millsworks

Temple Grandin talks at the recent TED conference about how the world needs all kinds of minds. Fascinating stuff.

We inevitably seek to shape, categorize, reform and alter the way our kids (and ourselves) think, behave and interact with the world. We do this because we want our kids (and ourselves) to be perceived as normal, to fit in, to be a part of the world instead of being apart from it.

I am all too aware of the role bipolar behaviour influences the arts. Autism, in all its many forms, has often been regarded as a strange dysfunction or aberration of the brain instead of as a possible evolutionary step for our species. Doubtless if the grand scientific minds of the 1800′s were to see how most of behave today we’d all be locked up in Bedlam.

While some forms of brain difference are manifestly disabling there are many many traits of the human mind that allow some of us to become an Einstein, Newton, Gould, Rainman, or even Temple Grandin.

I’m no flippin’ expert – I only have my own experience to bring to bear upon this – and I don’t want to go all Jerry Mander and Neil Postman on you but I suspect the rise in autistic symptoms within our younger population may indeed be in response to the overwhelming deluge of unmediated information. Unlike Postman and Mander, I don’t see this as a bad thing – it just is – and, as in times past, the brain will find a way to survive, to protect itself and ultimately thrive.

I don’t know. I just think she gave a really cool talk. Lemme go think about it.

Cheers.

P. S. Although Postman and Mander can come across as intensely pessimistic luddites they do have some good thoughts on the media cesspool we are drowning in. I remember reading Mander’s The Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television when I was working for Henson on Fraggle Rock. During a break in shooting I was half-in / half-out of this round foam blob creature that ate Doozers and poring through the pages when Jim asked me: “What are you reading?”. I gleefully held up the book and he snorted: “That’s a bit inflammatory, don’t you think?” to which I replied: “Not if you keep paying my salary!”

Anyway – there’s a really good piece by Mander that is more recent over at the Lapis Magazine site. It’s called The Homogenization Of Global Consciousness: Media, Telecommunications & Culture. Give it a read and then let me know how easy you sleep at night.

I’d really love to see him and Kevin Kelly go at it.