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.

Dealing with feelings of "unreality," "alienation"

Everyone has that occasional moment of feeling somewhat unreal. To put it simply, it is normal because it is like a brain "hiccup." You usually are not aware of what brought that moment on, but usually there was some outside stimulus that is unconscious to you. Like the feeling of deja vu, it is a burp, just a bit of a disruption in how the brain perceives what is actually going on, and it just lasts for a minute.

Deja vu (the "I've been here before") feeling, by the way, is also easily explained. Let me address that because when it happens some people get all paranoid about its "meaning." Rather than a "burp" or a "hiccup" like unreal or alienated feelings, deja vu is a momentary case of misidentification by the brain. You know how you get a glimpse of someone in a crowd and think you know who it is, but then realize it is not he or she? Well, the reason humans have such superior intellect and brain capacity (compared to animals) is that human brains are built for speed, to do very rapid processing, and brains are wired to do very rapid "pattern matching." Thus one can see an automobile and not each and every time go, "Hmm, what is that object? It has wheels and an ignition and a passenger cab. Ah, it must be a car!" Imagine if you had to think all that through every time you saw an auto! Instead, your brain rapidly "pattern matches." Your brain has pictures stored within it of things you already know, and when you see something it quickly compares what you are seeing to what it has in storage. When it sees a match it assumes, but tells you with certainty, that it is what it is. Deja vu happens when something that you see, or are feeling, or experiencing matches very closely, but incorrectly, something in your brain's picture gallery and memory bank. So you have a "deja vu" feeling that you have been there before, but that is because your brain jumped to a conclusion of familiarity because it found a weak match with a portion of something you have already seen before, or felt, but would not at all think they are alike if someone asked you. Your brain-all brains-once in a while make mistakes. So that's the deja vu problem. Let's get back to the main topic of feelings of unreality or alienation.

Before I explain how the "burp" or "hiccup" occurs, let's start with a clean table of understanding how things work normally when one is a living being, in a state of being alive within a real world. As I've mentioned in my recent blog about addictions, you gain a lot of information and solid grounding in wisdom when you remember that humans and animals share common biology. Animals and humans both have to breathe, eat, ingest fluids, have bodies that are composed of hard and soft tissue, internal organs, a way to reproduce, a way to move and so forth. Humans are basically animals with really big brains and a body that promote agility. (By that I mean, imagine a really smart dinosaur; even if he was really smart, without clever little fingers etc I doubt he could ever build a computer microchip! :-)

So you have to observe animals to understand humans, yourself, since it is like looking in a mirror. Do animals ever doubt their reality? No, they do not; they never doubt their reality. Ha, I can hear you saying, "You can't prove that!" Yes I can. Time for that time honored but forgotten and abused talent called logic and reasoning.

If a living being doubts their reality, this causes confusion in their state of being, obviously, since the person, for that moment, is not even sure if he or she "is real" or is "really part of this world." When one has that "burp," one usually stops what one is doing and mulls it over. The normal response is to realize that while creepy and unpleasant, it is just a burp and move on. The goofy and all too common response is to get whack job cultish, and get together with other paranoid people and worry "what if we are all really movies being shown on a projector," or "what if I'm imagining this," or "I must be remembering a 'past life' or a 'spirit being'" blah blah blah. It's like if you burped or hiccup you run out to find other people to see if they ever burp or hiccup, and when you find out they do, you go "Ah ha! Gosh! I knew it meant something." Then instead of researching how the lungs work and why burps happen you assume that little invisible aliens must be squeezing you with their cute webbed hands, "trying to get your attention." Ah, if only I was really joking, but sadly I am not.

So if animals had feelings of unreality, how would they cope with the sudden and harsh reality of life in nature, which, as we know, "is red in tooth and claw?" OK, now you are watching a nature show, such as one that shows African wildlife. You know that a scene of a lion stalking prey, such as a small wildebeest, is de rigour for such shows. How many times do you see the following?

Scene one: Lion sneaks up on potential prey, a grazing wildebeest.
Scene two: Lion makes a noise and gives away its presence, or it makes its move and leaps and runs toward the wildebeest. Either way the wildebeest is now aware of the lion.
Scene three: The wildebeest has a moment of "alienation" and "unreality," and wonders if it is real and/or if the lion is real (even though it is smelling, hearing and seeing lion with big teeth and claws in a dead run at it).

You don't have to "know" what an animal is "really" "thinking," because with animals all you need to do is observe what they do. Modern humans (not even traditional humans) are the only ones who think the obvious over and wonder about it. Why is this? Because it is what we call a "survival trait" not to think things over, but to quickly act to preserve life, while it is an anti-survival trait to think about whether or not the lion is real that is bearing down upon you and about to rip you apart. What human stands in the middle of a road and wonders if the bus that is about to run him or her over is "real," or if he or she is "really there." The answer is usually, "No one except the mentally ill or someone ingesting or abusing a substance." Mental illness, substance abuse, and some of the effects of a highly unreal media diet are the primary reasons for chronic, over analyzed and misunderstood feelings of "alienation" or "being unreal."

