Introduction: When Safety Becomes Surveillance

In theory, institutions such as governance, healthcare, and education are designed to safeguard the vulnerable, elevate dignity, and promote equity. They are presented as pillars of a civilized society, servants of the common good.

But in practice, a darker truth often emerges:

These same institutions, when infected by pathocratic values, become engines of harm.

Instead of offering protection, they enforce compliance. Instead of cultivating understanding, they pathologize difference. Instead of supporting individual needs, they standardize expectations and punish deviation.

Nowhere is this betrayal more visible than in the lives of autistic individuals with high support needs.

For those whose neurology places them outside the narrow range of “functional” productivity or socially acceptable behavior, society’s promises of support often dissolve into bureaucratic cruelty, clinical neglect, or institutional erasure.

• A child who stims to self-soothe is labeled disruptive. 
• A nonverbal adult is institutionalized rather than understood. 
• A family seeking support is met with waitlists, suspicion, or judgment. 
• A unique sensory experience is mistaken for defiance. 

These are not isolated failures. They are systemic patterns, emerging from pathocratic designs, systems governed not by care, but by control, not by empathy, but by efficiency, not by understanding, but by normalization.

 

Pathocracy in Disguise

A pathocracy is not merely a system with bad policies, it is a system shaped by emotionally detached logic, power preservation, and ideological rigidity. It favors those who can perform “normal” and marginalizes those who can’t, or won’t.

In such systems:

• Compliance is rewarded, even at the cost of personal integrity. 
• Divergence is medicalized or criminalized. 
• And those who most need flexibility and support are forced to conform, punished if they fail, and ignored if they disappear. 

For the autistic person with high support needs, this creates a paradoxical world:

You are most in need of support, but also the least likely to receive it in a form that respects your humanity.

 

From Protection to Pathology

This chapter seeks to expose that paradox. It will explore how institutions, despite well-meaning facades, often function as gatekeepers of normalcy, silencing the very people they claim to serve.

It asks:

• Why are autistic individuals so often misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or misrepresented? 
• How have schools become sites of behavioral conditioning rather than neurodevelopmental respect? 
• Why do medical systems prioritize symptom suppression over authentic communication and sensory autonomy? 
• What happens when policies are built around typical brains and enforced upon those whose experience of the world is fundamentally different? 

This is not merely about autism.
It is about what happens to all people when systems abandon empathy in favor of efficiency, or support in favor of surveillance.

 

A Call to Diagnose the Disease, Not the Person

We will explore:

• The structural failure of special education models 
• The coercive undercurrents of behavioral therapy (e.g., ABA) 
• The bureaucratization of diagnosis and service eligibility 
• And the cultural invisibility of autistic adults once they “age out” of childhood programs 

Ultimately, this chapter makes the case that the real disorder is not located in the autistic individual, it is embedded in the pathocratic systems around them.

The solution is not to fix the person, but to heal the system.

 

Understanding Pathocracy

A pathocracy is not just a corrupt regime or an authoritarian institution. It is a structural infection of empathy, where systems once designed for collective welfare are gradually overtaken by individuals and ideologies that prioritize power over people, efficiency over ethics, and control over compassion.

Pathocracy arises when people with traits such as:

• Low empathy 
• High need for domination 
• Strategic manipulation 
• Emotional detachment 

…are rewarded by the structure itself. Over time, their values become embedded into the DNA of the institution, not just through policy, but through culture, workflow, and leadership norms.

These systems no longer ask, “What does this person need to thrive?” Instead, they ask, “How can this person be made to conform?”

 

Empathy as a Threat

In a pathocracy, empathy is treated as a liability, a threat to order, a challenge to authority. Leaders who act from empathy are seen as “soft,” policies shaped by nuance are deemed inefficient, and any deviation from the standard is classified as problematic or even dangerous.

This has devastating consequences for neurodivergent individuals, especially autistic people with high support needs, whose very existence challenges the standard metrics of compliance, productivity, and communication.

• A child who flaps their hands is labeled disruptive. 
• A teen who shuts down under sensory overload is seen as defiant. 
• An adult who cannot speak in neurotypical ways is overlooked or institutionalized. 
• A family seeking accommodations is burdened by red tape, suspicion, or condescension. 

These aren’t isolated errors. They are predictable outcomes of a system that sees difference as dysfunction, and support as surrender.

