Being Amused
The main purpose of parents, if common culture is to
be believed, is to keep their children amused. To many parents their life revolves
around their children's activities and social lives: ferrying them to and from
school, football matches and social functions. This is often a compensation for
not providing their children with real love. Often the parents are too preoccupied
with their own careers or simply don't know how to deal with their children in
a responsible way. If their parents did not set a good example then this gets
passed down through the generations.
Because children always have to be kept occupied they don't develop their imagination.
I've written before (‘Scepticism and Anosognosia’) on the importance of developing
the creative (right-hemisphere) aspects of the mind. Also, because their minds
are continuously stimulated by external sensations they require more sensation
to keep occupied.
People are often at their happiest when their minds are stimulated. This can be achieved in a number of ways. The most obvious is to bombard the senses. This is how amusement parks work: loud music along with roller coasters and other ‘thrill-seeking’ activities. The problem with this is that the brain soon gets saturated and more and more sensation is needed to provide the same degree of amusement.
The second way is to reduce the sensation and then provide stimulation. Anyone who has been in a hospital for extended periods, or been shut off from civilisation, knows the feeling of suddenly being surrounded by the sights and sounds a bustling city.
The third method is to take drugs that either produce hallucinations or reduce the area of the brain concerned with consciousness so that the smaller area gets overwhelmed, producing a feeling of massive stimulation. This is how amphetamines work.
Nowadays, children, and many adults, require continuous stimulation. They have
the television or radio on continuously, or they play with their computer or mobile
phones if they have nothing else to do. These distractions may provide intellectual
stimulation but they don't feed the emotional or spiritual aspects of the soul.
Many people eat in order to fill the emotional hunger.
Years ago on the West Coast of Ireland or Scotland, where the energy currents are of an Earthy, feminine nature, the inhabitants would have a relationship with the spirits of the land. They called them the ‘little people’ or elves. This relationship died with the advent of television. People were no longer content to just ‘be’, they became used to being bombarded with sensation and lost the sensitivity to perceive otherworldly beings.
