Explaining the "bigger things" feelings

Hi again, especially the young readers :-)

You know how some people will tell you that it doesn't really hurt the lobster to cook it live in boiling water? The reason that they give is that the water is heated so gradually that the cold water living lobster is kind of lulled into unconsciousness, which may be true. I mention this not to bum out animal lovers (though lobsters are pretty tough in turn on their prey, you might know, using those big claws to rip apart live something it wants to eat!) I want you to just think about the analogy of gradually warming up a cold water organism until it is lulled into being dead.

The lobster lives in cold water (except for the warm water ones, yeah, I know, just work with me on the analogy!) So the cold water lobster evolved to fit perfectly into that ecological niche.

Likewise, humans evolved over millions of years to fill their niche. Humans have a few great advantages over cold water lobsters. Humans live in hot, cold and in between climates. Humans are omnivores (can eat plant or animal material). So humans are flexible. And they have big brains so they have great capacity for learning. But when you think about how successful human beings have been, thriving even through natural disasters, disease, famines, poverty, until the one billion population mark was achieved, and then as humans are now at six billion, you have to think over the millions of years of history about a fundamental anti-survival change that humans have embraced... embraced just the way that cold water lobsters might think that a little warming up is just fine... until it's too late. That problem is the over-stimulation of the human brain by false information.

Humans are successful up to today because they were totally reality based. Babies, whether rich or poor, lived in a simpler reality based world, where reality was introduced to them exactly in pace to how their brains developed.

But with the invention of television, we have a tremendous problem with humans, where it is at that point that the cold water lobster is in the pot and getting the first lulling heat.

Babies and toddlers should not even see a television screen, let alone view it, at ALL. Why is that? I've blogged about this before but am giving it to you in context of the title of this blogging, which I'll explain in a minute. But the problem is that baby brain development, which has been very thoroughly studied and is well understood, is entirely focused on understanding that the baby is a "self," that mom and dad and other people are "others," and that the world is reliable, safe, ordered and logical. The classic crucial phase of an infant's brain development, for example, is when babies first understand that when mom or dad leave the room, it is not "forever," that they are not "gone" and they will be back. You can read wonderful psychology literature on this subject.

So here is the problem. Exactly when babies need to comprehend the crucial realities of themselves and the world around them, in modern times they view rapidity and falseness of images that they cannot possibly understand, no matter how "benign." So this is true of everything, from cartoons to "educational" material. Babies and small infants absolutely should not even face a TV set that is turned on, not even for a short time. Remembering what I explained that babies first sense of self and other comes from understanding that mom and dad leave the room, but still "exist" and will come back, think about how a baby is affected, how YOU all were affected, when you, as just about everyone of the past two generations have, saw TV images as an infant or toddler. All television IS is the representation of the rapid fire unreal of things that go away and don't come back. At exactly the time babies need quiet singular development, they get a multitude of false overstimulating images that undermine the development of the proportionality and confidence circuitry that they are supposed to be forming.

This is one huge reason why the past several generations are 1) over stimulated 2) lack confidence in relationships even though they are raised in the most secure circumstances that humans ever had 3) keep feeling "alienated" and "cut off" or "special" 4) mark my words, autism is part of this problem 5) obsess about having super hero powers, origins, aliens, a "greater purpose" and hence as I say in my title, the feelings of "bigger things."

Babies and toddlers have been inadvertently messed up in their circuitry by exposure to TV, no matter how short the exposure or how benign the presumed programming. It is NOT a survival trait and in fact it is an anti-survival trait to allow babies or toddlers to even observe the TV programming when it is on: I argue they should not even be in the room. People need to copy what millions of years of successful human beings thriving did right, no matter the culture, no matter the social class, which is to allow their infants and toddlers to grow up in reality of the natural, family and community world at their pace of brain development, and not be exposed to the artificial and hence confusing rapid fire of the unreality of television images.

The residue of having one's infant brain circuits interfered with by television during their natural development is that feeling that reality is unreal, and that there is a "something else out there," which is actually false. Read that again and think about it because it is really scary and I've watched it develop throughout my lifetime. Because of television and infants and toddlers being allowed to view ANY of it, children, young people, adults and some of the aging of this generation have a troubling partial swap in their brains. They have the feeling that genuine reality feels "unreal" often or some of the time, while they yearn in a creepy way for "reality" that is actually a false and inflated delusion, that comes from misunderstanding the ephemera of television when their brains were developing. This makes the argument about if TV violence causes violence in children (and it does) dwarfed in urgency, because I'm explaining that the foundation of infant and toddler brain development is distorted and skewed from the very beginning due to any exposure at all to TV. If I had an infant or toddler I would not allow him or her to be in a room with the TV on at ALL EVER.

