Neurowild Margins

In permaculture design, the margins and edges of an ecosystem are given special consideration. Rather than being neglected for the simple spatial fact of not being in the middle of an area, or not being the statistically prominent aspect of a design, margins and edges are known to be among the most diverse and productive elements of an ecosystem.

What are the edges and margins of society, mindfully speaking? They include what the mainstream calls "neurodivergent" and what I prefer to call neurowild. The "divergence" in the common term implies a divergence from something, namely the "normal," which is thought to be definitionally good, desirable, and healthy. In turn, "neurodivergent" becomes something suspect, pathological, or problematic.

But in a species of 8 billion members and thousands of diverse cultures, what really is "normal?" The concept of the normal in the context of human cognition has origins in mathematics, where "normal" simply referred to what was statistically common and frequent. Just because something is quantitatively prominent doesn't mean it is necessarily good or desirable, however. Most humans are habitually prone to selfishness, greed, gossip, deceit, and irrationality, but we don't think of these "normal" behaviors as ideals of human activity.

We need a new way to characterize the wide and dynamic diversity of human cognitive function and style. So, in place of the "neuro-normal ~ neuro-divergent" dichotomy of what is our decidedly pathologizing medical-therapeutic culture, I like to think of cognition as running along a continuum marked by the poles of "neuro-domestic" and "neuro-wild." It was only in the previous 10,000-12,000 years (about or less than 1% of the history of human existence) that humans became domesticated in the social context of civilization. Prior to that, we lived as nature, as much a part of natural ecosystems as birds, bugs, trees, and rivers.