 

Control Masquerading as Care

Pathocracy often cloaks itself in the language of benevolence: “best practices,” “treatment plans,” “behavioral outcomes.” But beneath these phrases is a deep discomfort with the unpredictable, the nonlinear, and the emotionally complex, everything that true support for autistic individuals requires.

What looks like order is often suppression.
What is called intervention may be coercion.
What’s labeled as care may actually be compliance enforcement.

For example:

• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) may be framed as helpful “training” but is often experienced as a form of behavioral policing, where autistic expressions are extinguished to serve neurotypical comfort. 
• IEP meetings in schools often focus on how to make the student behave, rather than how to make the environment more accessible. 
• Healthcare settings may ignore sensory needs, communication differences, or even pain signals if they are not expressed in expected ways. 

 

Who Defines the Problem?

Perhaps the most insidious feature of a pathocracy is its control over the narrative of dysfunction.

Rather than asking, “How have we failed to support this person?”
It asks, “What is wrong with this person that they are so hard to support?”

In doing so, the system:

• Delegitimizes the experience of the autistic individual. 
• Pathologizes expressions of distress. 
• Centers the comfort of the majority over the safety of the vulnerable. 

Pathocracy doesn’t just mistreat neurodivergent individuals, it reframes their suffering as their own fault.

This is why so many autistic voices go unheard or are dismissed as “too emotional,” “too rigid,” or “not self-aware enough” to be valid.

 

When Pathocracy Meets Neurodivergence

Autism, especially in its high-support forms, does not fit into the pathocratic mold. It demands flexibility, requires co-regulation, and thrives on authentic connection and sensory safety.

But the pathocratic system responds not with adaptation, but with containment.

• Needs are medicalized. 
• Meltdowns are disciplined. 
• Advocacy is ignored. 
• And the autistic person is often either pushed to conform or cast out as “too much.” 

These systems were never truly designed for neurodivergent thriving. And once pathocratically infected, they become sites of chronic trauma, not care.

Healing Starts with Redefinition

To truly understand the depth of this systemic harm, we must redefine the problem.
The issue is not autism. The issue is rigidity, hierarchy, and fear-based leadership.

A pathocracy cannot offer genuine support to those who live and think differently. Not because support is impossible, but because pathocratic logic forbids vulnerability, nuance, and emotional honesty.

To heal our institutions, we must replace fear with flexibility, control with co-regulation, and dominance with dignity.

Only then can systems return to their true purpose: serving the people who need them most.

 

Government System Failures: When the State Becomes the Barrier

For autistic individuals with high support needs, the state is often imagined as a safety net, a final line of protection when family, school, or community cannot meet essential needs. But in practice, the state often becomes an additional layer of trauma, a sprawling, uncoordinated maze that confuses support with surveillance and care with control.

Instead of nurturing dignity, many public systems actively erode it. Their failures are not isolated accidents; they are predictable outcomes of a pathocratic logic that prizes efficiency, liability protection, and budget control over real human thriving.

Let us examine these failures in three layers:

 

1. Policy Framed by Cost, Not Humanity

Government policy often approaches autism through an economic lens. Phrases like “cost to the system” or “burden of care” dominate bureaucratic language, shaping policy decisions around minimizing expense, not maximizing inclusion.

Rather than viewing autistic individuals as citizens with rights and inherent worth, the system reduces them to line items in a budget:

• Services are underfunded. 
• Waitlists stretch for months or years. 
• Eligibility hinges on proving just how “helpless” a person is. 

This framing leads to perverse outcomes. A child may be denied early intervention unless their behavior is severe enough to seem “dangerous.” An adult may be denied housing support because their IQ is “too high” despite daily living impairments. Support is not offered in the spirit of flourishing, but as damage control, offered only once a crisis is visible, measurable, and legally threatening.

In a healthy system, funding reflects need.
In a pathocracy, funding reflects risk avoidance.

 

2. Inaccessible Bureaucracies

Even when resources technically exist, accessing them can be functionally impossible, especially for individuals with executive dysfunction, sensory challenges, or communication differences.