There is no species of animal that would last for the hundreds of thousands (and often tens of millions) of years that they have lasted as a species if any or all of them had "feelings of alienation and unreality." Any species that had such feelings would quickly die out if they were at all prevalent. First of all, animals have nothing to compare reality to in the first place, since animals have no conception of unreality. Animals do not understand that something is "made up" and thus "not real." Animals are entirely rooted in reality. But just so you understand, let's suppose that one wildebeest with too big a brain or who watched too much TV did have a feeling of "unreality" or "alienation." So he wonders if that lion that is leaping upon him is "real," or if he is "real." Yeppers, you guessed it. That wildebeest would become lunch for the lion and would never pass his overly clever but stupid genes onto future wildebeests. Any anti-survival trait is stomped on by the reality of nature, whether individually or as a species. Once an animal does anything that is not one hundred percent in response to reality, it is a goner and so are its potential offspring. So we can see from thousands of years of intelligent observation of animals by humans that animals are entirely reality based. Thus the cure, the detox, for people who have persistent self induced feelings of unreality are to reconnect with reality and get over yourself.

Why do I say "get over yourself?" Because almost always, unless the person is truly mentally ill, they have a grandiose feeling of having stumbled onto some great hidden "truth" when they have these "mysterious" "feelings." The answer, of course, is to let the moment of the brain burp or hiccup pass and simply reconnect with reality. People do try to self heal, and so the instinct to reconnect with reality is there, even in the nuttiest of people who deliberately cultivate their moments like this (again, I'm not speaking of the genuinely mentally ill who need to be understood in their confusion and treated with great kindness and appropriate medicine).

So the correct thing to do is to reconnect with normal reality. The incorrect thing to do is connect with an overstimulated and equal artificial "reality."

Stupid approach: "I have these feelings of unreality! I think I was a space angel! Or maybe I am not really here! Or maybe you are not really here! So I guess if I jump off a cliff I will find out!" *Splat*

Correct approach: Do something that you know is when you are least likely to have these feelings. If you cannot do it at the moment, then recall it in your mind or with a friend in conversation. Here's a perfect example. People rarely have inflated feelings of "alienation" or "unreality" when they are waiting in a long, slow line for something they either really want (a new release of a video game, etc) or are really dreading (motor vehicle bureau, inland revenue office, etc.). Notice you and your pals do not feel "unreal" when you are eagerly waiting for something that is a real treat, like that new video game or concert tickets. Equally you do not feel "unreal" when you are dreading with each step what the auditor is going to say to you about your taxes when it is your turn at the head of the line.

See, humans, up until the last one hundred years, like animals, could not escape mundane reality and thus never doubted it. When you have to go and hoe the crops by hand every day or your family will starve to death (really), you are so "connected with the earth" and "reality" that people simply never had those weird burps or hiccups. Again, one does not feel "unreal" unless someone has something to compare it to. Before there were movies, TV, radio, books, the printing press, etc, people did not have an "unreal" to think that they may be part of in the first place! People (and their brains) were always totally in reality since that is all that was offered to them. Again, going back to animals. A giraffe does not have a moment when he imagines he is "not really there" or is "maybe a carp instead" because he does not have the experience of what being something else, or of something being "real" or "imaginary" is like! I mean, duh! It's only when humans started to 1) isolate themselves from reality, since they no longer had to toil each day, unless one is still in those "less developed" "regions," in reality, to prevent the very reality of one's family starving to death and 2) started being exposed, through books (such as fiction, which are lies in print, LOL) and later electronic media to things that are totally imaginary and unreal.

By the way, most of you probably know without realizing it that one of the first things one does to someone he or she is torturing is to disrupt their connection with reality.

So to reconnect with reality one should really study animals as they are, and observe how they are entirely real and of the real world. Then remember that humans are still biologically like animals and hence are very connected to reality too (I doubt many people thought that they were imagining being swept away in the Asian tsunami). The third thing to do, then, is to accept the occasional brain "burps," but don't over analyze it as if you are something special (the tsunami swept away "smart" and "dumb" people alike). That "I am special" is a real problem to good mental health and logical living. So the fourth thing is to work on one's humility. The fifth thing to do is not to ingest substance that inflates one's ego or further disrupts one's connection with reality. As I pointed out in the addictions post, you don't see animals seeking medications; they are one hundred percent reality based. Not only don't animals seek mind altering medications, but they do not seek out physical medications, such as when they are wounded. Why is that? Because animals are entirely reality based and so they learn reality coping mechanisms. For example, if afflicted by flies or other insect pests, animals might roll in the mud, in the sand or immerse in water. They respond reality-to-reality (pest reality-barrier to pest reality). They don't wait around to get bitten and then seek out a pain medication. Animals are evolved to endure the reality and to have coping and survival mechanisms.

