Everything, Everywhere All At Once

Some thoughts on an assortment of articles that came to my attention while on a break

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

Been a little while since I posted here, not as frequently as I hope to, but you gotta start somewhere.¹ A lot has happened in a relatively short amount of time, a lot has already been said about it by those more eloquent (or at least more high-profile) than I, but I still feel the urge to go for broke and add my two cents adjusted for inflation. (At least I’m not shilling for crypto or “buying the dip.”)

I’ll start off with a brief preview of something shocking that I’m about to reveal:

RFK Jr. is an idiot, and everyone in Congress needs to be permanently furloughed for being feckless and useless at best, and actively destructive at worst.

Yeah, I know. Really groundbreaking stuff like no one has ever heard before. Believe me.

But he and the other nitwits in our hallowed halls of “leadership” aren’t the only thing on my mind this dark and stormy long holiday weekend: I’ve also been ruminating over the media, the market, the minds of mice and men and machines… and meanwhile, the meaning of life.

(And why the aforementioned members of both Silly Parties who have not been sacked, should heretofore be sacked.)

RFK Jr. Doesn’t Know Dick (Literally)

So the oddest (to say the least) scion of America’s foremost political dynasty gave a press conference with President Trump where he doubled down on the assertion that acetaminophen usage in children and pregnant women is a direct cause, if not the cause, of autistic disorders and possibly other so-called “neurodivergencies.” I’m an avowed contrarian in the discourse who is disillusioned with both parties for how they’ve addressed the rising prevalence, and while I’m still dissatisfied (a serious understatement) with Democrats and the left for how they have refused to make space for those who don’t subscribe to disability identitarianism, and do want medical intervention, because our disorder has been debilitating and has, in fact, “ruined our lives” and left us “unable to work or pay taxes or find love”… at the same time, I just can’t with Republicans anymore, their miracle bleach cures and now… #BlamingTheBris.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently claimed a link between autism and circumcision, suggesting that infants who are circumcised have a higher rate of autism due to the use of Tylenol after the procedure. However, these claims are widely criticized and lack scientific evidence to support them. (A.I. news summary from Duck Duck Go)

Great, just what everyone needs right now at a moment of exponentially rising antisemitism is for a White House official to basically put forth a conspiracy theory that “the Jews did autism.” He also said something about women getting pregnant in their placenta, or placebo, or Placido Domingo, or I don’t even know anymore because I can’t take these people seriously. And it’s really pissing me off.

I was hopeful for a moment that RFK’s junk science around the autism statistics would lead Democrats to put forth actual science and take people’s concerns seriously. To acknowledge that the messaging about autism being another facet of “diversity” that needs to be “accommodated by society” and is more comparable to left-handedness or homosexuality than Down syndrome or Alzheimer’s, is not working, because that’s not the “lived experience” of many if not most of those afflicted by it — especially the parents and caregivers of the profoundly autistic. Instead they have only doubled down on neurodiversity rhetoric and “centering the voices” of “neurodivergent” influencers, celebrities, and Ivy League professors, rather than ordinary normies who are really struggling. It’s OK, or it should be OK, to say that RFK Jr is full of shit but that having autism is awful. And that outlier anecdotes about Einstein and Newton aren’t helpful when someone is living hand-to-mouth and crying every day because he or she wants friends, relationships, and most importantly, a job. Not a welfare check. A job.

I started this Substack because I wanted people to recognize that there is, in fact, a middle path between anti-vax nonsense and Predator memes about “neurodivergence” being the “next stage of evolution.” I wanted the “autism wars” to be grounded in reality rather than ideology. I wanted people to realize that there is some truth, in fact a lot of it, going by statistics, to Kennedy’s initial remarks that the majority of those afflicted do not work or pay taxes; that the ability to earn a living by one’s own merit and effort (and without embarrassing “accommodation” requests that actually work against a prospective employee) does, in fact, give people a sense of raison d’etre that’s lacking in other pursuits outside the exchange of a salary; and that “dismantling capitalism” is an irrational fantasy that’s about as possible or likely as repealing the law of gravity. It would be wonderful if “people would be kinder” and “more accepting of differences” and we could have a luxury Star Trek utopia and a UBI of a million dollars a month and permanent peace in the Middle East and chocolate cake being the cure for cancer. It’s not going to happen. Desperate people will cling to any port in a storm when they’re grasping for answers and help that never seems to arrive.