Think about orphanages in poor countries where kids are left alone, often with their cribs turned toward the TV, for "company." I know someone who was abandoned and left in her crib as a toddler facing a TV set in a developing country, and I watched the effects of that, and other abandonment trauma, play out in her life and it was painful, painful, painful. Babies and toddlers, whether in a terrible situation such as abandonment, or in a loving and well provided home, cannot comprehend the over stimulation and ephemera of TV images and it destroys the God given and natural biological phased development of the confident and well paced brain.

I could go into more of the biology and the psychological consequences, but to make one point that you all can think about, I really want to stick with the topic of the feelings of "bigger things."

Before these modern times, people simply did not wonder all the time "why they are there," and "don't I have a 'bigger purpose' or 'destiny' in life" or "we must be from aliens or goddesses," etc. Now before you jump on me, sure, there were religions where people believe they descended from gods, or from other worlds (though they did not know about planets at the time) etc. It is one thing for a society to have a religion that supposes a "bigger thing" type of destiny or origin. But it is entirely a new phenomenon for individuals to be obsessed, overcome by, troubled by, over stimulated by, elated by, or deluded by those feelings on a personal level. Being poor and living in a subsistence pre-TV economy, no matter where in the world, gave all humans a huge survival advantage, which was they were 1) reality based and 2) their children developed rapidly but apace with reality and genuinely beneficial brain development. All children had the advantage of being raised in a household that may be poor, impoverished, or even abusive and dire, but they were not further confused by over stimulation of false images, which is television.

Those of us who read the classics know about the almost stereotyped character of the "clever waif," the "street smart kid." Whether in England or India, the clever and resourceful waif is a recurring theme in literature because that was reality. You of course still see this today in developing countries, but much less so. Why? Well, so much of the clever waif's success, presented in literature but based on much reality, was due to being entirely reality based. Waifs were raised so their brains developed in accordance with reality. What is the street smart kid like today? The "clever waif" of today? Entirely a media creation, looking for his or her cues from the false world they have seen from the cradle, and they genuinely view that as reality. They have that swap I mentioned above, as do their parents and their teachers.

This is why, to bring it back to religion and faith, the "swap" I mentioned above can be observed as such. Reality is viewed as unreal ("I don't believe the Bible because it's just all made up stuff) while unreality is viewed as real ("I think that I was personally destined to save the world and be a superhero"). Young people and adults and their teachers are far more willing to believe (especially if their egos are stroked) the most unbelievable proof lacking stuff and garbage, while they will reject without even examining reality that boring but truthful old men carefully penned onto parchments so that their future generations will know what really happened. I mean, if you think about it, it's mindboggling. MUCH of this comes from babies and infants being exposed to seeing television screens with content, regardless of the supposed benefit or benign nature of the actual show.

A baby's brain cannot understand a cute puppy galloping off the TV screen and disappearing. A baby can understand a real puppy that gallops across the kitchen floor and disappears through the door to the living room... where either baby can follow or the actual puppy returns.

The exposure of babies and toddlers to TV has been suicidal and totally insane for that reason alone, say nothing of the other factors we all know about (violence, couch potato, no longer reads, watches too mature content, sees bad examples, etc). The damage is already done in a much more fundamental level. The past two generations watched cute puppies gallop across a TV screen and not understand what it is, instead of watching only the cute puppy, or cat, or chicken, or fish in the fish tank move across the room and out of view, but it is still real and alive, just like mom and dad. The brains of humans were not meant to be given crossed signals of artificial media while they are still under development as babies and toddlers.

Be horrified. I am and have been all my life, as I've known about this problem all along. People listen to me for all the wrong reasons (prior to this blog) but refuse to comprehend and heed me, as I've worried and warned about these problems. Even as a teenager I would not have the TV on while I was caring for an infant or toddler, even if parents urged or recommended it. All parents got brainwashed and selfish about the "baby sitter in a box," the nickname for television. TV interfered with natural brain development of infants and toddlers and that is a fact.

So this, to get back to the main point, is the reason so many of you, and I am saying this with great love, concern and compassion, have these feelings of inflation, alienation, goofy beliefs, hubris, "destiny," "unrecognized specialness," etc.... not because "everyone feels that way" (maybe they do now, but they didn't "back then")... but because when you were infants and toddlers and following the well known and highly successful process of brain development and individuality recognition, against a backdrop of constancy, with a well understood and logical ordered world, it was contaminated by the contrarian over stimulation of any exposure to TV.

