The 2012 political season has started, not that it wasn’t already well underway since 2009. I ebb and flow on how much I pay attention to political shenanigans, and spent most of 2011 avoiding much more than the casual periodical reading of articles here and there. I stopped watching MSNBC and stopping loading in Huffington Post until a couple of weeks ago. I was burned out on the constant highly polarized confrontations. However, for some reason, I’ve found the Republican primaries to be intriguing. Since I don’t have a deep-seated interest in any of the candidates or their stances, it’s more like watching an ant farm, or rather, several ant farms with different species of ants who crossover and raid one another’s nests. To me, they’re ALL ants. To one another, they are in a fight to for survival.
I was intrigued by the various profiles that Troy channeled in early January. They were on a par with other things that Michael has said about politicians, i.e., most are solidly stuck in the 3rd Internal Monad. It wasn’t surprising to me that the two who seemed the most mature in their outlooks, Huntsman and Paul, were well along in their 4th IM. They really resonate differently. This may be why Romney is struggling to capture the nomination, even though he’s considered to be the frontrunner. It must be tough to be a Warrior-casted King having to vie for popular support, rather than just receiving his “due.”
Today, I came across a fascinating article by Chris Mooney, “Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution.” While I’m going to quote it, I strongly recommend a full read. And, I think it’s very valid in Michael terms on the differences between various Soul Ages and the inherent outlooks that each exhibit. Based on may different studies, he’s come to the conclusion that there is an evolutionary difference between liberals and conservatives, which in turn frames two substantially different realities. He posits, “. . .conservatism is largely a defensive ideology — and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments. By contrast, liberalism can be thought of as an exploratory ideology — much more appealing to people who go through life trying things out and seeking the new.”
Anyone who has read various statements from conservatives can quickly see how fear-based it is. They fear the future and want to return to yesteryear, those halcyon days that never were. And, it’s not that liberals aren’t fear-based, but they are seeking changes that might be solutions to long-standing problems. However, it’s useful to remember that the bigger population is somewhere in the middle — centrist, moderate, independent, or even a-political.
By and large, the people who show up for primary caucuses or elections are the most dedicated to a candidate. There are far more who will vote in the General Election in November than will during the preliminaries. For example, McCain garnered 9.8 million total primary votes, but received 59.9 million during the general. Conversely, the combination of Obama and Clinton primary votes equaled somewhat less than half of the plurality of the general election. It will be interesting to see whether or not the Republican primaries will boost their voter count; however, so far, they’re running lower or on a par with previous totals.
Meanwhile, watching Romney is similar to watching a contortionist. In order to win the Republican nomination, he must appear as a conservative, but to win the General, he must appear as a moderate. Obama may not be wildly popular right now, but his appeal will resurrect once he goes head-to-head with the Republican nominee, and he already holds the centrist position.
Meanwhile, Mooney’s closing argument will bear watching:
For now, I’ll leave it to others to speculate on the root causes of these differences. But whatever those may be, the perceptual gap between left and right certainly seems less than “adaptive” at the present moment. It may be the fault of biology that we’re now misfiring so very badly — clashing in ways that, as with the debt ceiling fiasco, could have gravely harmed everybody in America, regardless of their particular ideology.
The Nebraska-Lincoln scientists interpret their results as a powerful argument in favor of greater political tolerance and understanding — and I agree with them. Politics isn’t war, and it isn’t zero sum. It requires negotiation and compromise. Surely our public debates should be guided by something more than threat responses and fight-or-flight.
So how do we get beyond our political biology? Well, the implication for liberals seems obvious: If they want to fare better politically, they need to learn to go against their instincts and stay focused and committed.
And the lesson for conservatives? Well, here it is tougher. You see, first we’d have to get them to accept something they often view as aversive and threatening: The theory of evolution.
Most who have either been a teenager and/or attempted to raise them have found some fairly typical behaviors that become both puzzling and aggravating. This is the transitional time between being a child and an independent adult. Michael describes this transition as the 3rd Internal Monad, which is especially characterized as “authority issues.” Recently, I came across an article that clearly lays out the physiological changes that cause teens to be teens. I think it would be useful to compare the two perspectives and see where they overlap.
