What we want is that one day every workplace will be diverse - we already encourage that with gender and ethnicity, but the next frontier is neurodiversity and it will become ordinary. People won't think twice about it.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and embracing neurodiversity in the workplace as a natural evolution of diversity efforts.
Simon Baron-Cohen highlights the necessity of extending workplace diversity beyond gender and ethnicity to include neurodiversity. He envisions a future where a variety of cognitive profiles are recognized as normal, fostering acceptance and inclusion without hesitation, thereby enriching the work environment and benefiting society as a whole.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation on workplace diversity initiatives.
When I first started in this field there were all kinds of stereotypes about autism, as if these were children from another planet, or children who had been brought up by wolves, that they weren't part of our population and were somehow separate.
Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble. It is effective as a way of anticipating and resolving interpersonal problems, whether this is a marital conflict, an international conflict, a problem at work, difficulties in a friendship, political deadlocks, a family dispute, or a problem with a neighbor.
Brains come in different types and they're all normal.
Well, in the general population, we find differences between the typical male and typical female. For example, males seem to be more interested in systems and females seem to be more interested in people and particularly people's emotions.
Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.
There are people with Asperger's whom I've met who certainly would be very upset to learn they'd hurt another person's feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral codes. They care about not hurting people.
I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.
The present Arab uprising didn't stem from Israel. The old guard is trying to keep down the young chickens. The old guard is better organized. They may win elections, but unless they have a solution to poverty, to corruption, to oppression, they will not last. I am with the young people.
There is a miracle in every new beginning
Everything that you are against works against you. Everything that you are against can be restated in a way that puts you in support of something. When you are able to state what you are for rather than what you are against, you are focusing on the potential for positive change. Once that is in place, you will find whatever you are focusing on expanding.
While I may never be in remission from cancer, I am currently in remission from an unhealthy relationship to food.
Repentance, as we know, is basically not moaning and remorse, but turning and change.
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