Conscious Dreaming, Conscious Self

Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness
by David Foulkes

dreaming as we normally understand it–active stories in which the dreamer is an actor–appears relatively late in childhood. This true dreaming begins between the ages of 7 and 9. He argues that this late development of dreaming suggests an equally late development of waking reflective self-awareness.

What Little Kids See When They Dream
from Happiest Baby

Understandably, dreams can confuse small kids. Pre-schoolers often think their dreams are magically placed in their heads by someone else, or by God. […] Are you wondering what your kids are doing in their dreams? Good question, but the answer is…nothing! The “character of the self” hasn’t even made an appearance yet! […] Generally around age 8, children appear as central characters in their dreams. Dream narratives become more complex and longer. Not only do kids participate in the action as it unfolds, they also have thoughts and feelings within the dream.

What Do Babies Dream About?
by Natalie Wolchover, Live Science

According to research by Foulkes and his colleagues, even children at the ripe old age of 4 or 5 typically describe dreams that are static and plain, with no characters that move or act, few emotions and no memories.

Vivid dreams with structured narratives set in at age 7 or 8, around the same time children develop a clear understanding of their own identity. Researchers think self-awareness is necessary for the insertion of the self into dreams. In fact, the amount of self-knowledge a child possesses — her understanding that she would be the same person even if she had a different name, for instance, and that she is the same person as she was when she was a baby — strongly correlates with the vibrancy and amount of plot structure in that child’s dreams.

Dreaming and Narration
by Richard Walsh, LHN

The notion of the dream as itself narrative appears to conflate perceptual consciousness of the “facts” of the dream with reflective consciousness about the dream.5

In the Freudian model, the dream gives expression to prior, unconscious dream thoughts (Freud [1900] 1953). From a neurobiological perspective, however, there is no further regression of meaning, because dreams arise from the activation of the forebrain by periodic neuronal activity in the brain stem (Hobson & McCarley 1977). Such brain activity during sleep may be random or part of some adaptive process associated with that of sleep itself; the inception of dream mentation is just a by-product in this account. All the remarkable coherence of dreams is attributed to the mind’s subsequent cognitive efforts of synthesis, drawing upon the narrative sense-making capacities of waking life (Hobson 2002). Cognitive models of dreaming have more to say about the functioning of such sense-making processes, however. They too regard narrativizing as integral to the formation of dreams, but note that this should not be taken for granted; our storytelling capabilities develop in the course of childhood, and this development correlates with the development of children’s dreams (Foulkes 1999). Narrative logic, here, is not a given; instead, cognitive accounts foreground the creativity of dreams—their status, that is, not just as narratives but as fictions. Such approaches conceive the motive forces of dreaming as continuous with those of waking thought, whether the emphasis falls upon imaginative world-making (States 2003) or on the articulation of emotion (Hartmann 2010b).

Science: Julian Jaynes
by Josh Ronsen, monk mink pink punk

The most interesting, to me, paper concerned Agamemnon’s dream in the Iliad, how this dream mirrors the structure of the Bicameral Mind and how it differs from our dreams. In Bicameral dreams, and Jaynes admits there are not that many dreams from this time period to analyze, the dreamer is never anywhere other than his sleeping area, and the dream is always a direct message from a god/angel. Jacob’s “ladder” dream from the Jewish Bible fits in here as well. Compare this with our dreams, which can take place anywhere within the limits of our imagination, just as our consciousness can be projected throughout those same limits.

Bicameral Dream question
from Julian Jaynes Society Discussion Forum

Jaynes believes modern dreams are consciousness operating in sleep. We see elements of waking consciousness in dreams such as an analog ‘I’ narratizing in a mind-space. In cases where the dreamer simply experiences a visitation from a spirit or god issuing a command while asleep in his own bed, this aspect of consciousness is absent — i.e., the person does not see themselves as an actor in their dreams. So dreams do not “prove” but rather provide further evidence for a different pre-conscious mentality. We see these types of visitation dreams in ancient civilizations, pre-literate societies, and in children. As children develop consciousness, we see consciousness expand in their dreams.

“Primitive Mentality” by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl & Jaynes’ Theory
from Julian Jaynes Society Discussion Forum

In Chapter 3, Levy-Bruhl discusses the prophetic nature of dreams among tribal people.

