Train Up A Child

Street gangs are proliferating at such a rate that some social scientists are suggesting the streets of America will be controlled by them within ten years. Two legitimate questions are “from where are they coming?” and “what are the contributing factors?”.
There are ethnic gangs such as Hispanic and Asian but native born Americans are comprising more gangs than ever. To find the cause take a close look at the American family. Serving on the Governor’s Council I became privy to amazing insight.
At birth a child has approximately 100 billion brain cells. Each cell is interconnected by thousands of others by electrochemical structures called synapse. A newborn baby has approximately 50 trillion synapses.
If the cells or synapse aren’t used they wither.
Within the brain there are areas with varying functions.
The occipital lobe is assigned the job of identifying what we see. The temporal lobe processes spoken language and hearing.
Another area is where the capacity for social interaction is determined.
By 8 months the number of synaps has grown to 1,000 trillion. By age of 20 years the number has decreased from 1,000 trillion to 500 trillion.
Certain areas of the brain are not developed at birth. They have to be developed. If a child can’t hear at birth that part of the brain does not develop. In general if a child born deaf and doesn’t hear speech by age 10 they are not likely to ever understand language. That part of the brain was undeveloped because it didn’t function during the formative years.
If a child is born blind the neural connections between the eye and brain don’t develop. If sight isn’t gained by age 2 the child will never see properly. That part of the brain did not develop during the formative years.
If certain parts of the brain are not connected by synapse in the early years they don’t develop. A young child’s experiences can cause brain synapse to increase or decrease by up to 25%.
Parts of the brain, the parietal lobe, processes touch.  Cat scans show that in children in third world countries reared in government institutions where they are not lovingly held and touched this part of the brain doesn’t develop. They are candidates for anti-social behavior. They can destroy or kill and have no remorse, no feeling.
Studies show that dads with children ages 2 to 12 spend less that 12 minutes a day with their children. Add to that the absentee father and the situation is compounded.
The lack of loving parental touch is dramatically helping gang development in America. For children to be healthy emotionally they must have the opportunity to form a comfortable and secure relationship with a loving and care-giving parent.
Not everyone reading this has the good fortune of having a young child in the home but doubtless most know friends who do. Share this insight with them as an encouragement to cultivate well balanced children who function constructively in society.

Mirror Neurons

Have you polished your “mirror neurons” lately?
Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t know you had mirror neurons. Neurologists have just discovered our brains contain them. They serve to activate our responses to emotions we sense around us. It is a subtle but definite response that occurs without us realizing what is happening.
Not only does this happen in our interpersonal relationships but they also pick up emotions from movie and TV actors.
The way these neurons work is they pick up on the emotions of other persons and cause us to tend to respond in kind. If around a negative and critical person we tend to respond in kind. Conversely if around a positive and optimistic person we mirror their emotions.
These neurons are so strong that it is possible for a person to have a great day yet as a result of being around negative people who constantly complain end the day feeling down. Here is good news. The reverse is also true. A bad day around upbeat people can create a sense of fulfillment and peace.
It is no surprise that the mirror neurons of females work better than those of males. That has long been acknowledged by people noting the female is more intuitive. She has a greater depth of feeling; more sensitive. Her mirrors are more polished.
Do you have any toxic people in your life? You know the kind of people singing that old favorite from “Hee-Haw”, “Gloom, despair, and agony on me. If it weren’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all”?  If at all possible disassociate yourself from them. If you can’t, immunize yourself against them. To do this learn to better control your emotions. Realize the impact of such a person and act rather than react to them.
When the “Law of Emotional Equilibrium” is considered it becomes apparent how important to the functioning of our mirror neurons is. Simply stated, one negative person can pull down five positive people easier than five positive people can pick up on negative person.
There is another principle that states it takes eleven positive inputs to compensate for one negative input.
Those are the norms. However, if persons are aware of these factors and sensitive to the influences to which they are exposed they can compensate for them. An anti-toxin mental inoculate is achieved by feeding your mind with great truths and associating with positive people.
Our emotional compass or to be more current our emotional GPS needs a point of reference; a gyroscopically balanced attitude.
Sir Edmund Hillary in speaking of climbing high mountains observed, “When climbing at great altitudes in the rarified oxygen deprived atmosphere, the mind has a tendency to wander. Therefore before leaving the base camp in the morning one has to fix his mind.” He then spoke of how the mind has to be fixed on the objective and not allowed to wander.
Polish your mirror neurons so you can be sensitive to the emotional needs of others but not controlled by them. People with a certain spiritual orientation find a stable fixed point of reference in the fact “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You.” Mirror that to those around you.