Consider the typical pathway to securing disability benefits:

• Multiple rounds of dense paperwork 
• Doctor’s notes using specific diagnostic language 
• Repeated in-person evaluations 
• Navigating agency websites with poor accessibility 
• Phone calls with caseworkers using jargon and urgency 

For an autistic adult who experiences phone anxiety, struggles with abstract language, or cannot process dense bureaucratic texts, this isn’t just inconvenient, it’s inaccessible.

For families already managing daily care, the process becomes a second full-time job.

And if a person misses a deadline, answers a question “wrong,” or fails to advocate for themselves in the expected way?

Services can be denied.
Appeals can take years.
Repercussions can cascade into homelessness, unemployment, or hospitalization.

The system says, “We are here to help.”
But the process screams, “Prove to us that you are worth helping, and do so in our language, on our timeline, with our definitions of need.”

 

3. Institutionalization Culture

Despite decades of research supporting community-based care and neurodiverse inclusion, institutionalization remains the fallback mechanism of pathocratic systems.

When families burn out, when schools fail, and when services are denied, the state often offers only one option: containment.

Group homes, residential facilities, and long-term care institutions are presented as safe alternatives. But too often:

• Autonomy is stripped under the guise of protection. 
• Communication is ignored, especially for nonverbal individuals. 
• Accountability is minimal, with abuse cases surfacing only when a whistleblower risks everything. 

This isn’t just a failure of policy, it’s a philosophical failure.
The autistic individual is treated as a problem to be managed, not a person to be empowered.

Many facilities still rely on outdated behaviorist models, punishment-based control systems, and one-size-fits-all routines that ignore the diversity of sensory, emotional, and social needs. In the worst cases, residents are sedated, restrained, or isolated for simply being themselves.

These aren’t tragic outliers. They are symptoms of a deeper infection, one in which the state sees itself not as a partner in dignity, but as an overseer of order.

 

A System That Punishes Vulnerability

When government systems operate through the lens of pathocracy, they:

• Reward compliance, not truth. 
• Prioritize liability over healing. 
• Confuse control with care. 

Autistic people with high support needs are not “too hard to serve”, they are simply incompatible with systems that refuse to adapt, listen, or slow down.

To heal these systems, we must shift from:

• Punitive policy to preventive care 
• Inaccessibility to universal design 
• Containment to community 
• Surveillance to support 

These are not technical upgrades. They are moral mandates.

 

Healthcare System Failures: When Care Becomes Harm

For autistic individuals with high support needs, especially those who are non-speaking or have co-occurring conditions, the healthcare system often becomes a source of distress, violation, and neglect, the very opposite of what it is designed to offer. These failures are not isolated errors but emerge from a systemic pathology: a healthcare infrastructure designed around efficiency, hierarchy, and standardization, rather than human variability and neurodiverse inclusion.

Let’s examine three major domains where this failure manifests:

 

1. Diagnostic Overshadowing and Dismissal

One of the most pervasive forms of medical harm experienced by autistic people is diagnostic overshadowing, when a healthcare provider sees the autism diagnosis and stops looking further.

A nonverbal patient presenting with distress may have:

• A broken bone, 
• Severe abdominal pain, 
• A urinary tract infection, 
• Or a sensory reaction to an environmental trigger… 

…but instead of investigating, the doctor may say:

“That’s just how autism looks.”

This dismissive framing leads to two major harms:

• Under-treatment: Genuine, serious symptoms are overlooked, leading to suffering, complications, or even death. 
• Over-medication: Behavioral expressions of pain or overload (e.g., self-injury, withdrawal, shouting) are treated with antipsychotics or sedatives, rather than being understood as communication. 

These patterns are worsened by:

• Medical school curricula that offer minimal training on autism (especially adult presentations). 
• Implicit biases that equate “nonverbal” with “non-feeling” or “non-aware.” 
• Time-limited appointments that incentivize quick, superficial conclusions. 

In a pathocratic healthcare system, the body is treated like a machine, and autistic signals are seen as glitches rather than messages.

This is not just clinical oversight. It is a form of epistemic violence, a denial of the autistic person’s internal reality and lived experience.

 

2. Violation of Consent

Consent is the bedrock of ethical medicine. Yet for many high-support-needs autistic individuals, especially those who do not communicate in typical ways, consent is bypassed entirely.

Common violations include:

• Touching or restraining without warning. 
• Performing invasive procedures with no clear explanation. 
• Administering medications without alternatives or comprehension. 
• Speaking to caregivers as if the autistic person is invisible. 