But now the best of intentions have once again paved the road to hell.

As much as I hate flagrant and hyperbolic ticketing for alleged violations of Godwin’s law… “Jews did autism” is a red flag the size of a king-size bed sheet, and needless to say it didn’t turn out so good the last time it was floated as a theory. But the tabula-rasa social engineering of Soviet Lysenkoism (“disability justice” is innately Marxist) isn’t the way to respond to it either.

I got some pushback for being so aggressive in my tone towards those who espouse the accommodationist or “social model” perspective, and I’ve done my best to adjust that, because I don’t want to alienate potential allies with aggressive disagreement. But the reason I push so hard for a “cure” or “prevention” from real science, “eugenics” be damned, is because I find the social model unrealistic copium — and because the unsatisfying void that it creates, the insurmountable goals it puts forth, are pushing too many desperate people towards simplistic and harmful garbage from the likes of Kennedy and his circle.

The discourse on “neurodivergence” needs a major course correction. It isn’t going to come from the Reichstag White House and it isn’t going to come from the unrepresentative Pollyannas at the Autism Self-Advocates Network. It has to come from voices who are trying to speak louder but aren’t being listened to.

And that means the people with the loudest megaphones will have to tune in.

The Freddie de Boer War

One of the more prominent contrarians who I subscribe to is Freddie de Boer, who has a lot of insightful critiques about the top-down narrative on mental health struggles imposed by media gatekeepers and professional activists, whose grip on the discourse remains stubbornly in effect despite the proliferation of social media and Substack allowing people with dissenting views to express themselves at little to no cost. There is freedom of speech and freedom to preach, but what has not yet trickled down is freedom of reach.

In one of his more recent postings, he laments that the New York Times in particular has published a series of pieces on “neurodivergence” and disability issues over the course of Kennedy’s tenure at HHS, few of which seem to be anything but reactionary partisan takes and none of which give credit to the people who are actually affected by the discourse and have been writing and expressing their own sentiments for years.

It’s one thing, as the Times did in the piece he references, to open up a debate on whether “the spectrum” has been broadened to the point of absurdity and lent itself to an unexpected “pandemic panic.” It’s quite another for the NYT to claim an organic aha moment all its own, without meaningfully engaging with those who’ve been in the trenches on this issue because it affects them personally every day of their lives, and they can’t just drop it when the readership loses interest. And it’s yet another to only publish those whose lived experience doesn’t seem to have curtailed their quality of life much, because they’re from “privileged” surroundings with all the right connections and people in their corner doing all the uncomfortable networking and glad-handling for them. And because their perspectives align with the Times’ rather binary understanding, which has evolved ever-so-slightly in recent months (arguably because of Kennedy’s destructive absurdities), but not nearly enough to be truly representative of where the “missing majority” is. (So much for “If you’ve met one…” etc. etc. etc.)

Apparently, it’s OK for the parents of the severely afflicted to talk about how their loved one’s diagnosis has led to a life of suffering. Which I 100% support them having a broad platform to do! Bu it’s not OK for those at a similar “functioning level” as, say, Maia Szalavitz to go on record as saying, man oh man, does my life suck because of this, and I wish to God I could be normal. It seems unfathomable to the NYT and its ideological fellow travelers that someone who is articulate, “hyperlexic,” an avid reader and pop-culture aficionado with a broad array of interests and an uncanny recall ability, to actually find something wrong with one’s neurology, and in fact not even have a job, friends, or romance at all!