“To the primitive mind, as we know, the seen and the unseen worlds form but one, and there is therefore uninterrupted communication between what we call obvious reality and the mystic powers. Nowhere perhaps is this more directly and completely brought about than in dreams, in which man passes from the one world to the other without being aware of it. Such is in fact the ordinary idea of the dream to primitive peoples. The ‘soul’ leaves its tenement for the time being. It frequently goes very far away; it communes with spirits or with ghosts. At the moment of awakening it returns to take its place in the body once more. … At other times, it is the spirits of the dead, or even other powers, which come and visit the soul in sleep” (pgs. 98–99).

This immediately calls to mind E.R. Dodds’ discussion of the prophetic nature of dreams among the ancient Greeks. Dreams in ancient Greece, unlike modern, conscious dreams, often took the form of a visitation by a god or spirit that issued some form of command. […]

There seems to be strong evidence for the very different nature of what we might call “bicameral dreams” vs. “conscious dreams.” For those interested in this subject, I highly recommend reading Levy-Bruhl’s entire chapter on dreams along with Dodds.

More on the commanding nature of primitive people’s dreams:

“It frequently happens that when all the missionary’s efforts to induce a native to change his faith have proved ineffectual, a dream suddenly determines him to take the step, especially if the dream is repeated several times. For example, among the Basutos, ‘what plays the chief part in the conversion of the Mosuto? … The paramount role is played by the dream. … To make him definitely decide, there must be something out of the common, a Divine intervention (as he regards it) which strikes his imagination. … If you ask a heathen who has heard the Gospel, when he will be converted, he will answer in the most matter-of-course way: ‘When God speaks to me'” (p. 110).

“In Central Africa, dreams have similar meanings. To give but one example: “The Azande of the Upper Congo believe that during the night the dead make their wishes known to the living. Dreams are quite authentic to them, and they are convinced that when they see a dead relative in a dream they really have a conversation with his ghost, and in its course he gives advice, expresses satisfaction or displeasure, and states his aspirations and desires” (pgs. 111–112).

“‘The Iroquois,’ says another Jesuit priest, ‘have, strictly speaking, but one divinity, which is the dream; they submit to it and follow all its orders most implicitly.’ … It is not simply a question of advice, hints, friendly suggestions, official warnings conveyed by dreams; it is nearly always definite orders, and nothing can prevent the Indian from obeying them” (p. 113).

“The Greeks and the Irrational” by E.R. Dodds
from Julian Jaynes Society Discussion Forum

Chapter 4 describes the nature of dreams in ancient Greeks and how dreams changes as culture [or consciousness] changes. Dodds describes what Jaynes would probably refer to as “bicameral dreams” — dreams that consist of a visitation and the communication of some type of message or command.

“Ancient literature is full of these ‘godsent’ dreams in which a single dream-figure presents itself, as in Homer, to the sleeper, and gives him prophecy, advice, or warning” (p. 107).

“Such dreams played an important part in the life of other ancient peoples, as they do in that of many races to-day. Most of the dreams recorded in Assyrian, Hittite, and ancient Egyptian literature are ‘divine dreams’ in which a god appears and delivers a plain message to the sleeper, sometimes predicting the future, sometimes demanding cult” (pgs. 108-109).

On the frequency of hallucinations and visions:

“As I have mentioned self-induced visions in connection with the Asclepius cult, I may add a couple of general remarks on waking visions or hallucinations. It is likely that these were commoner in former times than they are to-day, since they seem to be relatively frequent among primitives; and even with us they are less rare than is often supposed. They have in general the same origin and psychological structure as dreams, and like dreams they tend to reflect traditional culture-patterns. Among the Greeks, by far the commonest type is the apparition of a god or the hearing of a diving voice which commands or forbids the performance of certain acts. This type figures, under the name of ‘spectaculum,’ in Chalcidius’ classification of dreams and visions; his example is the daemonion of Socrates. When all allowance has been made for the influence of literary tradition in creating a stereotyped form, we should probably conclude that experiences of this kind had once been fairly frequent, and still occurred occasionally in historical times” (pgs. 116-117).

Consciousness and Dreams
by Marcel Kuijsten, Julian Jaynes Society

The study of dreams in ancient civilizations and pre-literate societies demonstrate that dreams can be used as an indication of the level of consciousness in a given culture. Similarly, children’s dreams provide evidence that dreams can be used as an indication of the level of consciousness in a developing child. In Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness (2002), child psychologist and dream expert David Foulkes challenges the popular misconception that dreaming is “a given” in human experience. In a section on the development of consciousness in children that sounds surprisingly reminiscent of Jaynes, Foulkes writes: “I hypothesize that dreaming is simply the operation of consciousness in sleep … that consciousness develops, and that it does so more slowly and later than is generally believed” (Foulkes, 2002).

