The first thing that you need
to know about the contest of this review is that it comes from a man who has
autism. Like Temple Grandin, who
came to speak at Drury March 3rd, I am on what is referred to as the
autism spectrum, specifically in the form of Asperger’s Syndrome. My official diagnosis only goes back
about three years, but I’ve learned a lot about autism since then and how it
has impacted, impacts, and will continue to impact my life. Ms. Grandin’s view of her own
experience with autism is far more positive than my own with my own, but, then
again, I’m an unemployed man who writes articles on the Internet and she’s the
most successful living person with autism. What she managed to do was use her particular unique mind
and perspective to make herself useful enough in the world to have a productive
functioning adult life.
Specifically, she figured out methods of dealing with cattle and other
herd animals that were simultaneously more humane and more efficient. That whole story is detailed both in
the books that she’s written in and the film Temple Grandin, about which I’ve
also written. As she tells it,
that innovation was based on the fact that she could think like a cow, but I
think using that ability for that purpose probably occurred to her because she
had lived a life where no one understood her perspective and forced her into
ways of doing things that didn’t make any sense to her.
Going to a convocation at Drury University
should’ve been a very simple matter for me since I attended that institution
for seven years of undergraduate and graduate work and once was assigned the
convocation series as my beat for The Mirror student newspaper. However, the event was held at The
O’Reilly Event Center, which didn’t even exist back in 2006 when I got
done. There was even an iron gate
you needed a code to access before you could get back into the area where it
was built. So it was I found my once
encyclopedic knowledge of the Drury campus limited by the passage of time in
much the same way my life is limited by my neurology. With this rather appropriate thought in mind, I attempted to
find a campus official who had offered to put me in the front row and the Faces
Of Autism people who I had been told wanted to photograph me. Both found me in time for the lecture
to begin.
Ms.
Grandin was rather more calm and accomplished in person than I’d imagined her
based on her depiction in the film, but then again she was being portrayed at
my age in that film and is now my mother’s age. Clearly this public speaking thing is something she’s been
doing for a long time and is quite proficient at. No matter what though, she’s still autistic, and there was a
moment with the interpreter for the deaf where Ms. Grandin bluntly asked her to
move out of both her normal and peripheral vision because the movement was
distracting. She was careful to
explain why she was demanding this and what exactly about that rapid movement
in her field of vision was so distracting, but she was also very
insistent. It really set the tone
for her whole deeply honest perspective on autism, because it was about both
clearly communicating and steadfastly insisting upon what you need to function
as an autistic. Later, she spoke
of things like children with sensitivity to sound, and how it’s important to
understand that it really does hurt some children’s ears when loud noises
happen. This actually plagues me
to this day, making things like rock concerts, nightclubs, loud bars, and
athletic events (especially basketball game buzzers, which I would literally
hide under my seat from with my coat over my head as a child) completely beyond
my capacity to enjoy. There was
also a lot of talk about the advantages of an autistic mind, such as the
ability to think logically without the interference of emotion. In fact, Ms. Grandin cited this ability
as why she would not become neurologically typical if she could, viewing the
way neurotypicals think and behave as mushy, inefficient, and lacking attention
to detail. Obsessive interests, a
defining trait of autism, was also discussed at length and she made the
imminently reasonable point that, given that obsessions are inevitable with
autistic minds, it behooves parents of autistic children, as well as such
children’s teachers, to turn that obsessive interest to useful and productive
things. As a kid, my own obsessive interests were both healthy, as was the case
with reading and popular culture (Yes, I count that as healthy and nuts to you
if you don’t like it.), and unhealthy, as was the case with girls I liked who
did not like me or with specific favorite junk foods, so I can certainly tell
you from personal experience that harnessing that obsessive nature is every bit
as crucial as Ms. Grandin indicates to autistic children becoming successful
autistic adults. When it comes to
becoming productive adults, she also seems to favor vocational training that
allows autistics to develop skills that will allow them to be employed despite
whatever social difficulties might’ve been thrust upon them by their
neurology. Without seeing the film
based upon her life, the most surprising thing about Temple Grandin I would’ve
learned during the convocation would’ve been her attitude towards animals. Unlike nearly all animal rights
activists I’ve ever known, she has a good grasp of the realities of nature and
difficult it would be for humankind to equal the cruelty of a pack of
wolves. Certainly, if I were a cow
I’d favor Tyson’s slaughterhouses to anything in the wild if I had to choose
the manner of my end. Neither does
she have any truck with vegetarianism, saying that she needs a lot of protein
in her breakfast to start her day anywhere near properly. However, all of this just makes the
overall concept behind her revolutionizing of half the cattle industry, which
is that nature is cruel but we humans don’t have to be, all the more
powerful. Something about the fact
that she’s proven that more humane methods of handling cattle nearly always end
up producing product that is better in quality, produced more efficiently, and
results in a safer working environment for the humans involved the process
themselves lends credence to her more traditional animal rights pronouncement
that animals are owed our respect.
-Frank
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