I usually ride the train to work, which affords me the opportunity to surf the internet on my iPhone.  Recently, the combination of Wikipedia and YouTube led me to an hour and a half lecture by Dr. Temple Grandin. Grandin is a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and one of the foremost authorities on the humane treatment of livestock.  She was diagnosed at age two with high-functioning autism and didn't speak until age four.  Grandin has called for the societal acceptance and nurturing of autism as a different and valuable mode of cognition, rather than a disease that must be eradicated. 

Grandin describes herself as a primarily visual thinker: for her, language is like a second language.  Nevertheless, her ability to cut to the chase and lucidly advocate a nuanced, middle position on several issues is worth explicating. 

First, her views on animal rights:  As Grandin argues in her essay, Animals are not things:

Animals can be property and still have many laws and other protections to ensure their welfare. Changing language-based concepts like property are only important to animals if changes in rhetoric cause people to treat animals better.

Accordingly, to ensure humane treatment of animals, fear and pain must be minimized.  The efforts which this requires vary considerably as one goes up the phylogenetic tree.  As Grandin explains, for laboratory mice, this might be as simple as providing material for burrows and social interaction, but for chimpanzees kept at zoos, humane treatment requires larger habitats, much more social interaction and stimulus. 

Dr. Grandin's views on autism are similarly sober and refreshing: she sees autism as an extremely variable disorder, advocates early intervention and structured learning, and suggests unique treatment on a case-by-case basis.  Grandin also stresses the importance of parents to encourage activities in which their child shows an interest, whether that child is autistic or not.  Grandin further emphasizes the importance for people with autism to find an occupation which society values, such as computer programming, facility design, or library work. 

She has described autistic traits as on a continuous spectrum and distributed throughout the genepool, varying from individual to individual, and with no clear cut-off point for who's autistic and who isn't.  On the role of autism in human history, she has famously said, "if by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave."

Finally, Dr. Grandin's perception of societal rules: she classifies the rules of society into four catagories: (1) Really Bad Things, in which Grandin includes murder, arson, property destruction, stealing, etc.; (2) Courtesy Rules, which she declares "help society to get along" and in which she includes manners; (3) Illegal But Not Bad, in which Grandin includes bureaucratic regulations and other mandates which have no basis in logic, and which are okay to break sometimes; and (4) Sins of the System, in which rules particular to culture, such as drug offenses in the United States, are included.  Grandin then goes on to discuss the absurdity of serving longer prison sentences for breaking a rule in the fourth category than for breaking a rule in the first, but mentions that autistic children especially - who might have trouble grasping many of these rules, thereby resulting in behavioral problems with potentially disastrous consequences - must be given a firm, structured education in them.

Grandin describes herself as primarily a visual thinker who struggles with listening comprehension as well as non-verbal communication.  She was the subject of Oliver Sacks's book, An Anthropologist on Mars.  And, like a skilled anthropologist impartially observing the human race, Grandin provides a clear perspective on the foundations of society.  Her nuanced and well-articulated viewpoints suggest a refined indifference to the rabble of the incoherent masses and an emphasis on quality of argument rather than on the social status of who is making it.