Temple Grandin

Post Reply New Topic

lau, I think Bethie might be suggesting that anyone involved with the livestock industry is essentially an accomplice to murder. She seems to feel that it's wrong to eat them, period, so rather than make their lives more humane, the system should be abolished.

Personally, I think there are certainly some ethical questions, as to whether I should or should not eat meat. I found The Mind's I very thought-provoking.

Given that the majority of the world don't really care, and will eat meat regardless, for the immediately foreseeable future, I would prefer that slaughterhouses employed Temple Grandin's insights, to make the animals last aware moments as untroubled as possible.

Making disparaging remarks about Temple Grandin is no way to abolish the industry required by the majority of people on this planet. Or rather, it is no way to abolish all those people who eat meat, and hence require the existence of the livestock industry in the first place.

If Bethie were to assure me that she does not eat meat - or indeed, cause the termination of the existence of anything which may be considered to have any form of life (whatever that means), then I might be willing to allow her remarks to stand unchallenged.

I think that she has a personality, all her own, just like we all have our own unique personalities. She' a very successful lady, and she's shown the world, on her own terms, that people with autism, can acheive anything, that they put their minds to.

That joke comes from her remark that she is a like an anthropologist on Mars...

I greatly admire Temple Grandin. I think she deserves the utmost respect for the work she has done in her writings and lectures on autism, and in her work in the livestock industry. In my opinion she is incredible. Well...that's my opinion.

There is more to the ethics of eating meat than humane handling and slaughter. Every kilo of meat requires X amounts of grain or plant matter to produce and every kilo of grain needs at least 100 kilos of water during the growing season. And there is the question of nitrate pollution and pesticides.

I think it is time for Dr. Grandin and her students to be researching better ways of animal husbandry and more sustainable waste management.(ie bio-fuels)

That may be a very worthy pursuit, but Temple Grandin understands animal behavior, not the fancy chemistry behind biofuels. As well suggest that rather than adopt children from China you should run for public office. Both are noble callings, and the same people are not qualified to do both.

There have been other specialist in animal behavior such as biologist & ethologist John Todd who founded the New Alchemy Institute. Just because Dr. Grandin specializes in animal behavior doesn't mean she is less than competent in other disciplines. And I did mention "her students".

More info about New Alchemy and Ocean Arks International can be found at these sites:
http://www.thegreencenter.net/
http://www.oceanarks.org/

Given that by her own admission she does her work by empathizing with animals, I don't see how she could succeed in a field that wasn't, to some degree, about psychology.

I am a huge fan of Temple Grandin and have read all of her books. She is such a phenomenal and inspirational individual, in every sense of the word. As a veggie, I feel that what she has done for the livestock industry is so admirable...we can't force people to stop eating meat, but we can stop the pain and suffering of the animals involved by considering their perspectives.

I also will be speaking on a panel alongside her in two months, and couldn't be any more excited!

i would suggest that the philosophical beef bethie has with t.g. is very simple to understand. bethie thinks of a world she and i and many others wished existed. t.g. lives in the world that is. i assume she would love bethie's world, since cows are her favorite lifeform, but knows that world is an impossibility.

i ask friend bethie to think this through. humans are going to raise, kill and eat cows. no way that will not happen. you or i or any human cannot change this fact. t.g. has helped change the life of some of these cows for the better. she has the ability to deal with the scumbags who operate factory farms/slaughterhouses without spitting in their faces or stabbing them or?. i could not. i think you could not. without her, cows get treated much worse. what if ingrid newkirk tried to do her job. she'd end up as somebody's steak. there is no alternative to what she does.

maybe you have too much faith in human's. i have very little. you are aware that animal people are but what...5%,
7% of the general population. at the most. you live in the hometown of kfc, what do you think? i once participated in a protest in lexington with peta sponsorship. at the gap. over leather. i was the only one who showed up besides
the two from virginia. we were screamed at, spit at, had cans thrown at etc. that's the real world.

as i write this, louie, my companion animal, has just suffered a stroke (wednesday morning). he has had the best care available. he will get better or he will not. he is about 15, has lived with me for close to 11 years and has taught me the meaning of love. he was a bait dog, owned by some redneck hillbillies in eastern ky. what they did to him is hard to think about. i want to %&*# them. the police in e. ky. do not care. there are 120 counties in ky and dog fighting occurs in every one. a county close to lexington has an arena, seating thousands, built especially for cock fighting. families attend. it is sickening. police attend. if louie dies, i may think about payback. i am old and gimpy and alone....so why not. if it's not possible to stop this kind of crap, how is it possible to help cows at slaughterhouses? only in the way temple grandin does it. honest bethie.....it is the truth.