Thus genuine "calling" in the real world is muffled, misheard, unheard, and dismissed as being "unreal," while false "calling" and "purpose" are inflated into grandiose but ultimately depressive longings that are viewed as "reality." It is a total swap of the real with the false, and it comes from, in large part, the inconstant development of infant and toddler brains when they should have been in reality based constancy and consistency. I hope this helps. Be strong and keep it really real, not falsely real. Do not let your babies or small children observe either TV or now the other obvious problems, video games and computer screens. Seriously. It's already too late for many. But if you understand what I am saying you can start to edit and comprehend some of your own unremembered experiences, and realize that you have been influenced yourselves in such a way.

The term "quickening"

I have used the term "quickening" in my blog postings about life beginning at conception. I see that Senator Biden is glomming onto that term but using one specific ancient unscientific definition of it. So lest my readers be confused, here is the scoop on the word "quickening."

If you look through a microscope at a living cell, just before it divides it appears to shake or vibrate. That is "quickening." That is why I use the term to mean that the human sperm fertilizes the human egg, forming a single embryonic cell. That cell moves to the wall of the womb and attaches itself. Once it attaches itself, if it is viable then it does that "quickening" vibration and performs its first cell division. (Living beings grow by a process of continuing cell division.) So what I have explained to you in the blog is that the moment the embryonic cell performs its first division (its very first "growth"), that is quickening and that is when it receives its soul and its guardian angel.

Now, ancient philosophers did not have access to scientific and biological knowledge that we have today. They would mostly have known about embryos and developing pre born babies via observing miscarriages. No one did dissections or have examples to study of babies developing in womb. So when a woman had an early miscarriage, by the time the baby came out, it looked much like a blob of matter and not an individual to the human eye. Thus some philosophers developed the theory that at some point in the womb the baby went from "blob" to "human" and that it was at the human appearing formation that it "quickened," meaning vibrating with life from receiving its soul. Do you see what I mean? They were judging, not surprisingly, that when they observed tissue that came out of a woman who miscarried that it does not "look" human yet, therefore it probably was not quickened with a soul.

Remember that these were very pastoral and agricultural societies, knowledgeable in the reproduction of field and farm animals. So if you break open a chicken egg, you see only a white blob where a future chick would develop. So no one today feels bad about having scrambled eggs. But if you looked inside an egg and saw a miniature baby chick attached, that would put people off of wanting to eat eggs for sure, because visually it would clearly be a little chick. So the people of ancient times were used to knowing that animal embryos looked just like blobs early in their life cycle stage. They likewise concluded that when a woman miscarried something that looked like a blob that this was the "prehuman" form of the baby. When a woman miscarried later in term, where it is recognizably a baby, even after being mangled in the course of being miscarried, philosophers logically assumed that at some point in the womb the proto baby blob "quickened" by getting a soul and then started looking human. They didn't know any better and if you think about it, that's not bad for people living two thousand years ago.

More to the point, they recognized that the soul is entered into the pre-born baby, NOT as the baby exits the womb, which is ridiculous, but obviously the attitude of pro abortionists and astrologers today. So the ancients, using the only evidence they had, which is the bloody mass of tissue after a miscarriage, deduced that at some point in the womb the blob "turned into" a human baby with a soul. They then tried to fix number of days and so forth and got into trouble by guessing that baby girls got souls at different months of gestation than boys and so forth. That could also be because they observed more miscarriages with recognizable gender features at different stages of pregnancy, and being philosophers, not scientists, deduced strictly from that anecdotal observation. In their defense that was not a bad attempt and was definitely a pro-life stance from the very beginning of discussion of this topic. No one doubted it was a baby in the womb and that it got its soul in the womb, but based on tissue observation from miscarriage and lacking microscopes and other devices we have today, they did not understand the early developmental stages of an embryo because they could not see it and see its human features.

Plus, philosophers always differentiated between animals and humans by a criterion of "self awareness." Humans are self aware, while animals are not, they assume. Thus they would think, using their deductive reasoning of the time, that a human baby would not "quicken" and have a soul until it looked like a human, that is, in their mind, that it had the features to be self aware (eyes, ears, fully formed limbs). Again, they would miss evidence of that in the early months of pregnancy because it would be "unclean" tissue that came out during an early pregnancy miscarriage, and not a recognizable human form, as it would be if they could see the scans that we can see today. Also, obviously there is a flaw in their logic that a human gets a soul only when it has the physique to be self aware. God does not wait to give a baby a soul until it has eyes, for example. So they missed that error in their own deductive reasoning process simply because they lacked a view inside the living womb in the earliest days of pregnancy.

