Hello. I'm Natasha.
Fundamentalism isn't politically partisan. It's a human pattern.
We all use mental shortcuts and dogmatic rules to rush belonging and reduce anxiety. The faster the world changes around us, the more our brains over-simplify.
We retreat into "us" vs. "them," "good" vs. "bad," and the immediate relief of being told what to think.
It's cozy at first. Belonging feels good.
But to get that coziness, we trade truth. And without truth, you can't have agency.
As a late-diagnosed autistic person, I'd been operating by logic a little more than average my whole life. I knew I was doing it. I didn't know it was unusual.
It didn't always save me in time. At age 16, following a flawed argument to a wrong conclusion, I joined the Mormon church. For fourteen years, I experienced at close range the good and bad of letting other people do your thinking for you within a framework that works for them. As my critical thinking skills improved with age, education, and hard experience, logic was how I clawed my way out at thirty-one.
Soon after, I found myself inside a social justice community that began to feel uncomfortably familiar — the same backgrounding of professed values to prioritize controlling members, the same shunning for asking the wrong questions. That's when the pattern became undeniable: it wasn't about politics. It was about fear, and what fear does to groups of people when the world moves faster than they can process, or when some trade-offs feel necessary in the pursuit of power.
The antidote to fundamentalism is critical thinking. When we know how to think through complexity, we don't need to rely on lazy rules and shallow judgments.
I believe it's our social responsibility to know what we believe, why we believe it, and to be able to defend it logically. That capacity is especially urgent for people who are routinely manipulated, dismissed, and overruled — because clear thinking isn't just intellectual discipline. It's how you hold your ground when the pressure not to is coming from every direction.
That capacity is learnable. I've spent my life learning it — first intuitively, then formally, studying logic and philosophy at university. I've practiced it where it's hardest: in real disagreements, in communities I belonged to, and in arguments I didn't want to lose because they'd imply conclusions I didn't want to reach.
This is the through-line in everything I write, talk, and teach: truth, agency, and logic.
Our agency is under threat. Truth is going to become harder to locate in a rapidly advancing age of AI, deepfakes, and misinformation. Critical thinking isn't just a useful tool — for people who value individual and collective liberation, it's survival.
Truth isn't as relative as people like to say it is. Sometimes it's hard to locate, but it's always there, waiting for us.
A bit more about me
After raising four children, I created Undoing Motherhood to help mothers liberate themselves from the trappings of patriarchal, capitalistic, colonial, ableist motherhood—trappings I was groomed into at a young age. I am currently writing a memoir about the ways women are groomed into marriage and "good mother"-hood, and how to find our way out.
I am disabled with AuDHD and multiple health conditions. Sometimes my response times are slow and I take breaks from my work.
As an AuDHD person, I need beauty and order like other people need food. I'm a foodie myself, but I would never eat again if a magic fairy would let me sacrifice food in exchange for beautifully designed and perfectly orderly spaces everywhere I go forevermore. I am easily overwhelmed by visual clutter; depressed by low light and artificial materials; and instantly buoyed by stunning abstract art, gorgeous typography, and ingenious design.
When I'm too tired to read or write, or when I need to cope with my rage about the state of global politics, I make colourful jewellery (@insteadofdoingcrimes), cuddle with my Aussie Shepherd (Dr. Lola Gorgonzola), or play word games with loved ones.