According to Foulkes, the nature and content of children’s dreams changes dramatically over time. For example, during the preschool years, “dreams are brief and infrequent; they focus on body states; their imagery is static.” Dreams slowly transform to those experienced in adulthood between the ages of 5 and 9:

First, dream reports become longer, but not more frequent, and now describe social interaction and the kind of movement that suggests kinematic rather than static imaging; still lacking, however, is active participation in dream events by the dreamer herself or himself. Next, dream reports become more frequent as well as longer and narratively more complex, and active self-participation becomes a general possibility, along with, for the first time, the reliable attribution to the self of feelings and thoughts occurring in the dream in response to dream events (Foulkes, 2002).

The dreamer does not regularly appear as an active participant in his or her dreams — according to Jaynes, one of the hallmarks of conscious dreams — until between the ages of 7 and 9. Conscious dreams, therefore, seem to be infrequent until some time after the child has developed consciousness in waking life.

The content of dreams provide another method to gauge the level of consciousness in a given culture or individual. If language had no effect on consciousness — or if consciousness developed far back in our evolutionary past and has remained unchanged since — we would expect dreams to remain unchanged both throughout recorded history and throughout an individual’s development. Instead, dreams reflect developmental stages in mentality from preconscious to conscious, brought about by changes both culturally as well as in the linguistic sophistication of the dreamer.

Dreams in bicameral cultures lack consciousness — an analog ‘I’ narratizing in a mind-space, and mimic the waking experience of receiving behavioral commands from gods. In contrast, the dreams of conscious individuals reflect conscious narratization during sleep.

The Stuff of Childhood

I like to run and walk in the forest and I like to draw.
When I grow up I want to be a runner, forest ranger, or an artist.

Those are words from my young childhood,from 2nd grade. I still like those same things. Then again, right before those words, I also said that, “I like pizza.” But apparently I was self-aware enough at the time to realize I didn’t want a pizza-related career.

Besides, I wrote elsewhere that I wanted to work in the Sears Tower. I can’t say that fits my present aspirations and lifestyle, although being employed as a parking ramp cashier is closer to the Sears Tower than to the rest. Maybe I need to rethink the Sears Tower option.

* * *

My mom was clearing out old paperwork. She had multiple folders of various official documents giving glimpses of my life, from birth to high school graduation. Most of it is boring stuff, including grade reports. But there were a few interesting things mixed in.

My birth certificate shows that Dr. Suk W. Lee brought me into this world. He was my mom’s doctor during her pregnancy. He jokingly gets credit for why I had epicanthic eye folds as an infant. My eyes were quite squinty to an extreme degree and remained that way into early elementary school. Along with my blonde hair, I assume that would be my northern European ancestry.

Along with some other papers and cards, I found a newspaper clipping. It shows the dismissals for the hospital. It lists my mother and I, but what is interesting is that my mother is referred to as Mrs. Daniel C. Steele. This is what makes genealogical research so difficult. In centuries past, most women went through their entire lives without ever having their name stated on an official document.

It was still very much a man’s world, even in the ’70s. To emphasize this point, I wrote in Kindergarten (obviously with some assistance) that, “My father works. He works at the office,” along with a picture of a smoke-belching factory (a massive sun overhead, a symbol of power); but on the next page, I write that, “My mother works. She sweeps the floor,” and the accompanying picture is of her as the stereotypical smiling housewife. In reality, my mom was a speech pathologist who had been working outside of the house for years. I feel I should apologize to my mom (I did end up seeking her out in order to apologize about my childhood stereotyping of her. And guess what? She was sweeping the floor. Ha!). She did all the housework, cooked all the meals, and took care of us kids while she held down a full time job. Feminism back then meant a women could do it all, quite literally.

Mothers are the best. Civilization would collapse without them.

On a different note, another thing that caught my attention was my baptism record. Four months after my birth, my parents decided to get me (along with my older brothers) baptized and Christened. It was done at the United Church of Religious Science, the church based on Ernest Holmes’ The Science of Mind. It was the first church my parents attended as a married couple. They began attending a year before my birth and following a period of non-religiosity and, on my father’s part, agnosticism.

I was surprised that such a New Agey church did baptisms and Christenings. Anyway, it is nice having a certificate proving that my mortal soul has been safeguarded with proper Christian ritual, not that damnation is a part of New Thought theology.