It’s almost like they discount the core facet of why ASD is a “disorder”: social communication is lacking. Not always “intellectual ability.” Someone could be a genius with a tremendous work ethic and still be broke and living in a tent, subsisting on welfare, or slumming it with (often abusive and unsupportive) family (certainly the case for me), because they bomb job interviews, flunk personality tests, freeze up at networking events, don’t have a profile page on Linked In, or they just don’t bother with the process at all. Someone could be the most empathic and self-sacrificing person, and still have no friends or relationships because they can’t help but give off a subtle signal that something is “off.” That “thin slice judgment” response is hard-coded by evolutionary psychology. It’s not going to change with PSAs or “better representation in TV and movies” or “DEI training” or “adorkably quirky” Tik Tok influencers going off about how their Squishmallows and A.I. waifus/husbandos/polycule participants make better companions than actual human beings. The sad fact is that loneliness is inherent to the disorder in and of itself. I’m not sure if the Times is so in a bubble as to be completely unaware of any of this, or they do know, but choose to ignore it so as to not contradict their predetermined conclusions. There’s so much that the mainstream press doesn’t say about “the autisms,” either because they never even thought to ask the questions or they simply don’t care.

Freddie is thus bearish on the likelihood of the paper of record bothering to course-correct and broaden their horizons. I can vouch for this myself, having written several letters to the editor in response to said articles (from Szalavitz, DSM architect Allen Frances, prominent psychiatrist Roy Grinker, Science editor Holden Thorpe, and a panel discussion involving Eric Garcia and Allison Singer, among other features on the subject), and gotten not a single one printed. I have an account that I use to write in the comments sidebar, but so far that’s where I remain. That said, Freddie himself can’t seem to get a byline there either, despite having a much more prominent profile than my own on this very same website. But what else can I do but continue to write, maybe even to try and contact the people who they did print in their bylines and tell “my truth,” and maybe even to bite the bullet at some point and “glow up” to be a Tik Tok personality myself. It’s where all the cool weirdos seem to be hanging out these days. Maybe if I get lucky, I’ll score a lucrative sponsorship deal with Tylenol. I hear there’s a coupon for it, in the pages of the New York Times. And a big discount on their stock.

A Correction of Course, of Course

Unlike the NY Times and our hive-minded political parties, I don’t mind adjusting or reconsidering my own perspectives should something come to my attention that gives me pause or makes me think. My late, beloved mother, who would have been 73 this month, always used to say, “with new information, comes a new outlook on things,” and she was right. In fact that’s the very definition of the scientific process — if, of course, those doing the process allow for broad input in the first place, which unfortunately our “leaders” and institutions seem increasingly unwilling to do. For one thing, I’m especially livid with RFK Jr. in how his war against the breakthrough technology of mRNA, which was implemented to great success with the (hyper-politicized) COVID vaccine, threatens to kibosh crucial research into an inoculation against the disease that killed my mom: pancreatic cancer. Nor do I appreciate the left’s vilification of genetic engineering like CRISPR and polygenic diagnostics to screen out birth defects, which places them squarely in the same place that George W. Bush and the religious right were in with their attacks on embryonic stem-cell research. That said, am I willing to consider that a lot of my own problems and those of others afflicted by my particular “flavor” of “neurodivergence” might, even in part, be due to societal structures rather than errant biology per se? I am, particularly in the area of job hunting, which is the number one sore spot for me, far more so than not having friends or an active sex life (I couldn’t care less). I mentioned “personality testing” as a particularly insurmountable hurdle for those who don’t fit the mold, and came across this research paper recently, arguing for its abolition and a complete overhaul of the hiring and recruitment process for all, not just the “divergently disabled” (or whatever one wants to call it).

The entire paper (a PDF, available by clicking on “Full Text” on the abstract page or copied to my Google drive here in case it goes offline), is worth the read, and if I was so fortunate as to be in academia or a policy-making capacity myself, I would cite the authors and even invite them to testify on Capitol Hill and be involved with the drafting of legislation. I remember well these asinine questionnaires when I applied to retail and restaurant jobs in high school. Needless to say I got disqualified from the next step when I said honestly that I don’t find politicians to be honest. (It was the Bush era. Who did?) Even back then I didn’t see any correlation between whether one finds Congress to be chock full of crooks and one’s ability to bag groceries or hand out stickers at Wal-Mart. I know now, of course, that retail would be absolute hell for me — the name “Lucille Ball” and the words “chocolate factory” come to mind in terms of how I’d fare at the conveyor belt. But still: even at the tender age of seventeen I knew full well that my opinions on gun rights and the crookedness of congress critters bore no relevance to the actual tasks of the job. What I didn’t know was just how pervasive these seemingly irrelevant quizzes actually are across all strata of the workforce, from grocery markets to Fortune 500 multinational corporations.

