TED talk on autism.
Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, talks about how her mind works -- sharing her ability to "think in pictures," which helps her solve problems that neurotypical brains might miss. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids.
They seem to have listened to us, and removed that big bang of noise which used to open the TED videos. Good.
Seems there's a movie about Temple, starring Claire Danes.
She talks for instance about sensory sensitivity. I have a lot of that, every sensory input, touch and sound especially, are very intense for me, and often a problem.
She touches on something I've long considered important: that children should not be kept from working. Sure, they should not slave for 18 hours for others' profit, but to keep them from work totally may damage their life, because then they can't handle it when they are suddenly dropped into it as adults, and additionally if they work they will have a great boost in self-worth when they produce something and earn their own money.
To work and study til 20 and work for the rest is nuts, I think we should play and study and work all the way from childhood til death or incapability.
8 comments:
That was very interesting. Although I have heard of her I have not seen any of her talks or read her book. Until seeing this video I hadn't known that a movie about her had been made.
There were a couple of things she said which I disagree with, or which at least can't be proved. Diagnosing people long dead is something not even a trained and experienced psychologist or psychiatrist can do, so it's impossible to say that Einstein or Mozart or Tesla were autistic. Even though Tesla had the ability to think in pictures, according to him being able to see his inventions running in his mind and making changes there before ever building them, I'm not sure that based on his life he exhibited many or even any other autistic traits. I have only his own autobiography to go on. I know that she is not saying any of them were severely autistic, she probably just meant that they would have been more toward the high function end of the spectrum. Mozart I really can't see either. Einstein, maybe, especially since he was something like four years old before he started talking. It's just not possible to do a diagnosis on someone no longer even alive. We just don't know. Someone else once suggested Michelangelo as a possible autistic.
I also don't agree that people would still socializing in front of a fire in a cave without the autistic spectrum people, that it was they who made the discoveries that elevated us step by step. There have been plenty of geniuses who have not been autistic, even slightly. Genius and autism don't necessarily go together. I can see why as an autistic she would rather this was the case.
They seem to have listened to us, and removed that big bang of noise which used to open the TED videos. Good.
Yes, that was very annoying. Now just get someone to take the THX noise out of movies.
Seems there's a movie about Temple, staring Claire Danes.
An HBO movie it seems. I guess they probably thought it wouldn't have had enough appeal to released in theaters. I don't know. I'm definitely going to check that out.
She talks for instance about sensory sensitivity. I have a lot of that, every sensory input, touch and sound especially, are very intense for me, and often a problem.
As far as I know I'm not even slightly autistic but when I was a kid I had an extreme sensitivity to light. Not sound or anything else, just light. I appear to have mostly outgrown it.
She touches on something I've long considered important: that children should not be kept from working....work all the way from childhood til death or incapability.
Play is a kid's work, but most also are forced to do chores around the house. Cleaning their room, doing dishes, taking out the garbage. When you get older, you get something else - for example I delivered flyers and later newspapers from the age of 10 until able to get a McJob at 15. I think she is talking about getting them into doing things that are a bit more interesting. You might like to read " Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" by John Elder Robison. When he was in high school he was in the AV club and got started in electronics by repairing projectors and tape decks and stuff like that. Later he went on to design their firebreathing rocket launching guitars and later worked for some toy company designing electronic games. That kind of work, not the kind of mind-numbing, soul crushing kind of work most people end up doing. I can see your attitude being a bit different if you had to work a job like that, instead of doing something you like which pays well and doesn't involve physical labor. Being lucky enough to do something you love is great but most people don't get to do that. Until we have robots being our garbage men and mailmen, we're going to have to have people do those jobs and I don't there are very many who get much out of grunt jobs like those.
I was looking forward to this one generating a bit more interest.
I just finished watching the movie. It was great. You can barely recognize Danes, but it's not just looks, she gets the voice exact too and her acting is superb. She's totally convincing.
Yes, I saw the trailer, it was an outstanding transformation.
I think we should play and study and work all the way from childhood til death or incapability.
If you had a real job you wouldn't think so. Also people have to spend enough of their lives working, don't ruin childhood for them.
Maybe you don't *have* to hate your job.
Also if people didn't have to pay everything for their children for 20 years, and for 30 years of retirement, work might be a lot easier.
Maybe you don't *have* to hate your job.
If you do hate it, most likely it's because you've ended up in something you didn't like because you didn't push yourself hard enough. Not always the case, but sometimes. I doubt garbage man is the first choice of very many. Then again, there are some miserable surgeons, lawyers, pilots, etc., so who knows? Some people would be very happy with a factory job while some would think it was a pretty crappy job.
"a movie about Temple, staring Claire Danes"
Freudian slip about that VISUAL thinker? :-)
One of the things I dislike most about my here country, is people's almost-universal reaction to those who are different (I think "different" is a more adequate and less maudlin word than "special"), especially the intellectually-challenged such as trisomics: a gut reaction of primal aggressiveness and hurtful mockery, revealing an unsettling haphazard blend of fear and hostility. Whether this is to what they don't understand, to those different from themselves, or plain pathetic bullying from people vaguely aware of their own lameness, I couldn't tell. But it's something extremely common.
As is the sight of a group of children taunting a quiet dog that's tied by its leash.
While several people I meet like to flatter me by calling me a "genius" (I *am* a notable lateral thinker, and local vocabulary can lack more objective terms...), one moron I once worked with insisted on nicknaming me "handicapped", with the message being very clear. I finally had to publicly humiliate him with my wits. I deeply resented the word, not for myself (only the truth hurts), but for all the mentally challenged victims he was likely to hurt with the same attitude. So after a month of patience I opted to give him a memorable lesson.
I would lie if I claimed there wasn't a small part of payback satisfaction in "blackening his face". (Local expression.)
"I yams what I yams, and dat's all dat I yams."
I once spent an internship in Pediatry. One of the girl Residents there had to admit her younger brother for I forget what problem. The boy was 13, but admitted in Pediatry because he was a severe trisomic, therefore basically a big child. I very much liked how his sister was NOT ashamed of having such a brother (as could genuinely be expected in Lebanon. :-( ), and how EVERYBODY, not just me, was completely tactful about it. (Myself, the boy seemed to sense I was positive to him, and we traded a few friendly words.)
Maybe there IS some hope for this country still. At least from its elites.
Elites... so sad, to realize you're one of those, for the sole reason that you're not hopelessly primitive... "In the kingdom of the blind..."
Trisomics are among the most intrinsically harmless individuals I know. And yet they're also among the most bullied. :-(
"Harry, to know a person's truth, look not at how they behave with their peers, but with those underneath them." -- (Albus Dumbledore, in Harry Potter book #4)
We have a national NGO dedicated to supporting the intellectually handicapped, it's called Sesobel. Its logo: two lit candles, one broken in the middle, leaning on the other one. Touching symbol.
Just ran into this interesting post. It mentions an intriguing book, as well. (Dang! Too bad they don't have a Kindle version of that; I would have liked to have gotten that!)
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