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![]() Dear Alexander and all list friends, Wing-ed worms! The kids? - they went that away! Of late I have been pondering the ramifications of our seemingly forced fed youngsters. I know that time tends to dull the memory, but I am convinced today's child is born into a compressed environment where certainly the body seems to grow and mature at a rate far faster than I remember child growth from my past.
Is this evolutionary or revolutionary? Perhaps it a byproduct of eating foods laced with growth hormone, passed to the children second hand in the interest of rapid plant and animal growth maximizing industry productivity and profit. One concern I have is to do with corresponding growth of spirit and mind. Do we now have several generations of quickly developed physical bodies with no time to develop corresponding human sentience? Generations with ever diminished conscious! Are we becoming disenfranchised from our children, irrelevant for their learning? They are bombarded with propaganda, information, data and misinformation from every direction. Is the need for parent mentoring, agreement, guidance and validation a thing of the past? How much influence has a parents teaching in this child rearing hothouse? Who is molding the children's minds and for what purpose? Is this all just happenstance? What is the price of unregulated progress? Should someone, somewhere be concerned? Wink! In gentler times a young persons mind and soul nourished at a rate of natural wonder. Curious, the child would seek answers at the natural pace of life. Now it seems they are provided "answers" regardless of development need and pace. Force-fed minds Does this forced approach inhibit natural wonder? Is this a barrier to young mind's self-realization, natural curiosity and wonder? As you can see I have far more questions than answers. With these somewhat sinister thoughts in mind, I delved into the "Brain Wave Dairy" for an appropriate entry... This is what came back. Reference: "Brain Wave Diary" (July 00). The Wing-ed worm. I came across the description of an experiment designed to measure the tenacity of a predator engaged in hunting food versus a counter stimuli such as pain. It is a disgusting exercise, but since it was performed, perhaps some value can be extracted from the published result, (although even if there is, it cannot ever justify the end or the means). A predator pike fish was introduced into a tank of prey fish. The pike is an aggressive predator often called a fresh water shark. The young pike soon demonstrated the species hunting prowess by devouring the prey fish. The scientist then introduced a glass partition into the tank separating the pike from the replenished prey. For several days the young pike rushed at the prey fish on the other side of the glass partition, the result was always a sharp, cruel blow to the pikes nose. After a while, the will to hunt the prey fish diminished and the young pike ceased to try to hunt and feed from the partitioned prey fish. The glass partition was then removed. As hungry as the young pike was at that point, it would not attempt to cross the now imaginary boundary formally established by the glass partition. The young pike wasted away and died even though in easy reach of food. I will not address the conclusions science made from this controlled torture of a captive living entity. My conclusion is one of shame for what our species can be. I would have been content with an assumption of a hypothetical result to such a question. It is tempting to draw parallels to human behaviors based on the result of such an experiment, so tempted, I will. If our young are separated from their strong and natural drive to wonder and discover, could their desire to seek and try wither? Would this desire return if the barrier were removed at some future point? Or would they be so conditioned as to not go there again? Could a learned or imposed mental partition stanch self-exploration and perhaps enlightenment for the rest of their life? Would they lose the gift of question - our greatest gift? If cows were not tasty would there be any by now? Who would keep cows for any other purpose? Would they not become a burden and susceptible to extinction? Could being tasty be a species survival ploy? Is a robin nothing more than a collection of tasty worms who have found a way to elevate themselves in the natural order of things? Is offering themselves to robins as food, a worms answer to the secret of achieving flight? Is what we witness worm evolution based on second party cannibalism? What eats the robin when it passes on, the worms? The problem with removing the barricade of mental conditioning is: you are likely to start pondering unusual questions. The miracle of removing the mental barricade is: you are likely to start pondering unusual questions. Answers to questions are not nearly as important as formulating the question to begin with. Without questions, answers cannot exist, can they? There is no such thing as a silly question, this is the truest old wisdom I have ever heard. One good question is worth a thousand bad answers. Hmmm. I would like to fly, too! Do you suppose I ever will? *********** Ordering Information for the "Brain Wave Diary" series of books. To order a copy for a friend, or for a friend to order, please e-mail the request to Doug Lewis using e-mail address doug_lewis@bigwave.ca. Please put "Brain Wave Diary" in the subject line. To visit Doug's "Brain Wave Diary" WEB page you will find it at
Originally published in Project X Newsletter #46
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