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Afterword

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering for some time.

Why the sudden rise in social-awkwardness, neurodiversity and, ultimately, involuntary celibates (incels)?

I’ve heard quite a few theories, ranging from the practical (past societies had fewer room for people to diverge from the norm, or for people to take advantage of being neurodivergent) to the horrific (people like that used to be shoved out to die, thus removing them from the gene pool).  None of those theories quite seem to explain it.  There were neurodivergents in the past – most of the great inventors and innovators were neurodivergent – and they wouldn’t have existed if neurodivergence had been eliminated completely.  It’s true, of course, that the vast majority of the pre-1900 population had little or no education and thus any neurodivergence might have passed unnoticed.  It’s also true that society was far less tolerant of those who stepped out of line, whoever they were.  But social change alone doesn’t seem to explain it.  What changed?  And why?

Here’s my theory.  I blame the schools.

There is no shortage of problems with modern-day education, practically all of which owe their existence to government policy and bureaucracy.  I could write an entire book on the horrors that result from a combination of incompetence, micromanaging and poor allocation of funds.  But, for the moment, I’m going to focus on a single aspect and how it interacts (badly) with neurodivergence.

The average child, in Britain, enters formal schooling – primary one – when he or she is somewhere around five years old.  There’s some room for manoeuvre, but not much.  He will complete the first year, then move on to primary two.  It is, at least in my experience, very rare for a child to be held back a year.  This – and the combination of ever-growing classes sizes – makes it difficult to make sure that all the children master all the skills they need before they jump up a level.  A child can therefore move onto primary two – and ever-upwards – without actually being ready for it.

This has two separate implications.  First, from an educational point of view, if you fail to master the basics you will be unable to grasp advanced material.  A student who cannot read is not going to be able to study on his own.  A student who cannot do basic maths will be unable to cope with more advanced maths.  He will start falling behind almost at once, no matter how hard he tries.  And yet, the bureaucracy will sort him by his age group rather than his educational aptitude.  Distant bureaucrats are unable to realise that kids learn at different paces, let alone sort the fast from the slow.  They let their preconceptions – and political correctness – blind them to the truth.

The second implication, however, is just as serious.  Some children are lucky enough to develop socially as they develop physically.  Others are not.  A child who lags behind his peers in social development – for example, figuring out the right or wrong thing to say in any given situation – is likely to be shunned by his fellows.  At best, he’ll be seen as the class clown (unfairly, given that he’s not trying for laughs); at worst, he’ll plummet right down to the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Now, this alone would not necessarily be a problem.  However, kids can be cruel.  Very cruel.  The kids in the middle of the social hierarchy tend to establish themselves by dumping on the kids at the bottom (i.e. bullying them).  This is a display of social insecurity, from an adult point of view, but the bottom kids don’t care.  They just want it to stop.  Worse, because they’re targeted by everyone, the rest of the kids don’t want to hang with them.  Of course not.  If you’re standing next to a target, you get targeted yourself.  And if you try to defend them, it just gets worse.  Kids learn, very quickly, that calling a bully out is useless. 

This tends to be true for adults too.  It’s harder to tackle a bully who happens to be popular and/or important to the school (the typical sports star, for example).  It’s a lot easier to pick on the victim, to blame him or her for being targeted.  One of the reasons so many kids books include the ‘adults are useless’ trope is because many adults are useless, when it comes to schooling kids.  They prefer not to intervene because it could come back to haunt them.

What does this mean?  Simple – if you’re popular, people will make exceptions for you.  You’ll never be called out for your mistakes and, even if you are, you won’t suffer for them.  You’ll learn, consciously or not, that you can get away with anything as long as you don’t really cross the line (an attitude that can come back to bite you when you enter the working world).  The unpopular kids, on the other hand, will be jumped on for anything and everything.  They’re seen as weak, unable to fight back.  They make easy targets.  This is part of a ladder of abuse rolling downhill, but they’re at the bottom.  There’s no one they can pick on. 

The target’s social development, therefore, is badly hampered.  However, he or she is still moved up the ladder with the rest of the age group.  They do not get a chance to retake the year with their social peers, but have to remain with their age peers.  This ensures that they are almost always stuck at the bottom, which – as they grow older and their hormones start humming – their development is always behind their peers.  They don’t understand the limits. They don’t comprehend mixed messages – or resent getting them.  By the time they master the in-jokes, they’re outdated.  And so on and so on and so on.