Even when a person can consent with support, via AAC (augmentative and alternative communication), gestures, or calm verbal explanation, healthcare staff often default to a guardian-centered model that prioritizes speed, legal coverage, or assumed incapacity.

The result is a system where autonomy is erased in the name of care.

This breach of consent reinforces a lifelong trauma cycle:

• The body becomes a site of control. 
• Medical professionals are seen as unpredictable or coercive. 
• Avoidance and shutdown become survival strategies. 

When trauma responses are then misread as defiance or noncompliance, the cycle repeats, often with more force.

 

3. Sensory Inaccessibility and Medical Trauma

Modern medical settings are often sensory nightmares:

• Fluorescent lighting 
• Beeping monitors 
• Crowded waiting rooms 
• Long, unpredictable waits 
• Harsh smells and abrupt touch 

For an autistic nervous system, particularly one already primed by past trauma, this is not just unpleasant. It is dysregulating, overwhelming, and unsafe.

Imagine trying to explain chest pain or suicidal ideation while your body is locked in fight-or-flight mode, your auditory system is overloaded, and no one is speaking slowly enough for you to process their words.

This is not hypothetical, it is daily reality for many.

These environments cause:

• Medical trauma: Especially for children and adults who have experienced restraint, sedation, or invasive procedures. 
• Avoidance of care: Leading to delayed diagnoses, unmanaged chronic conditions, and emergency crises that could have been prevented. 

Sensory inaccessibility is not a minor inconvenience. It is a structural form of exclusion, one that silently punishes neurodivergence and deepens health disparities.

 

Medicine Without Attunement Is Not Care

Healthcare systems claim to uphold “do no harm”, but when viewed through the lens of high-needs autism, the reality is stark:

• The body is misunderstood. 
• The mind is ignored. 
• The voice is silenced. 
• The trauma is normalized. 

These are not technical failures. They are moral failures, rooted in a system that pathologizes difference and prioritizes procedure over presence.

To heal this system, we must move toward:

• Trauma-informed care 
• Sensory-aware design 
• Supported communication 
• Collaborative consent practices 
• Medical humility and active listening 

Just as we expect doctors to adjust their approach for children or seniors, we must demand adaptive, empathetic, and co-regulated care for neurodivergent patients, especially those most vulnerable.

 

Education System Failures: From Learning to Control

For high-support needs autistic students, the education system, meant to be a space of growth, inclusion, and empowerment, has often become a theater of containment and coercion. Beneath the glossy language of “inclusion,” “individualization,” and “least restrictive environment,” pathocratic patterns persist: those who do not conform are not supported, they are subdued.

Let’s explore how this unfolds across three critical dimensions:

 

1. Compliance Over Comprehension

At the heart of educational harm lies a core confusion: that obedience equals success.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), still dominant in special education, operates under the assumption that external behaviors are the primary concern. Eye contact, sitting still, verbal participation, and task completion are treated as ends, not outcomes of genuine understanding or comfort.

But ABA, and other rigid, behaviorist methods, rarely ask:

• Why is the student stimming? 
• Why do they avoid eye contact? 
• Why is speech difficult or inconsistent? 

Instead, it teaches autistic children to mask, to suppress their natural responses in favor of neurotypical mimicry.

The consequences are profound:

• Internalized shame 
• Chronic anxiety 
• Loss of self-trust 
• Long-term trauma responses 
• Post-ABA PTSD, often diagnosed in adolescence or adulthood 

As Dr. Devon Price notes:

“Masking is not a life skill. It is a survival strategy.”

When educational systems prioritize compliance over comprehension, they no longer teach. They condition.

This is the signature of pathocracy in education: where discipline replaces dialogue, and external conformity is valued over internal well-being.

 

2. Weaponized IEPs: Tools of Liability, Not Liberation

Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were conceived as compassionate tools to tailor learning to a student’s needs. But in a pathocratic system, even tools of inclusion can be co-opted.

Too often, IEPs are:

• Written by administrators more concerned with compliance checkboxes than developmental goals 
• Designed to limit legal liability, not enrich learning 
• Worded in vague, non-binding language that allows for minimal accountability 
• Used to document behavior incidents, rather than understand their root causes 

Parents are frequently outnumbered in IEP meetings, facing a wall of professionals whose goal is not collaboration, but containment. Meanwhile, autistic students, especially non-speaking or behaviorally expressive ones, are left without real input, real accommodations, or real goals.