Some of the more enjoyable things to look back on are old writings. There is a collection of stories from third grade. It includes one of my stories and that of my classmates. The story of mine was about a guy named Vick with a space ship who gets captured by the evil magician Zork, but his lazer comes in handy in making an escape. My best friend at the time, Andy Armens, wrote a micro-story that amused me:

“A train came out of a tunnel and tried to go over a bridge. The bridge broke. The train fell into Dead Man’s River. They went down a waterfall and got killed.”

I noticed something about many of the stories. They involved fear of one sort or another and often taking action in response to the source of fear—being or feeling threatened by, being killed or hurt by, being attacked by or fighting with, being captured by or escaping from ghosts, monsters, bad men, robbers, evil magicians, or unfortunate events. Just last year, I came across a recent collection of stories from the same local elementary school. Quite a few of the stories had the same focus on fear. I guess that is a fairly uncertain and helpless stage of life, when kids are just beginning to learn to take care of themselves. Stories, like art work, gives children a safe outlet for their fears.

I remember one story I wrote at around that age. It was about a future dystopian world. There had been some catastrophe and the biosphere was destroyed. People were then living in enclosed cities for protection. I didn’t find a copy of that story in the papers, but it would be nice to see it now. That was the Cold War fears seeping into my childhood psyche. It obviously impacted me for life. Some of my first essays written for school were on topics such as ocean pollution and overpopulation. That is a heavy load to put on the mind at such a young age.

* * *

What interests me the most are the official school documents. And there are lots of them. They bring back some painful memories.

The worst year of my mildly troubled youth was in 7th grade, having begun when at the transformative age of twelve. I did not transition well from elementary school to middle school. It was traumatic, in quiet desperation kind of way. I utterly despised school, except for art class. I did gain my love of reading fiction that year and spent a fair amount of time in the library, one of the few happy places while at school. I almost flunked out of 7th grade. I would have been held back, if we hadn’t moved. On a report card from that year, my grades were mostly Cs and Ds–it states that:

“NEEDS TO LISTEN MORE CAREFULLY AND FOLLOW DIRECTIONS
IS TOO EASILY DISTRACTED
SHOWING IMPROVEMENT
HOMEWORK IS FREQUENTLY LATE OR NEVER HANDED IN
IS ENJOYABLE TO HAVE IN CLASS
SHOWS CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION”

My difficulties began much earlier than that, which I discussed in some detail in a previous post (Aspergers and Chunking). Even after getting speech therapy, my learning disability dogged me for the rest of my education.

Looking back at the years of school records, I noticed some patterns of observations. I was described as getting along well with others, makes friends, cooperative, willing to participate, tries hard, creative, imaginative, thoughtful, requiring ‘thinking time’, slow (even neat, conscientious, and perfectionist), hard time understanding or following directions (needing directions repeated or looking to other students to understand), inconsistent in turning in homework, disorganized, easily distracted, etc. Basically, I often tried hard to fit in and do what was expected of me, but I wasn’t always successful.

I had a disorganized mind, and I simply did not learn and work in a normal fashion. I still have a disorganized mind of sorts—sprawling and unfocused and, of course, easily distracted. My mind runs around in circles and takes extended byways to get to what is sought, if it ever gets there. I’m a slow thinker and slow reader… or rather I’m inefficient. Why do something simply when it can be made complicated and convoluted? Straight lines of thought and simple, direct statements are boring.

Much of this had to do with language skills. I was late in learning to read. It was partly word retrieval, but it seems there was more to it than that. I apparently had difficulty in making complete sentences and clear phrasing, overusing interjections, understanding pronouns and tenses, formulating questions, and other similar issues. In 6th grade, my teacher wrote:

“Ben has good literal comprehension, but at times misses points which lead to deeper understanding in stories. he has some difficulty relating ideas from the real world to the context of a story.”

I’m not entirely sure what that meant. I did find some other clues. From a 2nd grade speech/language form, there were several important details noted:

• “Ben continues to have some problems with re-grouping in math and makes number reversals. he also has problems with sequencing which have hindered him in math. (What number comes before or after another number, etc.) Sequencing in stories is also difficult for Ben.”
• “Ben is stronger visually than auditorially.”
• “Weaknesses: . . . Language dev.[elopment] lag hinders ability to use context clues”

Interestingly, I noticed even a comment about visual perception difficulties. I really don’t know what that could be, as I’ve always been visually adept. It is the one area where I’ve always excelled. When tested in the first grade, my visual problem-solving was at a 12th grade level.