I hope this helps.

Oh, by the way, here is another example of quickening that will help in your understanding of medicine. If you ever had an infection you know that an infection hurts. Well, why does an infection hurt? Infection is caused by bacteria which multiplies very rapidly (in terms of minutes and hours). Bacteria "quickens," that is, vibrates as it goes through this rapid cell division process. This applies pressure and heat to nerves, which is why the pain is rapid and acute. Some infections, gross as this sounds, you can feel the vibration of the bacteria growing (yuck). I have felt it and if you ever had "red eye" (conjunctivitis) you probably felt it too, times when your eye vibrates from the infection. That's the bacteria actually "quickening" and growing (yuck). An anti-biotic does not kill bacteria. An anti-biotic stops the bacteria from multiplying, so with the very short life span of bacteria cells they die out and are not replaced by new bacteria. That is how eyedrops work against conjunctivitis; the drops are not killing the bacteria but prevent them from reproducing and thus you wait until all the bacteria dies in the course of its natural short life span of days or at most weeks.

This is also why when one takes an anti-biotic in pill form, one must keep taking all the pills even after the symptoms are gone. This is because like I said, the anti-biotic does not kill the bacteria; it prevents it from reproducing. Thus you might have some bacteria that is still able to reproduce that take longer to naturally die off. You want to keep blocking its ability to reproduce until it does all die off on its own. And that is also why excessive prescribing of anti-biotics can (and already has) result in bacteria that evolve to continue to reproduce even when hit with that particular anti-biotic. That is called "resistence." But that is beside the point, I just thought as part of my series in helping people regain logic and factual information skills that I would provide an example of why the term "quickening" as in vibration came into use and how it is possible to feel it, albeit in a yucky infection experience. Yuck. I could really have skipped those feelings, like bacteria Frankenstein "It's alive." Very yuck.

Urgent advice for those who train new parents

I've read of a baby being beaten to death by a parent who went crazy when the baby cried during diaper changing.


This generation has not received proper training and explanation of babies from the previous generation. New parents must know that diaper changing feels like "hurt" to babies. This is because their skin is very sensitive. When they are wet from pee or poo in their diapers, it is warm and comfortable. But when the diaper is opened air strikes the baby's skin and it feels extremely cold and is shocking to the baby. This is why many babies cry during their diaper change. It is the shock of the coldness when they are wet and the diaper is opened and then taken off, because their skin is very sensitive and they have no tolerance for discomfort yet. It is natural for them to cry to alert the parent to discomfort, so their crying should not be discouraged.


There is nothing to do about it but learn to be tolerant and be as fast a diaper changer as you can while still being kind and safe.


High strung young parents MUST have this explained to them.

So I'm asking teachers, nurses, social workers, parents, grandparents, neighbors and others who know new parents or expecting parents to include this information in your conversation.

Many thanks.

"Baby on board" advice for parents

Another baby has died in an overheated car while a parent forgot that the baby was in the car. While I find it incredible that a parent could be so distracted by anything that they forget they have the baby along with them in the car, I accept that humans will "zone out" in certain circumstances. One is when there is a change in routine, where a parent takes the child who normally does not to daycare and so forth. The other thing I understand, to some degree, is that people strap their kids into carriers in the back of big SUV's and so forth and so if they fall asleep, as they often do, they are "out of sight and out of mind." (I still am the type of person who would obsess with driving extra careful when I have a baby in the car, and thus would be unlikely to forget the baby is there, no matter how quiet he or she might be during the ride). But humans make mistakes.

I have a suggestion. You know how there are a lot of toys that attach via key ring to purses and so forth? Kids put them on knapsacks? I suggest you get one for each of your infant children. Then, whenever you take your baby to your car, you take that toy along and either hang it on your key chain or on your rear view mirror, your purse or briefcase, etc. This is your "baby on board" reminder.

So even if you are a hectic parent who has the baby when you don't normally on your commute, and you forget the baby is in the car, when you park and go to leave your car you can't help but see a big fluffy yellow chick, or pink pig, or teddy bear or whatever dangling from your keys, your purse, your briefcase, the car door handle, or wherever you had placed it when you got in the car.

Grandparents, this is something you can buy for your children for their "baby on board" reminders. It seems that nagging is really appropriate here. Even one death is too many and I read about it year after year after year.