5

I have just finished watching Temple's HBO biography twice, and I believe you are quite correct: Temple Grandin has her very own personality just as surely as we each have our own ... and I would also say her overall "success in life" is greatly dependent upon her having never lost that. Her mother had so wisely declined a doctor's suggestion of institutionalization early on, then "pushed" Temple (according to Temple) toward ultimate "self-sufficiency".

For anyone who might not know this: Renting a disk -- I got mine from NetFlix -- to watch that movie will give you the option of watching it while Temple and two or three of the people who produced the movie all talk alongside ... kind of like all of us sitting there watching it together. I watched it that way the first time through, then turned the narration off and watched it just as a movie ... and now my wife is watching it with the narration back on since she was not here when I had done that.

Overall, pretty neat.

Oh, and that movie is definitely not *any* kind of statement either way about whether or not people should harvest meat ...

... and anyone who might come away from that movie thinking about that has somehow managed to miss it altogether!

Best line in the movie?

Temple's mother speaking to the teacher who became Temple's mentor: "Different, but not less."

I have her books and love her perspective on how animals act since i'm closely connected to them and yes she does make the cows life a bit better because she understands their behavior so that when their end does come they wont be as traumatized.

I think she's awesome. She is a great role model for those on the autistic spectrum, and she is a living testimony to parents that their kids on the spectrum could make it even further than they even expected them to. Temple Grandin grew up in the days when anyone with any form of autism was automatically dubbed as needing institutionalization, and yet she proved all of the "experts" of her day wrong. She is a powerful role model and spokeswoman for those on the autistic spectrum, as well as just women in general (as it was difficult going into her line of work as a woman, much less a woman with autism). I disagree that Temple Grandin is a "curebie". She has dubbed her autism as vital to her success, and she helps NTs see that those with autism have made profound impacts to their fields of study, rather than just assuming that they're good-for-nothing and should just wipe them off the face of the earth. Also, if you haven't seen her movie yet, you should see it. It's a very inspiring story.

Just saw her yesterday at a lecture on the Colorado State University campus!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! ! Needless to say, it was AWESOME!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! It was really cool to watch how she handled some very emotional questions about autism with understanding and with the realization that a lot of people view her as a resource and inspiration. She enjoys sharing her experiences & it's cool to see her advocate for teachers and employers learning and accepting the way people with autism think & the challenges we have!

I think sometimes Temple oversimplifies things in ways both favorable and
unfavorable to autistics, but of course, concrete thinking IS core to
autism. In an article on the autism rights movement by New York Magazine, for example, she talks about preventing
some autistic people whereas she sometimes makes it seem like everyone in
Silicon Valley is on the spectrum (higher tendency, but not true, and many
smart autistic people don't like or are not good with technology).


Maybe Temple doesn't realize that if the genetics of people with different
"forms" of autism are ever understood, it's still most likely that the first
test(s) will be offered when people still couldn't discriminate between
"severe" and "high-functioning" autism reliably (if this is even a worthy
goal for society). I think non-verbal autistic people with particularly
challenging behaviors tend to be very difficult to understand and parent,
but are often much smarter and more competent than people realize, but need
appropriate social and research attention for people to see their abilities.

Temple herself didn't speak until age 4 or so and stared sometimes at
grains of sand for hours or otherwise shut out the world because of sensory
issues. Certainly without the right support and perseverance from her mother
Temple would not only have not developed into a leader in the animal
husandry and autism fields, but also would have been institutionalized. I
think, in sometimes less dramatic ways, many other autistic people are not
provided with the opportunities they need, and even though a minority may
have intellectual disabilities (whether core to or co-occurring with their
autism), I don't think that means people have less value and dignity.
Usually the "behaviors" result from sensory, motor, or communication
challenges, or some combination thereof, rather than enjoying them for their
own sake (and if someone seems to get reinforcement for the behaviors, that
does not mean they are "natural" for the person, but it may relate to the
responses they get and how they are treated).