Personally, I’ve found the Michael Teachings to be more concerned with emotional and spiritual ideas than about physical ones. We’re always dancing along the outer edge of Personality development and Essence evolution. So, while we discuss things such as Body Types, chakras, being Moving centered, etc., the focus is usually about our conscious ability to choose. Most of the profiles for older souls seem to have Moving centered as a trapped part, rather than Intellectual or Emotional. Even though we’re well aware that we’re in a solid 3D physical form, we don’t tend to give a lot of emphasis to the very real biological chemical factory that IS our body, except when diet or health is being discussed.
Three of the Internal Monads are undergone through a time of intense physical change, the first 20 or so years of one’s life. These are far more than conscious rites of passage — the change from infant to toddler is profound, as are the years that eventually culminate in adolescence and then adulthood. It’s long been said that the only bone that doesn’t change size from birth is the eardrum. Every other body part is a cellular explosion of change, even without any particular weight gain issues. Every adult who has ever held a newborn baby marvels at just how small we start off — normal birth weight is between 6 and 8 pounds. The average adult brain weighs 3 pounds, or nearly half of total birth weight. All of my children were about 20 inches when born and are all now 63 to 66 inches tall — none are considered “tall.”
When Michael describes the 3rd Internal Monad, they are mostly describing psychological changes, rather than physical ones; however, they do say, “This is the adjustment of the body and Personality in relation to the Moving Center, or Power Chakra.” Also, they mention a physiological impact in the 7 Levels of the 3rd Internal Monad, “In fact, until the hormonal washes of the 3rd Internal Monad are completed, not even the brain is capable of comprehending the impact and power of Choice.”
Yet, based on scientific evidence, a great deal of engine that drives the behaviors of an adolescent are physiological changes. A good overview is found in the “Five Reasons Teenagers Act the Way They Do:”
1. Risk Taking
All teenagers take stupid risks that they one day look back on and wonder what the heck they were thinking. But studies have found it is not because teens aren’t thinking about the risks involved—it’s because they think about them longer than adults.
Yes, that’s counter-intuitive. But think of it like this: If you are on a diet and see a piece of yummy chocolate cake, are you more likely to eat it if you just glance at it, remember you are trying to eat healthy, and walk away, or if you sit there and mull over the pros and cons of eating it? The latter, obviously.
It’s the same with the teen brain. Our brains take a lot longer to fully form than was previously thought. In teens, the frontal lobe (where our decision making happens) is not as connected to the rest of the brain as it is later in life. This means teens literally cannot come to a decision as fast as an adult. Teens take an average of 170 milliseconds longer to go over the consequences of a decision, which in turn makes them more likely to decide the risk is worth it.
2. Giving in to Peer Pressure
Adding friends to the mix makes it even harder for teens to avoid taking risks. Adults wonder why their kids’ friends can influence them so much. That’s because once you are an adult, your brain has quite literally grown out of it.
One study using MRI scans on adults and teens showed that their brains reacted very differently to the presence of friends when making a decision. It found that teens who would not take risks when alone or with an adult were far more likely to take risks when their friends were watching. The scans showed that the reward center of the teen brain became much more active in the company of their peers. In college students and adults, however, the reward center’s activity remained at a constant level no matter who was watching.
This means that teens, when spending that tiny bit of extra time deciding what choice to make, are also fighting against the overwhelming internal drive that tells us to do things that feel good. As the brain develops in adulthood, however, that connection ends and we end up getting no extra good feeling from taking risks in front of our friends.
3. Lack of Concentration
While teens may look more like adults than kids, to a neuroscientist their brains resemble a child’s. That’s part of the reason teens suddenly start acting like toddlers again around age 14. While their bodies are aging, their brain is rearranging itself in a way that temporarily makes it act the same way it did when they were younger.
When scientists looked at how teenagers’ brains functioned while they were distracted during an assigned task, they found a large amount of activity in that darn frontal lobe again, far more than they would in an adult. Teens have too much active grey matter in that area, something that decreases as we get older. This means their brain is trying to take in and process everything going on around it, literally overloading them. The more streamlined adult brain works more efficiently, making concentrating on one thing much easier.
But if you are in your twenties and have been feeling cocky up until this point, it’s important to note that this chaotic brain makeup doesn’t completely settle down until your early thirties.
4. Overly Emotional
If teens seem to not care about other people’s feelings or seem to flip out over nothing, it might not be because they are drama queens. Studies have found that teens have a much harder time correctly interpreting vocal inflection and facial expressions from other people, and so they sometimes react irrationally to emotional situations.
