We Are Very Good at Finding Villains
We are very good at finding villains. Numbers rise and we panic. Something becomes visible and we hunt for a cause. Something feels unfamiliar and we decide it must be dangerous. Blame is faster than curiosity. Blame is metabolically efficient.
I treat a lot of autistic people. Children who line up their Legos by color and get scolded for it. Teenagers who memorize train schedules and are told to “broaden their interests.” Adults who can dismantle complex systems but freeze in small talk and quietly assume they are defective. Parents who sit in my office wondering what they did wrong.
I can list diagnostic criteria without looking. Eye contact. Restricted interests. Developmental history. But lately I care less about the checklist and more about the experience. What does it feel like to walk into a grocery store where fluorescent lights hum like electricity in your skull? What does it feel like to sit in a classroom where everyone else seems to understand rules no one explains? What does it feel like to be intelligent and still feel slightly misaligned every day?
I do not live inside that nervous system. But I can imagine it.
Empathy is not mystical. It is ordinary equipment. And yet it feels scarce.
Categories Are Tidy. Humans Are Not.
There’s a line often attributed to Stephen Shore (autistic professor and advocate): “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”¹ It’s a sentence that should slow us down. Instead, we prefer categories. They are tidy. They relieve us of nuance.
In the early 1900s, about 2–3% of Americans identified as left-handed². Teachers corrected them. Rulers. Shame. Hands tied behind backs.
• Early 20th century reported left-handedness: ~2–3%²
• Post-1950s, after punishment decreased: ~10–12%²
The genome did not shift. The ruler disappeared.
Picture that classroom. A child reaches for a pencil with his left hand. Crack. “Use the right one.” Try again. Crack. Eventually he learns. We look back and feel embarrassed for them. How certain they were. How confident. How wrong.
The child was never defective. He was inconvenient.
Visibility Is Not Contagion
Autism identification among 8-year-olds shifted from about 1 in 150 in 2000 to roughly 1 in 31 in 2022³.
• Autism prevalence, 2000: ~1 in 150³
• Autism prevalence, 2022: ~1 in 31³
• DSM-5 broadened criteria: 2013⁴
Nearly fivefold. Screening improved. Criteria broadened. Girls and historically overlooked groups are recognized more often³⁴. And immediately the word appears: epidemic. As though visibility were contagion.
As Albert Einstein (physicist whose name we invoke when we want to sound intelligent) said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”⁵ We changed how we treat left-handed children. That was intelligence.
Catastrophe Travels Faster Than Nuance
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described autism as catastrophic and suggested autistic people won’t play baseball, won’t date, won’t work, won’t pay taxes⁶ (my emphasis), I felt something tighten. He went further, suggesting acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy as cause⁷.
On that same day, I saw a young woman elected valedictorian. Top grades. Sports. Volunteer work. Leadership.
She is autistic.
Two narratives. Same day.
As Tig Notaro (comedian who once opened a set by calmly announcing, “Hello. I have cancer.”⁸) demonstrated, a diagnosis does not flatten a person. As Samantha Bee (political satirist) once said, “It’s not even a good dystopia.”⁹ Catastrophe spreads faster than nuance because catastrophe is louder.
The Performance Problem
Employment rate for U.S. adults with disabilities: about 22%. For adults without disabilities: about 65%¹⁰.
• Employment gap: ~43 percentage points¹⁰
That gap is not TikTok. It is design. Walk into a hiring process built around rapid eye contact and fluid small talk. Imagine your strengths are pattern recognition, sustained focus, precision, honesty.
Which traits win?
As Larry David (comedian and patron saint of social discomfort) once said, “I don’t like to be forced into anything.”¹¹ Many neurodivergent people are not resisting work. They are resisting performance.
The Question I Don’t Love Asking
There is a question I do not love asking myself. Am I helping someone with medication operate more efficiently in a world that does not accept them?
Medication can reduce suffering. It can improve executive function. It can make school survivable. But it cannot redesign the classroom. If the classroom punishes the left hand, do we medicate the child — or remove the ruler?
Autism was described in medical literature in 1943¹². ADHD-like symptoms were described in 1902¹³.
• First formal autism description: 1943¹²
• ADHD-like symptoms described: 1902¹³
These nervous systems are not new. What is new is visibility. What is new is volume. What is new is how quickly we move from curiosity to blame.
As David Byrne (musician and professional observer of human strangeness) once said, “We’re all just trying to make sense of the world.”¹⁴ Some of us do that by listening. Some of us do it by assigning villains.
The Ruler in Our Hands
We used to punish left-handed children with rulers. We now call that absurd.
One day, we may look back at parts of this moment and feel that same heat of embarrassment.
The question is not whether difference exists. The question is whether we can see the ruler while we’re still holding it.
Blame promises clarity. Fad promises simplicity. Sensitivity asks for empathy.
We prefer villains. We distrust nuance. We fear complexity.
That is not new. It is human.
Leave a comment. Smash the like button. Watch my videos on YouTube (HLevine).
If you are in Boulder, stop by. I do not have a villain. But I have cookies. If we cannot sit across from one another long enough to eat one in peace, we were never as evolved as we thought.
Footnotes
- Shore, S. (2003). Beyond the Wall: Personal Experiences with Autism and Asperger Syndrome.
- McManus, I. C. (2009). The history and geography of human handedness.
- CDC Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (2023). MMWR Surveillance Summary.
- American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.
- Einstein quotation, widely attributed.
- Public remarks by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 2025.
- Public statements linking acetaminophen exposure and autism, 2025.
- Tig Notaro, Largo performance (2012).
- Samantha Bee commentary.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024). Persons with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics.
- Larry David interview quotation.
- Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact.
- Still, G. F. (1902). Some abnormal psychical conditions in children.
- David Byrne interview commentary.