So humans have to be very careful in modern times to not become so disconnected from reality, and then worse, be a paranoid carrier of inflated beliefs about "alienation" and "unreality" so that others self reinforce, because society and life choices are increasingly disconnected, yet reality never goes away. Reality is reality because it is real, LOL. I mean, duh. So you can imagine and feel all unreal and alienated until you do get caught in a tsunami, or the bills aren't paid so your satellite TV is disconnected and you can't imagine that the series "Stargate" "might be real," because now your real family and your real rear end is about to be kicked out of your real house because your real mortgage did not get paid to the real banker with the real outstretched hand because your real boss really did fire you from your real job!

I hope this helped. Really.

;-)

School shootings, youth violence and depression

OK, I have to be very blunt here and explain some societal changes that are now coming back to bite people very hard, especially young males. We have just had the shootings in Finland. There is a pattern of emulating Columbine and other shootings, with grievances, fascination and lack of fear of death, a dark seething rage, access to weapons that enable those with no impulse control, networks of like minded youths including the problem of gangs, and last of all, fueling addictions such as alcohol, drugs, pornography.

Now, why are so many youth, especially young males, seething and detached from the joys of life (often totally numb to them) and unable to have patience and fortitude during their youth and difficult times? I bet you expect me to say the absence of fathers and the breakdown of the family, but that is not what I am going to focus on, although obviously that has had a terrible effect. Yet, we see these problems even in families that seem traditional and content, or at least adequate, on the outside.

No, I have to get a little Freudian and also social scientist to explain to you what has happened. Humans have evolved over millions of years to have peak sexuality and lots of energy when youth, particularly men, are in their late teenage years and into their twenties. That is how the human species is wired to survive. Young men have maximum energy to reproduce and take on great responsibility in their teens, though they lack the finishing gloss of maturity, which they get in their twenties and thirties. So here is how humanity used to do things. Young men could look forward to being sexually gratified in their late teens when they were married and became heads of new families (under the watchful eyes of their parents). Young people were paired up in arranged marriages for thousands of years, around the world and in all society, rich or poor, of all faiths and cultures. This way no man or woman was left without a spouse, giving sex when the young man is most driven to obtain it, and also giving him a piece of adult responsibility with marriage. For example, a typical young man would be matched to a young woman in their village and they would obtain a piece of land from the parents to farm. The young man would have sexual gratification, the woman would have a provider, and both would be able to start their own journey into maturity.

Today we have claimed that society is "liberated" and men and women can be intimate with whoever they want. But the result is that as our society has become more highly sexualized (as if humans needed help in that regard) yet access to regular, stable loving sex has been destroyed. Without the pairing that used to take place through family alliances, matchmaking and other customs, many youth are overstimulated and yet excluded from a stable sexual situation (marriage) and also a share in taking on adult responsibility (farming or having an apprenticeship or share of a family trade). As a result we see two extremes in young men. We see a violent seething under culture fueled by alienation, loneliness, repressed sexual needs, inability to be physically and mentally matured by parental and grandparent role models.... or you have the drugging and dummying down of male youth in order to make them feminized and compliant as they work their way through seemingly endless schooling and then into a desk job.

Traditional human culture was much more compassionate in this regard. You did not have many "bachelors" or seething male youth because villages and communities ensured that all possible compatible matches were made. So there was no young man or woman "left behind" because they were not popular or pretty or "hot" enough to get laid or to be matured in a structured way, such as apprenticeship. That is why I have said kind things about arranged marriages, and I know a very content couple who were married in the traditional way. By the way, I'm obviously not talking about "astrology" and "fortune telling" matches. Those were the minority of one society I could mention. The rest of the world through the centuries just cared about "compatibility" and ability to support a family.

As a result we now have two generations in a row of seething, under served (in the sense of being stewarded and ushered into meaningful adulthood via family, community and society), over stimulated (hormones plus all of the agitating addictions and instant gratification society), rudderless (thus vulnerable to depression) youth who are both tossed out on their own earlier than they should be AND infantalized in areas where they should be given adult responsibilities. People used to be matched, married young and given adult responsibilities (trades, farming, apprentice, etc) and now they lack all of that while at the same time being over stimulated in their senses and expectations, fueled by the unreality of life as portrayed in the media, and often aggravated by broken families and low impulse control. For example, a young man used to be introduced to weapons, such as guns, in the context of hunting for food for the family. Now a young man is introduced to guns in TV violence (the previous generation) and with this generation, video games and weaponized "superhero" mentality. This is why even youth from traditional families are vulnerable to the pressures of depression, lack of sexual gratification within a timely marriage when they have peak urge, and dark nihilistic "seeking" of "meaning" and worse, glorifying the lack of meaning. All this is happening in the same evolved biological human bodies that are programmed to "expect" sex and family responsibility by the late teens or early twenties and have an excess of energy that used to be used in sheer survival skills, such as hunting, farming, home building and the military. Now many youth have to sublimate their human "birth right" into alienation, longing, bitterness, depression and hostile escapism. What a terrible problem this is and people need to get real about what humans are really like and what is the healthiest for them in their genuine natures and not in fantasy.

Obviously there is more to say and an awful lot of damage to undo, but I truly hope this gives you, especially the young people, a more generous perspective of the potentials and problems of humans and their human nature.