One study showed teens and adults pictures like this: 
What emotion do you think that woman is feeling? If you’re not a teenager you probably answered fear, just like every single adult in the study did. But while some teens identified fear, 50% of them saw anger, or even shock. All of the participants were hooked up to MRI machines while they looked at these images, and an analysis of the scans showed that adults and teens used two completely different parts of their brains to come to a decision on what emotions the people were feeling.
The teens were using a part of the brain called the amygdala, which largely controls emotions, while the most active part of the adult brain was the part controlling logic and reason. That means that if you are expressing an emotion—say, disappointment—a teen’s brain has a 50% chance of misinterpreting it as a different emotion, like anger. Then, since the emotional part of their brain is already active from making that (incorrect) judgment, they become more likely to react irrationally and over the top.
5. Getting Dumber
Parents of teens often wonder what happened to the bright child they used to have. How can someone go from getting A’s to getting C’s when they seem to be doing the same amount of work? Once again, changes in the brain are to blame. While the merits of IQ tests are debatable, scientists used to think IQ stayed the same over one’s lifetime. Now it turns out that number can fluctuate widely in adolescence.
All the extra grey matter we talked about starts to die off as you get older. When you are young, that grey stuff has lots of extra synapses that help your brain store and process information. But as you age, your brain starts killing off the bits that don’t get used as often. Scientists used to think there was only one major “surge” of synapse “pruning” when we were children, but brain scans of teens have shown that one just as large happens at the beginning of adolescence.
This makes sense biologically; why should your brain waste energy remembering things that aren’t very necessary to your day to day life? It’s one of the reasons that younger children can learn a second language much faster than adults; they have more synapses to store that information. And if they keep speaking that second language often enough, they will remember it the rest of their lives.
But if there is a subject they didn’t concentrate so hard on, like math, suddenly they start forgetting things they used to know because the brain is deleting that information.
I found each of those points to be quite illuminating. Although, I didn’t interpret the picture as “fear.” There were too many mixed messages in the picture, and I was more apt to ascribe the look to bewilderment or my reaction was “Get off those drugs NOW!” I also enjoyed the fact that this article didn’t even use the word “hormones” a single time.
I also think that if someone hasn’t finished their 2nd Internal Monad in positive poles, their teen years are going to be even more chaotic as they stay in negative poles and maybe careen off into VERY negative poles. For example, the 1st Stage, Initiation, has a negative pole of rebellion. While all will experience some degree of rebellion in order to start pulling away from “home and hearth” towards independence, some will make it a lifestyle that profoundly impacts them for years. Many who end up on the wrong side of the law go into a pattern of recidivism that doesn’t seem to break until 4th IM kicks in as a physical rite of passage.
I’d like to get more channeling on the 3rd Internal Monad from a physiological perspective — the Moving Centered part of it.
Tonight I had an epiphany of understanding, and it came from an unexpected source: television. I was watching the PBS Evening News and they had an article on Hans Rosling accepting an award from a major and very elite philanthropic organization. I’d never heard of him. He gave one of his well-honed talks. It lit me on fire. So, of course, I did what I normally do . . .went on the hunt for more.
I’ve spent my evening going through a series of TED videos on YouTube on various talks he’s given at conferences over several years.
Hans Rosling: No more boring data: TEDTalks
Hans Rosling on global population growth
Hans Rosling: Asia’s rise — how and when
Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world
Hans Rosling on HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals
Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine
All are worth watching and vary from 10 to 20 minutes. He’s a statistician who has created software to animate and make statistics interesting and understandable to anyone. But, most importantly, he’s taken historical publicly available data and made it relevant about a world that is changing far more rapidly than any of us have kept pace with. It altered my belief systems about population, income, health, and life expectancy — changes that have been occurring over the past 150 years, but most especially since 1960.
I’ve not been able to validate Michael’s reiterations about the world moving into a Mature Soul Age as I’ve been hung up in old data, old images, and paradigms about East versus West or to use the language of the past 50 years — developed versus undeveloped nations. Rosling admits that he started from the same place, but it was through statistics about what has really been happening that changed his worldview. If you only watch one of the videos, start with the first one. His data proves that almost none of the political rhetoric that we’ve been employing is valid.