Global Warming

“Waste not want not.”
“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Our predecessors beat us to those practical insights. They are indeed words of wisdom.  I believe in conservation. The first paying job I had was with the conservation department in our state. I believe in thrift. I am not as thrifty as the woman who puts her used paper towel on the kitchen sink faucet to dry overnight for reuse, or the man who rinses and saves his dental floss for reuse. However, I am provident and at best frugal. One of the most popular movements of our time advocates a worthy means to an impossible end. The means involves but is not limited to reducing atmospheric pollution, conserving energy, when possible using biodegradable products, conserving water and reducing greenhouse gases. I’m a believer who does those things. The intended end is to stop global warming. To help determine if this is possible, consider the history of our planet. To do so take into consideration the various climate changes in the past and in light of them consider if there were human activities that caused them or if they were simply endemic and cyclical. When visiting the Sahara
Desert, I was shown evidence that it once was a vast forest, verdure. Herbage abounded. Today it is the largest arid land mass on earth. Fossils of animals that were foragers and grazers reveal it was once a vegetative area. Fossil remains of trees are found in vast areas of the desert. What could have been the conditions created by human beings to cause this dramatic change? There were no fossil fuels or greenhouse gases produced by humans in such quantities as to have caused it. In Switzerland we visited the Jungfrau where a contrasting climate to the Sahara exists. On this mountain summit you are above 95% of the atmospheric pollution of the earth.  The snow and glaciers cover the mountains all year. The Ice Palace has been carved in the glacier. Long corridors and spacious rooms are made the more interesting by stunning ice sculptures.
Snow flakes that fall on the Jungfrau flow through the lower Grindelwald Glacier in the form of ice crystals for 200 to 250 years before melting and becoming part of the streams in the valleys.  This is a marvelous place to study global warming. A 10,000 year record shows a rapid change every 2,000 years from colder to warmer or warmer to colder. That is earth’s history.
None of our current cultural “culprits” to which global warming is attributed, existed 10,000, 8,000 or even 2,000 years ago to cause the change. The conditions that caused these periods of global warming exist today and existed throughout history. The conditions that caused change yesteryear exist today and they are beyond human kind’s capacity to stop it. Our ancestors had to adjust and so must we.
Let’s join in conservation and preservation and not make things worse, but don’t expect to reverse historical cycles inherent in creation.

Pride In America

Do you find it hard to be proud of America?  Like all other nations it isn’t a perfect country.  As a stimulus to your pride, consider the Iwo Jima statue.  A friend shared some of these insights.

How could any American stand before the memorial in Washington depicting the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima and not have pride?  Those six boys, and they were boys, that raised that flag typify all American youth who have kept us free. As a result of our national TV ministry, I corresponded with one of those heroic boys in his latter years.

John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, typified those six after the war.  He would never give an interview.  Bradley was a medic who held over 200 boys as they writhed in pain and screamed as they died without medication to midigate their pain.

Harlon Block, high school all-state football player, was the first to put the pole in the ground.  At the age of 21, Harlon died holding his intestines in his hand.

Rene Gagon was an 18 year old from New Hampshire who kept a picture of his girlfriend in his helmet.

Sgt. Mike Shank was known by his colleagues as “the old man”.  He was 24.  He was known for saying, “Let’s die for our country.”

Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona, was one of the few who walked off Iwo.  President Truman called him a hero.  Ira said, “How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?”

Franklin Sousley was a fun-loving country boy from Hilltop, KY.  Franklin died at the age of 19.

Consider this in light of our Iraq casualties.  Over 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima.  Those who walked off never tolerated themselves being called heroes.  They considered those who didn’t walk off the real heroes.

Three of the six depicted as raising the flag were among those who didn’t walk off Iwo.

It might offend Michelle if she took a close look at that statue of the flag raising by those 6 boys.  A close look reveals there were thirteen hands on the flag staff, not twelve.  when asked about it, the person responsible for the statue said the thirteenth hand was the hand of God.  Deal with that you history revisionists!

I was the interim pastor of Lee Greenwood for a year.  He has one song that is his signature achievement, “God Bless the USA”.  In that song are lines that we should all sing with gratitude for these 6 boys and the thousands like them.

“I am proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.

And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave they right to me”

There is a bumper sticker that reads: “America, she ain’t perfect, but God ain’t through with her yet.”

Pride should produce gratitude that should solicit a commitment to helping make America a more perfect union.

A New America

When President Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote his memoirs of the crucial years following the Second World War, he entitled them, “Present at the Creation.” Little did he know how true that was. So much of our political world of today was brought into being during the days of the Roosevelt administration. A new national mentality was created by the two Roosevelts who were president. What Teddy set in motion Franklin accentuated. That generation of Americans was present at the creation of a new interpretation of the role of government.
When President Franklin Roosevelt signed what we now call the death tax bill he said, “This is the beginning of the redistribution of the wealth of America.” It ushered in a new creative way of interpreting the role of government. All of today’s entitlement programs are an outgrowth of that philosophy.
Economic stimulus checks, government support of businesses facing potential bankruptcy, federally funded programs that were once part of the business community were not the intent of the founders of our nation. The government cannot give the public anything costing money that they don’t take the money from the people to give. The government has no money. Their money comes from the tax paying public and the government determines how much the tax will be.
As a Congressman Davey Crockett, the lion of Washington in his day, said, “We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity, but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”
It was part of his speech when Congress proposed to give a subsidy to the widow of a navy man. He felt it unconstitutional for the government to give support so instead he offered to personally give a week’s wage to the widow and urged his colleagues each to do the same.
Later in explaining his reasoning he offered this sockdolager, “Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.”
A new America was created in the 1930s and 40s. Now another new America is being advocated by some proponents of an even more benevolent government who are poised for election. The new America will be more dramatically different from our present one than ours is from the one of which Crockett spoke.
It will involve government getting more involved in public life and giving away more than ever. To do so they will have to take more than ever from the people. For example there is a proposal that not only will income off savings be taxed but the savings themselves.
One of our founding fathers warned against the day when an unproductive element of society would discover they could vote themselves benefits by electing those disposed to provide them. Thus we were warned of a potential implosion resulting from the more productive element of society being over taxed.
Like Acheson, are we present at the creation?