Where are you on the spectrum?

“Where are you on the spectrum?

This could be a question that could spark all kinds of emotive reactions, particularly if the recipient sits in a space of feeling a stigma and block towards talking about anyone or anything that sits outside generalised “norms”. To cut to it, the idea of being “on the spectrum” can be labelled in a negative way towards those with any form of autism, yet another form of “othering” in society.

“Where are you on the spectrum?

Today I ask this provocative question first for us to be aware of our biases (for more on bias and heuristics. see earlier posts here, here and here).

From that awareness around bias towards labelling and “othering, I ask you to then recognise that we often think in binary ways along a myriad of topics, using heuristics (mental shortcuts which inherently contain degrees of bias) to decide that we are either one thing or another, rather than being “somewhere on the spectrum”, not at one end or the other.

The specific topic I’ve chosen to use to examine this today is: “are you entrepreneurial or not?”, answering that binary question…