The result? A document that says:

“We did our part.”
But not:
“This child is growing, thriving, and understood.”

IEPs should be living agreements of trust, not dead letters of compliance. When they are weaponized, they erode trust between families and schools, and between students and learning itself.

 

3. Inclusion in Name Only: The Lie of Least Restrictive Environment

The Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) principle is a beautiful idea: that every student should be placed in the most inclusive setting appropriate for their needs.

But in reality, LRE is often a logistical excuse or budgetary illusion, not a sincere commitment.

Two common failures emerge:

1. General Education Dumping: Students are placed in typical classrooms without aides, supports, or sensory accommodations, simply to fulfill the letter of inclusion while ignoring its spirit. They are left isolated, overstimulated, and misinterpreted. 
2. Segregated Lifeskills Tracks: Others are funneled into “life skills” or “functional” programs that offer no real academics, limited peer interaction, and a deficit-based worldview, reinforcing the message that they are broken, burdensome, or incapable. 

Both of these fail the student.

True inclusion is not location-based. It is relationship-based. It requires:

• Adapted materials, 
• Trained support staff, 
• Co-regulation capacity in teachers, 
• Peer education, 
• Sensory-friendly options, 
• And above all, dignity-centered expectations. 

Without this, “inclusive” classrooms become new cages, and “support programs” become warehouses for the inconvenient.

 

From Control to Connection

When education becomes about behavior instead of meaning, documents instead of relationships, and placement instead of participation, it loses its moral compass.

• Autistic children become test subjects, not students. 
• Parents become adversaries, not partners. 
• Teachers become compliance officers, not mentors. 

This is not a failure of individual intention, it is a systemic failure of vision. An immune system corrupted by the very ideology it should resist.

To restore education, we must:

• Replace behaviorism with relational pedagogy 
• Build IEPs as collaborative blueprints, not legal shields 
• Redefine inclusion as adaptive belonging, not physical placement 
• Treat sensory needs as architectural design principles, not afterthoughts 
• Elevate neurodivergent voices as co-creators, not case studies 

Because no system that demands obedience over authenticity can call itself educational.
And no system that prioritizes performance over presence can claim to be inclusive.

 

Core Traits of Pathocratic Systems in Action

To understand how institutions fail high-support needs autistic individuals, we must first diagnose the underlying traits of pathocracy. These systems are not neutral, they are shaped by values, incentives, and defaults that reward emotional detachment, reward conformity, and punish vulnerability.

Below is a breakdown of common pathocratic traits, their systemic expressions, and the resulting impact on autistic lives:

Pathocratic Trait	Systemic Expression	Impact on Autistic People
Control through bureaucracy	Gatekeeping services through complex applications, narrow eligibility, and adversarial review boards.	Isolation, exhaustion, and systemic burnout for families and individuals who must fight just to be seen.
Devaluation of outliers	Favoring “success stories” of verbal, independent autistics while erasing or underfunding high-support needs.	Neglect, invisibility, and a deepening of internalized stigma.
Empathy suppression	Training educators, medical staff, and caregivers to focus on “fixing behaviors” rather than meeting needs.	Masking, identity trauma, and loss of authentic self-expression.
Punitive response to difference	Use of seclusion rooms, physical restraints, compliance-based interventions like ABA.	Physical danger, emotional withdrawal, and long-term trauma responses.
Efficiency over dignity	Prioritizing throughput (test scores, cost savings, compliance rates) over relationships and human well-being.	Autistic individuals become data points, not people, with needs overlooked in pursuit of metrics.

These systemic traits are not simply failures of compassion, they are designed outcomes of a culture that treats non-conformity as dysfunction and divergence as disorder.

 

What Ethical Systems Would Look Like

To heal these infections, we need more than surface reform, we need a re-rooting of institutional purpose in human dignity, neurodiversity, and relational ethics.

In a neuro-inclusive society, systems would be designed with the following principles:

1. Supported Autonomy

Instead of binary thinking, either complete independence or full guardianship, ethical systems would promote scaffolded choice-making, customized planning, and co-created support structures. This includes:

• Person-centered planning from childhood into late adulthood 
• Flexible guardianship models like supported decision-making 
• Valuing nonverbal and nonspeaking communication in legal and medical contexts 

Autonomy isn’t about doing it alone. It’s about being in charge of your life, with the right supports.