One thing that came up is visual cues were challenging for me in relation to any verbal task, and the challenge is that all of education is verbal. Both listening and reading were problematic for me. Language wasn’t easily connected to other aspects of my thinking and life, even such simple things as recalling a friend’s name. It wasn’t just word recall, but also information recall and making sense of it in any verbal context (e.g., being asked a question).

There was a particularly interesting psychological interpretive report. It was done because of my 7th grade problems.

The psychologist pointed out that my IQ was 102 on the Stanford-Binet intelligence test when it was given to me in 1st grade. That is only average, but she doesn’t mention the breakdown of the test between fluid and crystallized intelligence (i.e., between problem-solving and book learning). That was probably the same test that showed me with problem-solving skills at a 12th grade level. So, considering that my IQ was average, the book learning part must have been extremely low.

She adds that, “It was thought that he had difficulties primarily in transferring information from one modality to another in expressive areas.” Problem-solving, as long as it was non-verbal/expressive, wouldn’t involve that particular difficulty.

In another section about my 7th grade abilities and behavior, the psychologist made some useful observations:

“At this time Ben is functioning intellectually in the average range of intelligence, but there is significant discrepancies between his verbal task, just at the average range, and his work on performance tasks, which is in the gifted range. When Ben works on activities that do not involve interaction with people, he can be extremely productive. He does not use trial and error, but figures out exactly what has to be done, and then does it. In verbal tasks he gives minimal interaction. There seems to be a word retrieval problem, which has been noted in the past, and he would make comments such as, “I don’t know how to state it.” Also noted in verbal tasks that he sometimes missed directions, and then would ask to have them repeated.”

A lot of that resonates with me. I’ve always had social issues that go along with verbal issues. I often felt stupid and, worse, that there was something wrong with me. There was a disconnect between my potential ability to do something and the actual results of my trying to do it. I developed a massive deficiency in confidence and, along with depression, began to develop social anxiety or something like it. I just couldn’t deal with the pressure and the constant sense of failure and inadequacy. It plain sucked. I hated school and I hated myself. I’ve never gotten over that feeling.

There was one thing that I think the psychologist got wrong and, in talking about it, my mom agrees about this. The psychologist concludes that, my younger self’s “problems are related to a history of learning difficulties and a present style of covert resistance to pressure. That is, Ben does not ever exert open defiance or resistance, but instead gives minimal responses whenever possible. He is never actively uncooperative, but the feeling he communicates is very definitely that he does not like being pressured.”

That misses the point. I was feeling frustrated and hopeless, a lost cause and a failure. I had a low self-concept, thought of myself as unpopular and weak, was painfully shy and carried a debilitating sense of shame. I lacked social skills to the point of being socially oblivious, probably somehow related to my learning disability. I didn’t understand people or the world, much less how I was supposed to deal with all my educational problems. No one else seemed to understand me either or knew how to actually help me. Anything I did or didn’t do would be wrong and so what was the point. I was on the verge of developing a permanent state of learned helplessness. It is almost certain that I already had depression at the time, although I wouldn’t be diagnosed until college.

The psychologists response was to have perceived me as having been uncooperative. That probably wasn’t a helpful conclusion.

* * *

While reading such reports, it gets me thinking about early childhood. Mixed in with official documents, there were some photographs of my young self. I was a happy little kid.

One thing I was always good at was art. In the quote at the the beginning of this piece, I stated that among other possibilities I dreamed of growing up to become an artist. Later on, I would even win a scholarship for an art degree. But I don’t think my parents considered that practical and so I went into a botany major and was predictably overwhelmed by science and math classes.

No guidance counselor should have ever allowed me to take that major without voicing some serious concern. The only class I ever had to repeat was a chemistry class. That should have been a sign of problems. But all anyone had to do was ask me. I hated science classes, partly because how they were taught and how I learned. My troubles with learning disability would be magnified a thousandfold in college, and yet no one thought to offer me extra help. I was simply thrown into the deep end with the assumption that I’d just start swimming. Instead, depression fell on me like a ton of bricks.

* * *

It feels like for my whole life I was always being set up for failure. I have this basic sense of being out of sync with the rest of humanity. I’m a seriously dysfunctional person, but I hide it well. That is all that society cares about is as long as you can manage to hide your problems and not make them public concerns. Struggle and fail in isolation. Don’t make yourself a nuisance. It’s all your fault and there is no one else to blame. Feel ashamed, but suppress it and pretend your normal.

