I urge everyone to watch the new HBO Movie: Temple Grandin. It didn't sound that good from the movie description, but I'm really glad I watched it. It's a movie that tells of a mother who refused to have her little girl institutionalized, and how important family support is. It tells of how one woman's struggle with autism and the how she lived by the words, "Different but not less."
The movie is made so well, it really held my attention. I've read about autism before but this really helps you grasp what it's like for the autistic, and why the world around them frightens them so. They think in pictures, and then connect them, and the movie does this for the viewer occasionally, so you're really able to grasp the idea.
Temple has designed over 50% of American's slaughterhouses, they are built with the purpose that the animals should not be frightened, there's no need to brutalize, if done correctly. I'm not sure anyone else could have done this, she understood what the cattle were feeling and understood the details on why they were scared, and she was able to design a system that alleviated their fears. It worked for the cattleman too, who increased profits.
Talking to her old science teacher on why she wants to build a slaughterhouse, she says:
Of course they’re going to get slaughtered, you think we’d have cattle if people didn’t eat ’em every day? They’d just be funny-looking animals in zoos.
But we raise them for us. That means we owe them some respect. Nature is cruel, but we don’t have to be!”
Here's the trailer: