In the early days of our predominance over the life on earth, mankind handled its problems in very direct way. There was little finesse or intrigue, and diplomacy was a crude skill at best.
Soon, though certain men came to realize that tens of thousands of deaths were not necessary to achieve their ends. Groups of the wealthy and the powerful individuals, instead, invested their time in getting to know mankind better. By that I mean learning what motivates, inspires and repels us.
This in the sure knowledge that with this powerful tool of insight alone mankind could be manipulated, guided, and controlled. They found that entrenched armies of occupation were unnecessary to achieve their goals. All they had to do was convince a mass of people to believe they were being guided through honesty and sincerity.
The mastery, the genius in this is that they could achieve their ends with the subjugated people while allowing them to believe that they were still in control of their lives, still owners of their lands. It’s not so different from the policies used against the American Indian. One day they were receiving shiny beads, trade knives, and blankets and in the next they were kicking themselves as they made their tribal exoduses to reservations.
What is the comparison to us? It is in our love of shiny baubles, our addiction to conveniences, our un -willingness to look past the couch, plate, computer, or TV. Our attentions have been bought so completely that we, like they, have ceased to use solid reason in certain areas of our life. The constant need for change and upgrade has, to a degree, stolen a portion of our common sense.
Children are taught by repetition; the alphabet, counting, pronouncing words, chores, music and the like are repeated until the child learns them. This is also used on adults in college or training for a job. Any Psychiatrist or Psychologist will tell you that any person, man, woman or child, if told something enough times will come to believe it, as in abuse cases when they are told they will never amount to anything or they are ugly and other such mentally abusive phrases.
It used to be a virtue when a person made something last, took care of it. Now that ethic is a joke. If you have a cell phone two or three years old, or are not dressing in the current style there’s not only a mocking question about your regular contact with the world, but one as to your skills of observation and possibly your mental health.
In this way, we, the general populace, are much like the Indians of our countries past, unable to see past our material present to understand until it’s too late what has been occurring behind the scenes.
This isn’t a statement about any political party or leader. Individuals of this kind have long since ceased to be the issue. There are non- political entities that have taken over the role of big brother.
Yet there are things taking place around us at an alarming rate. The activity in the skies is startling ,and there is an air of the growing unknown, in the political process, in the turbulence and instability that seems to plague the world, not just our country alone.
The “Shell Game” has been around a long time. Whether it is used to simply entertain or to hoodwink people out of their hard earned cash, it has made its rounds. Sometimes these smoke screens are put in place to protect us, and often to intentionally mislead. Below is just one example of a possible effort at damage control.
The other morning I read an article In the Yahoo News titled: Fearful Kids Can’t Separate Fantasy from Reality. It struck me as odd in places. Now, of course, this is probably because of my background and personal experience with night fears as a child.
I grew up in a household of contradictions as many of us, unfortunately, do. There was a high level of fear and abuse from one parent while the other had a huge job of working twice as hard to present a positive and nurturing “other half” to our upbringing. In these kinds of conditions, when you have to fear the unexpected in your daily life, night time seems, at least for some, to hold all the more terrors. It did in my case.
I was, on occasions, immobilized by the intensity of it, but one night, I guess too exhausted with fear to give a damn any longer, I rolled over on my belly and turned my back to it. It wasn’t as though I was never unnerved again walking home in the dark, but I was never again frozen by it.
We all have dreams, and are able to remember a few as we wake, but there are odd ones that never seem to fade as 99% of them usually do. For me, those dreams with real longevity weren’t ones inspired by my father or the movies we watched in our home, but, oddly about a subject I knew nothing about, something I had no interest at all in; UFOS.
In one my whole neighborhood had been reduced to nothing but basements without houses above. I was cowering in the stairwell of ours as the classic disc or inverted bowl shaped craft was slowly passing by one street, over a hundred feet or so above the ground. This, again, is odd because my mother said she once had to come get me as I was walking in my sleep. She found me in just that position, standing in the basement stairwell.
In another I was riding my bike on the road, furthest west, in West Belton. It was a summer day and I can see the gravel under my tires and the huge sun flowers to my left that grew tall in the dry heat. I stopped at the corner where the gravel road met the highway that ran further west past Sneed’s Barbecue and Holmes Road. There, at that corner, I can still clearly see, in my memories of the dream, the old gnarled hedge wood corner post. Then, something draws my attention. Up over head and in daylight, NOT looking into the sun, I see a number of points of light racing down at me, and that is where the dream ends.
I know dreams are the gobbledygook of our subconscious, so how can any importance be drawn from them? Yet, when thousands, if not millions of dreams turn to vapor and are lost to us as the morning light and yawns prevail, why do we remember so clearly only one or two? Why are these one or two etched in our memory more clearly than important moments of our life that time has reduced to pictures like the view of a TV screen with bad reception, and why do we, sometimes, repeatedly dream those almost pristine dreams? Is there more to them that engraves them with such fullness and finality in our mind?
The article talked about a study done in which children were asked questions, and shown images that were designed to illicit a response of fear, one the child might be able to explain on a scale of cuddly bears in different states of fear. For me, there was an odd interest in the examples given the child.
One of these was “what would their response be to a burglar or intruder in their home”, the other was “did they think a fairy would or could enter their home at night?” A cartoon character, Bob the Builder, was also used in a similar scenario. Monsters were also mentioned. The end result was to determine how each child separated fantasy from reality.
There has been a very common scenario, very close to the subject matter of the study. Its rate of occurrence almost epidemic like, one in which people both young and old, both intellectually sophisticated and simple, both rich and poor, have reported in newspaper articles and books and records of counseling.
That scenario is the experience of an intrusion in their home in the hours of nighttime by humans or human like figures. There have also been those described, that in size and description could be labeled Fairy like. They describe what our limited understanding might mistakenly call “monsters” on occasion as well. They talk of powerlessness and immobilizing fear, of medical or scientific examinations and even sexual encounters of a kind.
Why this sudden newsworthy concern over a subject as old as the family itself? More and more people and more and more children are in Psychological care than ever before. Possibly something is coming out in therapy that is so consistent across the board that its possible real relevance is being examined. Perhaps these details coming out in sessions are a little too close to home especially when you examine not the acts of alien, but humanities uses of children.
It’s widely known that children have been unwitting test subjects just as adults have been, that they have even been intentionally exposed to life threatening illnesses and substances in an effort to have more relevant lab rats for study. This wasn’t the brain child of Nazi Germany alone; you could say its humble beginnings started there. It has occurred in many different situations around the world.
And okay let’s get back to the questions asked the children. “Which is the more real scenario, that of a “burglar breaking into the house,” or “a monster frightening a child in the dark?” Or “Do you think this fairy can come to your home?” Among the large portion of the world, that public that believes in the possibility of UFOS and intrusions by their crews into the home, a resounding “yes” would be the answer to these questions.
Yes, figures described as Fairy- like do enter homes, only they aren’t those of the Grimm’s Fairy tales realm, but mislabeled creatures that possibly have been the inspiration for our elves, Fairies and our boogeymen throughout the ages.
Surely a sort of shell game has been going on for some time to keep the curious interested but on a fruitless trail towards the truth. In the golden age of TV, Art Linkletter, long forgotten by most, had a saying that rang true now as it did then “Kids say the darndest things”. Maybe it’s time we adults take the time and seriously listen to what our children our saying.