What is frustrating about all of this isn’t just my personal problems and the unhappy moments of my past. My personal issues are rather insignificant in the big scheme of things. Our entire society is dysfunctional to the point of self-destructiveness, some might even say sociopathy. We humans have a collective learning disability in that we are incapable of learning from our past mistakes, much less grasp our collective failings in the present moment. My granddad gave my infant self a framed copy of The New York Times’ front page for the date of my birth. The events reported were rather mundane, pretty much the same old crap we are still dealing with—mostly an obsession with such things as politics and troublesome socialists and civil rights activists, healthcare and education, crime and drugs, international conflict and the Middle East.

I just turned 40 years old. That feels like a new era of my life. I guess I’m old now, but it occurs to me that I’m now at the age my dad was when I entered first grade. Back then, my dad was hitting the high point of his career in the private sector and, although his prospects were bright, he had a midlife crisis. He was wise enough to wait to get well into adulthood before having such a crisis. As for me, I started my crisis in childhood and worked from there.

Mine was a generation with many problems. I had good company. As I’ve pointed out a number of times, this partly had to do with lead toxicity, possibly related to my own learning disability. It was also the entire shifting of society and economy, pollutants just being one small part. We don’t choose the world we are born into. I was my parents’ last child because of the fears at the time about overpopulation and the overtaxing of the environment.

When we are young, we dream of the future. This is usually expressed in personal terms. Teachers and other adults will ask us what we like to do and what we want to be when we grow up. But it doesn’t take long for the larger world to impinge on the developing mind and to shape the emerging individual. Each new generation grows up with a shared set of dreams and fears, opportunities and problems. It is what we inherit and what we carry forward through the rest of our lives, traces of it passing onto the following generations.

What will the kids of today find in the boxes of childhood stuff when they reach adulthood and then middle age? What will they make of the world that made them into who they are? How will they see those of us who helped create the world they were born into and inherited?

* * *

With those questions in mind, it occurred to me how so many of my generational peers are at the age of being ‘young’ parents. Both of my brothers have kids, one of whom is just starting school. I have a number of cousins and friends with kids as well, all at school age, many still in elementary school.

I see the issues they are dealing with, both the parents and the kids. There are, of course, various issues involved, as growing up is always a challenge—issues of: learning, development, behavior, etc. In some cases, the parents are struggling. It’s a tough position to be in as a parent, not always knowing how to best help your child and no doubt making mistakes in the process. Also, like in the past, school officials aren’t always helpful, considering the limits of funding, resources, and time.

What kind of childhood do kids have these days? What memories are they forming? It does seem like a strange time to be a kid.

One thought I had was how the world is becoming more impersonal. This is seen in education, where bureaucracy has taken over. I noticed the shift happening even in the records across my own grade school education. The early forms were often filled out by hand and contained personal observations made by teachers, school psychologists, etc. But later records were almost entirely type written and often obviously computer-generated, all personal aspects eliminated.

It also makes me wonder what will get saved. My mom apparently saved almost everything and there was plenty to be saved. All work was done on physical paper. Computers simply weren’t used when I was in grade school, even though they were around. We had computers at home, but they ultimately were just fancy typewriters.

When I was growing up, my mom made photo albums for the family and for each of us boys. But neither of my sister-in-laws makes photo albums for their kids. Most of the photographs remain on the computer, at best maybe getting posted on Facebook. Will those photos just get lost over the decades? Where will Facebook and all those pictures be when my nieces and nephew turn 40 years old? Will people go back to some archived Facebook to explore their childhoods and reminisce?

Many have noted how much childhood has changed in recent generations. It makes one wonder how the remembering of childhood will also change.

 

Why are there refugees at the US southern border?

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/30/5842054/violence-in-central-america-and-the-child-refugee-crisis

“Recent studies suggest that most of these unaccompanied children aren’t economic migrants, as many Americans might assume — they’re fleeing from threats and violence in their home countries, where things have gotten so bad that many families believe that they have no choice but to send their children on the long, dangerous journey north. They’re not here to take advantage of American social services — they’re refugees from conflict. Understanding the nature of the violence pushing them north is crucial for figuring out what to do about the child refugee crisis on our southern border.”

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/07/12/why-the-honduran-children-flee-north/

“Much of the violence driving thousands of unaccompanied children from Honduras to the U.S. can be traced to the past decades of U.S. military and economic interference in Honduras, including ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for a 2009 coup, Adrienne Pine tells Dennis J Bernstein.”

http://www.mintpressnews.com/central-american-child-refugees-made-in-the-usa/193890/

“The unwanted, invading hordes ejected from a country that did not want them are actually the folks the kids now on our border are fleeing, and the country that ejected them is our own.