2. Sensory Accessibility

Environments would be designed around sensory dignity, not sensory conformity. Schools, clinics, offices, and public services would offer:

• Quiet spaces 
• Natural lighting 
• Noise reduction protocols 
• Opt-in uniforms or dress codes 
• Freedom of movement 

Sensory trauma should not be the entry fee for participation in society.

3. Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) as Standard

Communication would be multimodal by default, not by exception. This includes:

• Tablets, symbol boards, text-to-speech devices in classrooms and clinics 
• Acceptance of behavior as communication 
• Training all staff in AAC basics, including neurotypical peers 

If you can’t hear someone, the solution is not to silence them further. It is to learn their language.

4. Lifespan-Oriented Care

Support does not stop at age 18 or 22. Ethical systems understand that disability is not a childhood phase, it’s a lifelong experience. Support would follow individuals across life domains:

• Career and vocational coaching 
• Relationship and sexuality education 
• Grief and aging supports 
• Retirement and end-of-life planning with dignity 

Each phase of life requires new scaffolding, not abandonment.

5. Relational Trust, Not Behavioral Compliance

The fundamental shift from a pathocratic model to an ethical one is this:

• Pathocracy seeks control through fear and performance. 
• Ethical systems seek trust through co-regulation and partnership. 

In education, this means:

• Replacing ABA with Developmental Relationship-Based Models (e.g. DIR/Floortime, RDI)
  In healthcare: 
• Valuing lived experience, trauma-informed care, and patient-led decision-making
  In governance: 
• Policies created with autistic people, not just about them 

Systems as Ethical Immune Responses

In an Ethiocratic model, systems act as social immune cells, not attacking the divergent, but responding to harm, nourishing what is healthy, and containing what is corrosive.

• Government would fund care as a human right, not a transactional cost-benefit calculation. 
• Healthcare would listen first, interpret second, and treat collaboratively. 
• Education would teach for meaning and connection, not compliance and conformity. 

In this vision, high-needs autistic individuals are not burdens to manage, they are souls to empower, carriers of a deeper truth: that systems designed for the most vulnerable will serve everyone better.

 

Conclusion: Toward a System Worthy of the Human Soul

High-support needs autistic individuals exist in a cruel paradox: they are simultaneously invisible and over-policed. Their differences are either dismissed as burdens too great to accommodate or pathologized into behaviors to be corrected. They are left out of triumphalist neurodiversity narratives that favor the quirky genius trope, and left behind by institutions that define value through independence, productivity, and compliance.

This is not a failure of execution. It is a failure of design.

Our systems, education, healthcare, governance, were not built with neurodivergent minds in mind. They were constructed by and for those who prize conformity, performance, and control. In such systems, difference is not celebrated, it is pathologized. Support becomes a privilege instead of a right. Autistic lives become case files, liabilities, or permanent wards of a broken bureaucracy.

This is the signature of pathocracy, not just the rule of the emotionally disconnected, but the elevation of systems that reward suppression and punish authenticity.

But this reality does not have to remain our future.

If we are brave enough to name the infection, we can begin the work of healing. That work requires:

• Reimagining institutions as responsive, not reactive 
• Designing environments that treat interdependence as strength, not weakness 
• Valuing regulation and relational trust over coercion and compliance 
• Shifting from metrics of efficiency to metrics of dignity and participation 

This is not simply inclusion. It is justice.

It is the ethical evolution of systems into something more human, more resilient, more attuned to the truths neurodivergent individuals have always known, that connection is not a luxury, it is a lifeline, and that difference is not a defect, it is a design feature.

So we say it plainly:

• High-support needs autistic people deserve systems that work for them. 
• They deserve to be seen not as anomalies, but as indicators of what a compassionate society requires. 
• They are not burdens to accommodate; they are barometers of our collective integrity. 

It is time to build institutions that do not demand assimilation but provide belonging.

To create policies that do not manage people, but empower them.

To forge a culture where being fully human is not contingent upon meeting someone else’s standards of functionality, but upon being valued as you are.

This is the call.
This is the cure.
This is the future we must choose to build.