杰克认为，真正的自闭症是对公众努力的最后分析。这是一个私人存在，好像个体是所有价值的创造者，而不仅仅是继承价值的存储库。杰克·博伦（Jack Bohlen）为他的生命而言，无法接受公立学校的教学机器，这是什么是什么和没有价值的唯一仲裁者。因为一个社会的价值观是不断的通量，公立学校是试图稳定这些价值观，以固定点的固定点使它们陷入困境。
(True autism, Jack had decided, was in the last analysis an apathy toward public endeavor; it was a private existence carried on as if the individual person were the creator of all value, rather than merely the repository of inherited values. And Jack Bohlen, for the life of him, could not accept the Public School with its teaching machines as the sole arbiter of what was and what wasn't of value. For the values of a society were in ceaseless flux, and the Public School was an attempt to stabilize those values, to jell them at a fixed point-to embalm them.)