“That’s because the refugee cum immigration crisis now playing out all the way from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, is one that in large part has been manufactured right here in America. Ironically — or perhaps appropriately — the vicious criminal gangs that have taken over large swathes of the countries where the kids currently being detained in our border control holding cells are coming from, have their origins here in the U.S.”

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2014/06/09/immigrant-children-arizona-border-answers/10246771/

“Gang violence in El Salvador and in urban areas of Guatemala has escalated dramatically in recent months since a weak truce among rival gangs has evaporated, said Elizabeth G. Kennedy, a Fulbright scholar reached Monday in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

“”Half of them are fleeing for their lives,” she said.

[ . , . ]

“”Immigration laws have as much to do with the crisis as the conditions back home,” she said.

“She said that because of civil war and post-conflict violence, Hondurans have been able to seek asylum and be granted temporary protected status since 1998. Salvadorans have been able to gain temporary protected status since an arthquake in 2001.”

http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2014/07/vassar_child_refugees_here_are.html

“More than 55,000 children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have turned up at U.S. borders since October. Many of the children are unaccompanied minors, and the U.S. Border Patrol has taken them into custody, according to the Associated Press.

“Their home countries are wracked by violence related to the illegal drug trade, NPR reported.

“Honduras has the highest peacetime homicide rate of any country in the world, the Associated Press reported. In El Salvador, 2.1 percent of the population has been uprooted because of violence.”

http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/why-90-000-children-flooding-our-border-is-not-an-immigration-story-20140616

“So what is attracting them to the United States?

“First, I have to point out to you, it’s not just the United States. That was a another red flag for us. There is an increasing trend to seek asylum in Mexico, which is much safer for them than where they are from. The number of asylum seekers in Nicaragua, in Belize, in Costa Rica, in Panama—all of that has grown 712 percent since 2008.

“This is not the normal flow. For the U.N. refugee agency to register an uptick in asylum applications in places other than the United States is a huge red flag for us. People are leaving to places where they can find safety.”

[ . . . ]

“Are these refugees? Immigrants? Does the distinction matter?

“What we learned from our empirical study was that 58 percent of the children we interviewed flagged an international-protection concern. Where we drew the line, was that these children feared return because of violence and insecurity. They feared harm to themselves, and had the single conviction that they could not be protected in their countries. So that was our most conservative lens that we could look at the numbers. We excluded entrenched poverty, we excluded everything else. So 58 percent of the kids, in a statistically significant pool of 404, we wanted to be able to extrapolate to have a significant pool, present international protection concerns.

“So what does that mean? We did not interview them [to determine refugee status]. We interviewed them to find out why they left. We did a preliminary screening which to us was enough to say these individuals presented concerns.

“Which means that if a country was to reject these people from their borders without allowing them any access to asylum protection or complementary protection processes, it actually would be in breach of the conventions.”

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/4/5773268/children-migration-central-america-texas-unaccompanied-alien-children-border-crisis

“But just releasing a child into the custody of a “relative” doesn’t mean the child is out of harm’s way. Back in the 1990s, the (now-defunct) Immigration and Naturalization Services found that many unauthorized Chinese immigrants were being unintentionally released into the care of relatives who turned out to be part of smuggling networks — who would, in turn, extort immigrants’ parents for payment.

“It’s not clear that the same thing is happening today with unaccompanied child migrants, but it points to the importance of strict screening procedures — and many agencies may be too strained by the influx to do proper screening. Nora Skelly, who works with Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, says that HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has rules to fingerprint and screen any relative before releasing a child. But she’s heard of cases in which HHS loosens those requirements so that kids can be released more quickly.”

A Lesson I’m Trying To Unlearn: Punishment vs Forgiveness

I was thinking about forgiveness lately. Maybe it’s that end-of-the-year mentality causing me to consider the failures of the past. I came across a very personal article from the Guardian which shows how difficult it can be to either seek or offer forgiveness.

In my life, I’ve come to realize I’m in certain ways not a forgiving person. I don’t become angry easily and I try to not worry about the small stuff. However, there is one category of behavior that is hard for me let go of: betrayal of trust. This isn’t an issue most of the time for there are few people I trust enough ever to feel betrayed.