And the fact that they’re intentionally implemented to keep people like me away.

For all my criticisms of the NY Times (I clearly have a lot), I do want to bring up a recent piece of theirs that connects to this issue of discriminatory personality profiling: “How to Live a Long and Healthy Life as an Introvert,” which got a lot of pushback in the vaunted comment section from people who were none too pleased with the pathologizing of the introverted personality type as something posing a risk of premature fatality. I brought up in the comments this issue of personality profiling being a discriminatory practice that by design ostracizes those who score high on introversion on the “Big Five” scale. Others replied with concurrence, but had no answers either. The Times has probably blacklisted my email address into the spam folder by now, but if I were to write them a letter, I’d point out that an introvert’s life is adversely affected by the business world going out of its way to shove them to the margins of poverty and unemployment!

I’m not discounting the presence of external factors working against the “divergent” or introverted or those who otherwise don’t fit the mold of those in power who designed it that way. The reason I nonetheless advocate for a medical intervention for the individual is because I see absolutely zero possibility of those structures ever changing. Again I refer back to Sinclair’s law of self-interest — it is difficult (if not impossible) to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it. Humans evolved to such an extent that they could create their environment; rather than rely solely upon the mercy of the laws of the jungle, they built their own concrete jungle, and those with the capacity to have been the “architects” of it were the alpha predators who designed their surroundings in a way that the also-rans would starve and eventually go extinct. I and others can complain ad infinitum on Substack and social media and the comment sections of the major newspapers. It is not going to change because it is set up this way by design. Yes, the world is not designed for me or others like me. No, it is not ever going to be designed for me or for others like me. “Adapt or die” is the choice; those who cannot do the former are destined to do the latter. The reason I want a medical cure is so that those who otherwise can’t adapt can, so that they have more choices before them than to just give up and die.

This is what I want the neurodiversity advocates to understand, and why I get so angry when they fall back to “there’s nothing wrong with me; society needs to change.” It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not, because society isn’t going to change, so why put up so much resistance to medical intervention? You’re not just fighting against arbitrary rules of Calvinball that can be changed on a whim because someone said oops and agreed to fix it, to let participants have a Mulligan or play the links with a handicap. You’re fighting against tens of thousands of years of human evolutionary psychology set up to be a rigged game of musical chairs, and against the multi-trillion-dollar economies of the Western world. Do you really think there’s going to be an epiphany of empathy on the part of those “architects” that allows the “divergent” among us to thrive? If you answered yes, can I interest you in waterfront property in Nebraska?

I subscribe to Susan Cain’s newsletter, and appreciate her insights about the qualities that introverts and the “divergent” may possess. But her book Quiet (and it is a good one), has had arguably zero impact upon the inclusion of introverts and the “divergent” in society, in the baker’s-dozen years since its publication. Academics and even industry publications like the Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and Forbes have all pleaded with their readership in Corporate America to be more flexible and open-minded in their hiring processes, not just for the “neurodivergent” as a scrutinized (and stigmatized) subset² but for everyone.³ Those calls continue to fall upon deaf (or “audio-divergent”) ears, and will continue to do so until nobody has a job but Sam Altman and Elon Musk. As the Times also reports, with A.I. now sorting through applications and résumés (with the biases of those personality profiles programmed into it), this problem has only gotten one hundred times worse, and it will continue to get worse to the point where millions of jobs are made redundant and only the “influencers” will survive. (Or not.) The answer that’s been given to work around this is to “rely on one’s network,” which introverts and the “divergent” hardly ever have. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat Bobby Berserker’s brain worms.

