Book Review: The Pattern Seekers by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen

This is my first experience with Dr. Baron-Cohen's writing, and... I'm going to call it an acquired taste. He presents a really interesting idea (especially for those of us on the spectrum), but he does it in a very dry, flat way. It's understandable, given his history in academia, but it can make the book feel like a chore to slog through.

Baron-Cohen's assertion is that the primary quality of an autistic brain as opposed to a neurotypical one is pattern-seeking behavior, which he calls systemizing. He includes a test in the appendix so you can see where you fall on the systemizing and empathizing spectrums (though the results matrix is backward -- use the URL in the book to take the test online for accurate results), as well as a short test to determine whether you might be autistic. He covers elements of human evolution, prenatal and childhood development, and the definition of invention to make his point that the capacity to invent is unique to homo sapiens and most prevalent in strong systemizers, like those on the autism spectrum.

While he makes an excellent case for his primary thesis, some of his side points feel wobbly, and one element of his methodology in particular looks flawed to me. He talks about research he's done into autistic couples and the increased likelihood that their offspring will be on the spectrum, which makes a lot of sense to me, but he conducts most of this research in Silicon Valley (and similarly tech-focused communities elsewhere in the world). He relies on school- or parent-reported data for much of his research, and his focus on STEM work communities carries an inherent classist bias that he doesn't address in the book.

All of that said, The Pattern Seekers is a fairly quick and interesting (though not terribly peppy) read, and it's a good title to recommend to people who advocate for "curing" autism, because it re-frames autistic differences as useful and functional to the species as a whole.

Absolutism

I have never had a cable television account in my name, and haven't lived in a house that had live TV service in many years. I stopped listening to the news on the radio when the Las Vegas shooting happened, because the sound of gunshots replayed every few minutes was so distressing. I don't read the news online unless there's something specific I want to know more about. I quit Facebook on New Year's Day several years ago. I joined Instagram because I still like feeling connected to my far-flung friends, but would rather see pictures of what they're passionate about than read vitriolic diatribes. But even with Instagram being the only social media platform I'm active on, the current situation has me exhausted and angry and ready to chuck my phone in the river and go live in a hut in the mountains.

Our culture has embraced a sort of moral absolutism on all sides that's making it impossible to talk about issues and try to find practical, workable solutions. Political "transparency" and the 24-hour news cycle mean that legislators either have to hold fast to every polarizing plank of their platform or use increasingly unscrupulous means to cobble together bills that can pass. When everyone insists that they should get 100% of what they want, nobody gets anything worth having.

Social media, with its algorithms that show a user more and more of what they already know and like, creates echo chambers that convince people their opinions are the only right ones, and that anybody who differs in the slightest is wrong and bad and the enemy. Trends go viral without thought, people re-post without investigating, and a giant game of "telephone" can turn a rational idea into a wing-nut conspiracy theory in moments.

I'm guilty of this myself. It has taken a fair bit of willpower to train myself to research issues to the point where I understand them and don't just automatically believe and parrot the voices that confirm what I already felt ought to be true. When I joined Instagram, I made "no reposts" and "no hashtags" part of my online identity as a way to prevent myself from falling back into the habit of amplifying voices without thinking about whether they're right or wrong or damaging or distorted.

So when, in response to yet another POC being killed by LEOs with no justification, my Instagram feed was suddenly flooded with screaming voices and black squares and more absolutism ("if you don't do XYZ you're racist/bigoted/part-of-the-problem")... I'm having difficulty finding reasons to belong to a society that behaves this way. I don't want to be part of a society that includes police brutality. I don't want to be part of a society that includes looters and arsonists. I don't want to be part of a society that can't decide whether to glorify or vilify white cops who stand in solidarity with BLM. I don't want to be part of a society where "hero" and "villian" are the only options. Humans and the situations we get ourselves into are far more complex and nuanced than that. 

We are broken. Capitalism is broken, democracy is broken, America is broken, and all anybody wants to do is scream that it's someone else's fault. Where are the solutions? Suggestions are met with hate because they don't fit someone's personal ideal and, thus, must be horrible. We can't make progress without conversation and compromise, and we can't talk about it when everybody's screaming.

Pack up your epithets, shelve your moral indignation, stop thinking more about the optics of your personal political opinions than about the effects of your behavior (yes, you, who posted a black square yesterday without taking a good look at WHY you were doing it), and LISTEN. Observe. THINK. Think about it from the perspective of someone you disagree with, without automatically writing that person off as a racist or a wing-nut or a "lib-tard" or whatever other term you spit at people who don't think like you. People who disagree with you exist, and they vote and hold office and run businesses, and they, like you, believe they're holding the moral high ground, and believe that their opinions are well-reasoned. To dismiss them or try to do an end-run around them is folly; you can't will them out of existence, and you can't change their minds by shouting at them.

If we don't collectively come down off our high horses, the fires that are burning right now will consume us all. We will be victims of our own egos, our own stupidity, our own inflexibility. We will lay waste to our civilization in the name of being "right."

What good is being right if we're all dead?

Let's Be Clear

We're called "essential" because calling us "sacrificial" didn't play well in the focus groups.

If we're truly essential, prioritize our well-being over your profits.

If we're truly essential, thank us for our service, both with words and deeds.

If we're truly essential, stop telling us we're replaceable, expendable, or worthless.

