(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Temple Grandin, the autistic professor, said non-visual learners could not possibly think like cows, as she could, and therefore were horribly handicapped in seeing the real world. Temple built her success largely on methods and means of handling livestock humanely and productively.
On the other hand visual learners were unable to receive the mysterious signals that normal people communicated to each other through some incomprehensible mechanism and had to rely on extensive learned memory banks to have any clue to a mysterious, illogical world of emotion.
Humpty Dumpty had it right, Alice.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
– Through the Looking Glass
A table set up on a sidewalk had copies of the Bill of Rights that passersby were asked to read.
“Propaganda by Karl Marx,” was the typical judgment.
In an earlier day, a tract condemning “rampant heterosexualism” found nearly unanimous agreement. I suspect us bent “straights” have made progress of a kind along with the none-bents but I know of no tests.
I somehow doubt cows think much like an Einstein or a Temple Grandin. Even they know a warmth of emotion prohibited to autistics but they also have a logic that escapes the herd of true believers fired up by words that somehow have an opposite meaning from their original intent – words like capitalism, socialism, democracy, race and – worst of all – the words of founders of the major religions of the day.
Best, Terry