The First to Fall

What is “neurotypical” across living systems?

A nervous system is neurotypical when it supports survival by maintaining coherence within the environment through feedback.

This includes:

  1. Sensory Integrity
    • Acute responsiveness to relevant environmental cues
    • Filtering of irrelevant noise (but not suppression of important input)
    • Modulation (not dulling)
  2. Predictive Flexibility
    • The ability to form and update internal models based on real consequences.
    • Resistance to rigid schemas when contradicted by experience.
    • Local, bottom-up learning prioritized over top-down imposition.
  3. Emotional Fidelity
    • Emotions arise in response to actual relational, bodily, or environmental signals.
    • Expression aligns with inner state (no chronic masking or performative dissonance).
    • Emotional responses guide adaptive behavior (e.g. flee danger, seek connection).
  4. Behavioral Coherence
    • Behavior is driven by needs, feedback, and context (not abstract rules).
    • Repetition and rhythm serve regulation (not compulsion).
    • Disruption in the system leads to adaptive signals (e.g. withdrawal, stimming, protest).
  5. Relational Reciprocity
    • Social interactions involve mutual regulation (not dominance hierarchies).
    • Communication is functional, honest, and oriented toward shared understanding.
    • Deception is rare and costly.
  6. Feedback Sensitivity
    • The system changes in response to reality.
    • Pain, hunger, conflict, beauty, and pleasure all serve as real-time guidance systems.
    • When feedback loops break, pathology arises…not in the organism, but in the system.

Neurotypicality (in an ecological sense) is the default wiring for coherence with life.

By this definition, most modern humans are neurodivergent…not in a pathologized way, but in a systemic distortion way. They’ve been selected or conditioned to override feedback, suppress affect, and conform to symbolic systems detached from biological reality.

Written by

Ken

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A nervous system is neurotypical when it supports survival by maintaining coherence within the environment through feedback.

This includes:

  1. Sensory Integrity
    • Acute responsiveness to relevant environmental cues
    • Filtering of irrelevant noise (but not suppression of important input)
    • Modulation (not dulling)
  2. Predictive Flexibility
    • The ability to form and update internal models based on real consequences.
    • Resistance to rigid schemas when contradicted by experience.
    • Local, bottom-up learning prioritized over top-down imposition.
  3. Emotional Fidelity
    • Emotions arise in response to actual relational, bodily, or environmental signals.
    • Expression aligns with inner state (no chronic masking or performative dissonance).
    • Emotional responses guide adaptive behavior (e.g. flee danger, seek connection).
  4. Behavioral Coherence
    • Behavior is driven by needs, feedback, and context (not abstract rules).
    • Repetition and rhythm serve regulation (not compulsion).
    • Disruption in the system leads to adaptive signals (e.g. withdrawal, stimming, protest).
  5. Relational Reciprocity
    • Social interactions involve mutual regulation (not dominance hierarchies).
    • Communication is functional, honest, and oriented toward shared understanding.
    • Deception is rare and costly.
  6. Feedback Sensitivity
    • The system changes in response to reality.
    • Pain, hunger, conflict, beauty, and pleasure all serve as real-time guidance systems.
    • When feedback loops break, pathology arises…not in the organism, but in the system.

Neurotypicality (in an ecological sense) is the default wiring for coherence with life.

By this definition, most modern humans are neurodivergent…not in a pathologized way, but in a systemic distortion way. They’ve been selected or conditioned to override feedback, suppress affect, and conform to symbolic systems detached from biological reality.

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