We take care of you when you're sick or dying. We cook and deliver your food. We stock shelves with the things you need and ring out your purchases. We deliver packages to your door. We keep the supply chains open. We pick up your trash. We set up home offices with remote workstations so you can still call somebody to solve problems.

We make the world run as smoothly as it can during the worst situations.

We deserve better. Better wages, better benefits, better treatment, better managers, better lives.

Stop the race to the bottom.

Horticultural Humor

I just saw an article with the headline, "How To Grow Lots of Zucchini."

If I were writing the article, it would go like this:

Step 1: plant zucchini.

Step 2: stand back.

(Speaking of which, I should pop out to the greenhouse to see how my seedlings are doing. Last year's zucchini harvest was more than we needed, even with giving a lot of it away, so I'm only doing one zucchini plant this year. That should give me enough for a few batches of zucchini relish, some zucchini bread, and sautéed zucchini about once a week through the summer.)

Plague

Life during a pandemic teaches us all sorts of things. We learn which workers are considered essential (generally those who earn the lowest wages). We learn how far six feet really is (thanks to tape lines on the floor at the supermarket). We see how feeble an excuse people need to be racist (some of them don't even need an excuse). We learn how little some people know about health and medicine (somebody please get the Cheeto-in-chief away from microphones). We see which companies are willing to take care of their workers (CVS and Aldi are giving raises/bonuses to current employees and hiring more to keep supply lines open and stores sanitized) ...and which aren't.

The company I work for is one of the ones that isn't taking care of its employees. We're considered essential workers, so we still have to show up to work unless we or someone in our households is symptomatic. We're being forced to take a week of unpaid furlough each, on a rolling schedule. The company has stopped its contributions to our 401(k) retirement funds. Raises that had been in the works are on hold indefinitely. Our "community hire" (a disabled part-time porter) has been laid off.

All of this is being done in the name of keeping the company afloat during the economic downturn associated with the pandemic. But given that other "essential" companies are doing things like suspending executives' salaries to keep their front-line employees fully paid, or making other tweaks to their business models to adjust to the current market without forcing their lowest-paid employees to feel the pinch, it ends up looking like the company is trying to preserve its profits at our expense.

On top of that, we were informed of our first in-house confirmed case of COVID-19 on Friday. The person's name wasn't released, but we're a pretty small crew and only one person has been out sick, so it's obvious who it is. As soon as the announcement was made, operations were brought to a halt, old PPE thrown out, new PPE issued, and we all grabbed Clorox wipes and proceeded to clean every touch-point in the building. I had to get home to feed my animals, so I didn't stay late to finish the job, but I'm certain that operations started back up immediately following the cleaning session, and as far as I know I'll be back to work as usual on Monday.

My personal exposure to this thing is pretty limited, and my physical health is fairly robust, but because I have to be out in the world every day, I do worry about being a vector and spreading the disease to other, more vulnerable people. I would have appreciated some acknowledgement/explanation of the essential-ness of the work we do (we do supply some products that could be critical during an emergency, but for the most part I'm not sure why we're still open) and more effort on the part of upper management to show us what, if anything, they themselves are sacrificing in order to keep the company afloat. I would like to be able to say I work for one of the companies that cares about its workers.

It's a pity I can't.

What Have They Done To The Durrells?

One of the best things my mother ever did for me was to introduce me to Gerald Durrell's writing. Durrell was a British naturalist who spent part of his childhood in the 1903s on Corfu with his mother and siblings. His books about that time (My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, and Fauna and Family) are hilarious, and I can remember knowing that my mother was reading one of his books when she could barely get through a paragraph without giggling. Despite seeing his brother Lawrence as a better writer, Gerry certainly knew how to hold a reader's attention.

When I stumbled across My Family and Other Animals, the 2005 movie based on his books, I was wary. Movie adaptations of books can sometimes go dreadfully awry, especially when one has grown up with a beloved set of books and has a fairly firm notion of what they ought to look like acted out. I was pleasantly surprised -- the movie trims down the story to fit the allotted time, but it does so with care and affection for both the characters and the general feel of the books. There are little bits of serious drama in with the wackiness, just to remind you that it's the '30s in Europe and bad things are happening, but for the most part, the movie keeps it light and fun, which is why it now sits in my DVD collection.

Today I discovered that there's been a more recent adaptation that's now on Amazon Prime Video -- a four-season series that, one would think, would really get into the details in the books and bring Gerry's wit to the fore.

No such luck, sadly. I'm a few episodes in, and it seems the producers have seen fit to turn it into a heart-wrenching drama rather than a light-hearted comedy. They're skipping a lot of the good bits, giving the characters far more flaws than they deserve, and the whole thing is feeling unhappy and rushed. It's rather like what Netflix did in Anne With An E -- taking a beloved childhood classic and making it dark and full of angst.

I'm going to stick with the series a bit longer in the hopes that it gets better, but I don't think I'd put money on it. I do want to know, with the writers skipping great chunks of the storyline, how they've filled four seasons from three books that they seem to be racing to bypass entirely. We shall see, I suppose.

RT

I was out to dinner with a friend tonight. As we were leaving the restaurant, she was complaining of some unusual abdominal pain that had been going on for several days, and as she's going through the list of possible causes, she says, "I hope I'm not pregnant -- I ain't ready for no kid!"

A young woman at a nearby table looks over and says, "gurl, retweet!"

I'm torn between feeling very, very old... and laughing my ass off.