empathy Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism Neurodivergent Sexuality Just Stimming Autistic Passing Project