So you keep the toy or toys, one for each infant or small child, where you keep your car keys in your home. When you pick up your car keys you also pick up the toy and bring it with you along with the baby to the car. You place the toy in the unforgettable and un-missable place where you are certain to see it when you arrive at your destination and park your car. If you are dropping off the baby at daycare, for example, you keep the toy in the un-missable spot in your car. Thus when you get in your car at the end of your work day, you see the toy there and remember that it's your turn to pick up the baby. When you arrive home and put your car keys in their usual place you put the "baby on board" toy next to your keys, ready for the next use.

Do it, folks, and tell others to do so. Better yet, buy extras and give them to other parents and explain the idea to them. I really hope this helps.

Spiritual direction: reverence for the Infant Jesus

I spent a little time this afternoon and evening printing some holy cards on my new little Canon Selphy printer. I've not had a working printer for a quite a long while so I've had a backlog of longing to have printed visual art, especially antique holy card art. Some of my favorites are those that depict the Infant Jesus. I have one of him sitting in his bed of straw, holding out his little hands, with a prayer. Another one shows infant angels opening the door of the tabernacle from which the Infant Jesus emerges. I love that one!

There used to be many holy cards depicting reverence for the Infant Jesus. The best known shrine images of the Infant Jesus are Infant Jesus of Prague and Niño de Atocha (honoring the apparition of the Infant Jesus who miraculously fed and gave water to starving prisoners in Spain). But for the most part until recently Christians had a very prayerful attentiveness and tenderness toward not just the grown man Jesus, but also for the Infant Jesus. The holy card art work by Catholics is one way to monitor and observe this attentiveness.

I've often mentioned that one of the things I am most fond of regarding the Qur'an is that it records the fact that the Infant Jesus could and did speak for himself. And the Gospel records how Jesus spoke for himself and taught at the Temple of Jerusalem as a child around the age of twelve.

Grown men carried Infant Jesus holy cards and venerated his memory. But today we have that overall deterioration of respect for life and love for infants so that not only is it hard to recall the memory of the divine Infant Jesus, human babies themselves are aborted, abused and devalued. Instead of a treasure many pre-born and born babies are an inconvenience and a punching bag, even being sexually assaulted in their own families.

It is pointless to argue which came first, the abuse of infants or the deterioration of the veneration of the Infant Jesus, since they are a coupling of part of the overall pattern of the coarsening and anti-life depressive and angry stance of the world as a whole. But I need to point this out since fewer and fewer people are old enough to remember the times I speak about in this blog and my postings.

People who are not overcome with wonder at the Infant Jesus are certainly not likely to be full with the rapt love that their own human infants deserve. I think Lent is an appropriate time to ponder this in addition to pondering the sacrifice of the grown Lord, Jesus Christ.

I wish to make another point. In apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is known that the most rarefied and delicate honor given by Mary to the holy person to whom she appeared was visions of the Infant Jesus, by himself, held by her or sometimes actually given to the holy person to hold. St. Anthony of Padua was so honored with actually being given the vision of the Infant Jesus to hold. The best gift that Mary can give a human is to share the love and veneration that she felt herself for the Holy Infant Jesus. Mary does not appear to be an oracle to future wealth and power, or to show off the wonder of heaven for those who merit eternal life in the presence of God. She always points to Jesus and always teaches how to see Jesus through her eyes, and perceive even a portion of the love she has through her God given fullness of grace. Mary was infused with the Holy Spirit, and that did not leave her upon the baby Jesus being birthed. Mary continued to be the human ark that had held the Infant Jesus. She continues to have perfect love, knowledge and understanding of how to love the Savior, and her perspective is so full and perfect that humans can only hope for a fraction of what she feels. But it is there for anyone with the open heart and comprehension to claim.

This is another way you can easily depict phony prophets who claim Marian apparitions. Mary never appears or speaks without an infusion of her fullness of pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ. Words that fakes pen to supposedly represent "messages" that they have receive from Mary fall like the rusty bits of metal that they are, since they are not infused with love of the Infant Jesus, which is Mary's true hallmark.

I'd like to see people include in their homes a depiction of the Infant Jesus year around, and not only during the Christmas holiday when the Nativity scene is displayed. It is for humans' own good since they cannot recover love for their own innocent children without recalling that it was as an Infant that Jesus entered and lived day to day within the physical world of earth. This is also a great help for those who suffer from spiritual aridity and/or a darkness of the soul. Many of the great saints pondered and loved the memory of the Infant Jesus and gained great refreshment. People are so power and message oriented nowadays and that is like choking on dirty dust. Reconnecting with the love of the Infant Jesus is like rediscovering the goodness of life and regaining refreshment and restoration of the soul (along with one's own humanity).

I hope this helps.