Birth rates have been radically dropping since 1960, even though there has been population growth overall. They have been dropping worldwide in all places, except for most of Africa. Child survival rates have increased dramatically — in fact, he’s drawing the correlation that birth rates are tied to survival rates. He believes that trends are well in place throughout most of the world for rising income, rising survival rates, increased longevity, to actually achieve maximum population of about 9 billion people, then universal stable birth/survival rates, and then declining population at about 2048.
It’s easy for us to focus on places such as Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Haiti to draw a worldview of ALL backward and poverty-ridden countries and assume that this is true for all but the “West.” Watch the video on Asia’s rise to get a better understanding of huge changes that have been underway since 1947.
Michael students have a tendency to gloss over the importance of younger soul ages and just how much vitality they can have. Let’s face it, we tend to be Soul Age snobs. Another thing we tend to gloss over is the fact that Young Souls progressively move past rigid ideologies. They become highly competitive, independent, and willing to explore beyond the boundaries of tradition. They are movers and shakers. Mature souls may become more community and relationship oriented, but they keep a lot of the paradigms that drive Young Souls, but with more “heart.”
The world is not as backwards and poverty-riddled as it once was. Change has been occurring, and it’s been occurring far more rapidly than anyone has realized. I can now see that it’s quite possible that we are moving into a Mature Soul world that will continue to evolve. It simply won’t be based on old data and belief systems.
Most of my postings have been focused on the more benign aspects of choice and personal responsibility as exemplified through our own personal growth and development–how it affects our interpersonal relationships or our worldview of happiness. There are many who have taken it a further step into recognizing declining nutrition to our foods due to a combination of GMO and/or factory farming of animals, including various additives. Various diets are being followed that either focus on locally grown, organic, and/or various levels of vegetarianism in large part due to these issues. Others have been focused for years on environmental issues caused by mining, manufacturing, and even waste disposal. Yet, as more regulation is imposed locally to protect our own “backyards,” all of these practices have been moved to underdeveloped nations where either no regulation exists or it’s unenforced.
The factories and working conditions of the Industrial Revolution throughout Europe and the U.S. became more regulated, labor laws were enacted, and environmental protections were implemented to clean up dead rivers, toxic dumpsites, and contaminated water supplies during the 20th C. Recycling has become part of our consciousness in many cities and towns. Yet, rampant consumerism has not slowed any of these issues, they’ve been exacerbated.
For example, most who can read this have owned multiple computers during the past 20 years. Most who have bought 2G, 3G, and now 4G mobile phones have owned more than one model for each generation. Most who have bought various gaming devices have owned more than one model as new features were released. Most who have had a television during the same period of time have owned several, with at least one of them simply being an upgrade to a newer and better model. I would hazard a guess that at least half of all of these secondary purchases were due to needing to “upgrade,” rather than the original piece of equipment being totally non-usable and defunct.
Why am I focusing on electronics? Because they are one of the biggest sources of manufacturing and consumer-generated toxic waste. As Greenpeace says so succinctly: “Electronic devices are a complex mixture of several hundred materials. A mobile phone, for example, contains 500 to 1000 components. Many of these contain toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium and hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants. Polluting PVC plastic is also frequently used.” Read the Greenpeace Briefing on the heavy metals and chemicals used in making electronics. Here’s a good chart on E-Waste.
Quoted in the Wikipedia article, “Electronic Waste,” which definitely has had “industry” input to mitigate its harshness, “According to a report by UNEP titled, “Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources,” the amount of e-waste being produced – including mobile phones and computers – could rise by as much as 500 percent over the next decade in some countries, such as India. The United States is the world leader in producing electronic waste, tossing away about 3 million tons each year. China already produces about 2.3 million tons (2010 estimate) domestically, second only to the United States. And, despite having banned e-waste imports, China remains a major e-waste dumping ground for developed countries.”
If one wants to think in terms of global politics, think Afghanistan. In 2010, the Pentagon said, “Afghanistan has significant deposits of copper, iron ore, niobium, cobalt, gold, molybdenum, silver and aluminum as well as sources of fluorspar, beryllium and lithium, among others, a task force studying the country’s resources found.” Oil is not the only mineral that drives the world economy.