The unavoidable reality is that we are but naked apes with bigger brains, but the law of the jungle still holds: whoever thumps his chest the loudest and wields the biggest banana will rule the pack. Now the apes have gone virtual (and I don’t mean NFTs), but the nasty brutishness of human nature is still the law of the land.

Civilized creatures

Speaking of alpha predator primates and their targets, I decided to give a donation to the World Wildlife Fund recently, because I couldn’t stop crying over their ads with mama elephants looking after their babies as they face threats from human poachers. If it saves even one pachyderm in my mother’s memory, I’ll be happy. (If I were bereft of empathy, as clinical opinion would have it, I wouldn’t sob during “Baby Mine.”) I may not have friends, a significant other, or even a job. But until I end up in the dirt myself, at least I’ve got someone to watch over me.

1. The late summer into fall transition has been especially tough for me this year; I marked (not celebrated) a birthday in late August, my first without my mother, and her birthday is in late October. I’ve been recommended grief counseling but don’t find the concept all that useful in my situation. Nothing will bring back my mother, and I don’t have much of a life to “get back to,” and still don’t find it worth living. So as the weather turns colder and darker, and a bad storm engulfs a quarter of the U.S. on Columbus Day weekend, I pretty much went the Clement Moore route before the Christmas holidays and settled in for a long winter’s nap. Such is the nature of intractable depression, seasonal-affective disorder, “prolonged grief,” social reclusiveness, self-hatred, and a general sense of existential pointlessness that would make Sartre and Camus alike probably tell me to do something to cheer up.

2. I am not a fan in the least of Devon Price and the Unmasking Autism manifesto, or of the general comparison between “neurodivergence” and the seemingly endless rainbow alphabet (see also Nick Walker’s “neuroqueer theory” which is equally preposterous, and arguably homophobic considering all the work that the “normal gays” did in the 1970s to de-link their orientations from categorizations of mental illness). I did nonetheless find it worth note that Price argues in this Medium essay (which seems to be the genesis for the book) that the ideal future for “autists” and others with “invisible disabilities” is when everyone can have accommodations as a kind of consumer request without having to disclose a pathology or handicap. That’s a nice idea, but not one that is anywhere approaching reality. People don’t seem to mind simple things like installing wheelchair ramps or handicap restrooms for the physically hobbled. Where the benevolence ends, with an angry and screeching halt, is a “least restrictive environment” for those who are immediately clocked as “weird.”

3. On a similar note, towards the end of the Penn State Law paper, the authors discuss the catch-22 of applicants requesting accommodations that might streamline the hiring process, and how “outing” themselves as disabled or “divergent” by requesting accommodations in the first place works against them, because disclosure of a disability or “divergency” significantly decreases if not eliminates their likelihood of being hired or even called back at all. They also discuss how even if an applicant manages to “game” the personality profile to land an interview, the standard interview itself is designed to be a hostile and unwelcoming environment for the “divergent,” but there again, that requesting an alternative assessment than the standard in-person interview raises a red flag that this applicant is “one of those people” that companies do not wish to hire in the first place. The solution that the authors give is for the workforce as a whole to do away with their traditional metrics of assessment and eliminate personality profiling except in absolutely necessary circumstances, but to not have it be a dealbreaker for the candidate, rather part of a holistic evaluation package that takes into account one’s life circumstances and “hidden strengths,” so that the person does not have to disclose an embarrassing diagnosis. Again, the chances of this are considerably less than winning Powerball on a Leap Day in a year when Halley’s Comet orbits the earth. This is where I hit a wall, where “neurodiversity” has utterly failed (ironically, by adopting RFK Sr.’s philosophy of “imagining the world as it could be and asking ‘why not’,” but then pretending like the world is already that way), and where I and others like me begin to wish for the sweet release of death. Fortunately, if the Times is correct, introverts and the “divergent” will die sooner than our normal/extrovert/not-“divergent” counterparts anyway, and then they won’t have to be bothered with pesky requests to get out of their bubble and give a shit about the “oppressed and marginalized” they claim to be so concerned about.