If you get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that social interaction is dangerous, you’ll do as little of it as possible.  You may even come to see it as a threat!  The person who asks you how you are, for example, may be making a honest enquiry, but your history tells you that it’s the prelude to more pain and humiliation.  You’ll say as little as possible, which will make you look stand-offish to people who don’t know you.  Or, alternatively, you’ll overcompensate.  You’ll be too friendly, too eager, too pushy … people will be creeped out, even though you think you’re doing the right thing.  You’ll misjudge a situation badly and wind up with egg on your face.

This can really mess someone up, particularly if they’re a little (or a lot) neurodivergent.  It’s very easy to become bitter and curdled, to give way to resentment and hatred of the popular kids.  It’s very easy to start blaming them for everything.  It’s very easy to look at the lies they tell, and how the rules are warped and twisted for the popular kids, and dismiss them as nothing more than nonsense.  If you can’t win, why bother to play?  And if you get a chance to take revenge, to lash out at the bullies, maybe you’ll take it.  Or maybe you’ll be too scared to take it and hate them even more, because you can’t fight back.  Indeed, one assessment of GamerGate was that nerds were finally fighting back against bullies.  This may not be true – I make no judgement, here – but resentment of bullies intruding into nerdy spaces certainly played a part.  One very cynical remark about incels noted that ‘bogeyman’ was actually a step up for them.  If they’re seen as dangerous, they might not be picked on quite so much.

The good news is that a lot of people grow out of it.  The real world is much kinder to the neurodivergent (particularly in fields where neurodivergence brings useful skills).  As people mature, as they grow used to adult bodies and lives, a lot of problems and old hatreds fade away.  The bad news is that not everyone grows out of it.  If they go to work in the wrong place, marry the wrong person (and so on and so on), they find themselves stuck in the bitter teenage mindset, the one that tells you that everyone else is to blame.

And, if you get hammered for a tiny mistake while others get away with far greater transgressions, because you’re an easy target and they’re not, you’ll find it hard to improve.

And this tends to lead to a descent into depression, isolation and – sometimes – incoherent violence.

What can be done about this?

Most suggestions I’ve heard are poor, in that they don’t tackle the underlying causes of the problem or impinge on other’s rights and freedoms.  They tend to be based more on what ought to be rather than what is.  Indeed, I don’t think there is a single solution that will fix everything.  Humans are social animals.  We want companionship.  But companionship isn’t something that can be forced.  You can’t pay someone to be your friend (well, yes you can, but the friend won’t stay with you when you run out of money). 

First, during basic education, we need to reduce class sizes.  It’s a lot harder for someone to slip through the cracks if the teacher has more time to work with them individually.  Linked to this, we need to be prepared to have low-performing kids repeat a year to give them another chance to master the basics rather than mindlessly advancing them up an increasingly-slippery ladder.

Second, we need to enforce the rules evenly.  The rules should be simple, easy to understand and enforced in all cases.  Nothing destroys the credibility of the law – or school/corporate rules – than having them unevenly enforced, or blatantly accepting different rules for different people.  There must be a clear understanding of what is wrong, a clear statement of the consequences and a willingness to enforce them, even if the person being punished is popular and/or important. 

Third, we need to be a great deal more tolerant of social faux pas.  People make mistakes all the time.  If you have a quiet word with someone who made a faux pas, they’ll be embarrassed but grateful you pointed it out; if you publically humiliate them, they’ll hate you with white hot fury for the rest of their life.  (If you do that, rest assured they’ll strike back if they find themselves in a position to do so.)   Linked to this, if someone really does step over the line, be prepared to justify your actions to people who will not automatically take your side.  If you act like a bully, people won’t give much credence to what you say even if you’re in the right.

And fourth, we need to stop engaging in what John Ringo called ‘Deflection in Abuse Syndrome.’  It’s tempting, if you get bullied or feel insecure (which leads to bullying), to stamp on the people below you, but it only fosters resentment and hated.  It certainly doesn’t convince people to like you.  Picking on the safe targets, the ones who can’t or won’t hit back, just makes you look like a coward.  People will hold you in contempt.

I don’t know if any of these ideas are practical, or if they’ll work if they were tried.  But I do know we have to try.

Christopher G. Nuttall

Edinburgh, 2020