One has only to do a brief Google search to discover the vast issue of hazardous waste, toxic dumpsites, etc., located throughout the world. No country has been immune. This is becoming our true legacy to our children, grandchildren, and generations into the 2100s. Consumerism drives the engine for most of it. And, we all consume.
It’s worth remembering that the ensoulment of the Cetaceans was due to that Sentient Design’s Grand Cycle making its own home world uninhabitable due to industrial waste and misuse of the environment. I’m sure there are many who would have preferred to remain on their home world and to have had the opportunity to finish out their Cycle as planned. According to Michael, that species was not unique.
It’s worth remembering that since we believe that we will be incarnating again and again, it is truly the legacy to ourselves. This is the world we are creating that we will be living in. Personal responsibility will come full circle. It’s not just our children and our children’s children who will inherit this environmental mess, it is us. Not all karma is tit-for-tat balancing from Essence to Essence. Some of it is our legacies to ourselves. We are creating one especially onerous reality.
I’ve been taking a break on the blog as I simply have not been able to fully develop any topic that I started. My interests have been more currently topical and/or historical research-based, few of which lent themselves to being readily applicable to the overall theme of Validating Michael. I’ve also been fighting personal issues of extreme low energy. It’s surprising how much energy it takes to coalesce ideas into written form, and all too often, I get several paragraphs into a topic only to have it vanish into a cloud of “why bother?” It’s as though I’m struggling to make something happen when my passion is missing.
Some of this is the deep winter blahs. We’ve been mostly below 0-F for over a month now–day and night. Even though we’ve been getting more sunshine recently, that’s still a relative concept as it contains no warmth, nor does it linger long to shine through my window. Wind returns for several days at a time — today and tomorrow, it’ll be blowing gustily at about 35 mph with wind chills down around minus 35. The two feet of snow is gone from the parking garage roof immediately outside my window, stripped away by the wind and sent elsewhere. Someone is getting some huge drifts. I keep waiting for the return to “normal” temperatures of 10s and 20s. Part of the blahs is the extreme isolation it imposes. Errands are miserable events, and I can’t even keep my door cracked to outside. I’m cocooned inside.
I’ve been forced to become more news-oriented, which never is an uplifting event, especially during extreme political times. Normally, I avoid the rancor and posturing as little of it seems real. As politicians attempt to find resonance with voters, they manufacture issues, while avoiding anything of substance. So much is overstated, misstated, or glorified into far more than it warrants. 24-Hour media repeats and repeats, trying to find kernels of “something” to talk about just to avoid empty air only to become empty air. There is more speculation than bona fide news. 30-Second soundbites get dissected as though they are major 2-hour policy statements.
I watched the 2nd South Carolina Republican Debate between the remaining four candidates last night. It was more entertaining than I expected it would be. Also, I was in full Discrimination and Observation; so, I was disengaged in terms of allowing the rhetoric get to me. I’ve noticed that this has become far more prevalent during the past couple of years. It’s as though I’m watching actors deliver their well-rehearsed lines, which in a sense that is exactly what they are doing. All candidates spend enormous time preparing for debates, and aren’t really delivering very much that is extemporaneous.
I found myself actually liking and appreciating two candidates whom I traditionally would totally dismiss: Santorum and Gingrich. Both were articulate and passionate, i.e., they didn’t drool on themselves. I honestly believe that Santorum, while quite pre-packaged, really believes what he says from his Baby-souled perspective. I don’t have to agree with him to understand that he’s got integrity within his belief systems. And, in fact, I find it hard to believe that he’s stuck in his 2nd IM. There is an honest sincerity about him; so, what is his true Achilles heel? Similarly, Gingrich presents himself well, but we know his personal history — it’s not surprising to know that he’s stuck way back in Stage 1 of the 3rd IM. This man has issues. As for Romney, he’s the true representative of the last gasp of the Young soul-age.
As for the chronic anti-Obama din, I think that once Obama starts his campaign, that he’ll be able to prove that he’s accomplished more than most people know and that he’ll come across as the only adult in the room. Andrew Sullivan did a great recap on Obama, “Obama’s Long Game,” and it’s well worth a read in order to put Obama back into perspective. The constant trashing is mostly egos attempting to get elected, rather than based on substance. It will be interesting to see if the “Mature Soul Age” is actually upon us or not. Obama is the only representative of the older soul perspectives.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to find something else to occupy my mind online than politics. It’s a wasteland.
|
|