As for those I do trust to a great extent, my attitude is very different. If a relationship is important to me, I’ll put a lot of effort and commitment into it. My willingness to forgive will go far, but after some p0int too much just is beyond my normal capacity for forgiveness. I have these very clear boundaries, lines in the sand. Other people may not realize they are there, but they will know of them when they cross them. If you recognize I’m angry or upset or even just highly annoyed, the only good response is to back off. You really don’t want to test me.

This is an issue in my family. I’m very much my mother’s son and my mother’s family is known for holding grudges for years. I suspect it is genetic because I’ve inherited this ability to a lesser degree, despite my not having grown up around my mom’s family. For me, my grudges tend to be based on a desire to communicate. If I feel a failure of communication, I tend to lose hope… and if it lasts too long, I lose the connection with that person that made me care in the first place. Not being able to make myself understood frustrates me to no end. On the other hand, to be able to express myself and in turn to understand the other’s perspective can sooth the worst of conflicts.

In thinking about forgiveness, I was reminded of something my parents taught me as a child… and I began to feel resentful, wishing they hadn’t taught me such a lesson. Here it is: During a difficult time in my childhood, I was struggling in school and generally sad about social changes with leaving elementatry school. I just wanted to escape or at least avoid my problems, and so I would sometimes lie. What my parents taught me was that once trust is lost it can take a long time to be earned back.

That seems like a responsible thing for a parent to teach a child. However, the more I thought about it, I came to see the dark shadow it casts. The implied morality behind it is hardly uplifting. Let me break it down.

First, there is the message that transgressions must be punished. Those who hurt you must be taught a lesson. To forgive people right away would simply give them an easy way out. The guilty person must fully feel their guilt, must suffer under the scowl of judgment, and only long after may repentance lead to the harmed party deigning to forgive the unworthy transgressor.

Second, forgiveness isn’t something given freely. It must be earned. The harm caused must be paid back in some form. It’s close to an eye for an eye sense of justice. Maybe the person doesn’t have to pay back with their own eye but at least something equivalent. The parent who loses their trust in their child then punishes the child by losing a sense of trust. No one is allowed to fully trust the other until recompensation is achieved.

My parents weren’t bad parents, but they definitely believed in the ‘goodness’ or at least the effectiveness of punishment. I sometimes feel an urge to hit my cats when they do something wrong, not hit them hard but just swat their butts. I realize I feel this urge because this is how I was raised. Even though my parents weren’t abusive, they did make clear that we kids were to obey without being told twice. I don’t like that I’ve inherited this aggressive dominance style of authority. I don’t want to be that kind of person toward others. I don’t want to be that way toward my cats and I would hate myself if I had children and treated them that way.

It’s a thorny issue. I don’t know what I think about all of this. I understand why parents swat their children. I’m of course against kids being abused, but a light swat to the butt isn’t the same as being beaten. As I’m not a parent, it’s hard for me to judge others and it’s hard for me to know what kind of parent I would be. Anyway, it isn’t the physical part of punishment that I’m concerned with here.

Is punishment, especially the psychological or social component, the only or best ‘solution’ to transgression or conflict? Why should punishment come before forgiveness? I would agree justice should accompany forgiveness, whether before or after, but vengeance and justice aren’t the same thing. This is particularly clear when dealing with more personal relationships.

My parents occasionally cross a line and it really pisses me off. A somewhat recent incident led me to not talk to my mom for an extended period of time. She crossed a line she shouldn’t have crossed and she wouldn’t acknowledge how wrong her action was. What made it worse was that she simply refused to try to communicate. She instead left it to my dad to repair the broken relationship. If my mom had been willing to apologize sincerely and fully right away, the incident would have blown over without much further tension. For me, communication is everything.

It seems my mom saw my ‘grudge’ as being irrational or not her problem, that she would just let me get over it on my own. She was treating me in the way she treats her brother when he holds grudges against her. She sees other people’s grudges as the failure or weakness of the other person. This isn’t an entirely unfair or irrational position to take in certain situations, but it can be used as a way to avoid taking responsibility and an unwillingness to take an emotional risk in opening up to the other person.

The problem in my mom’s response is that I was operating under the lesson she had helped instill in me. I was refusing to trust her until she earned back my trust and she was refusing to earn back my trust. What earning back my trust would have meant was simply a willingness to communicate with me and understand why I was so upset. I thought that was a simple expectation, but apparently I was expecting too much.

Contemplating this incident, I’ve come to realize how faulty is this lesson. If we desire to ensure people are punished enough and force them to earn forgiveness, then we can find ourselves waiting a long time. So, I’m in the odd position of also trying to forgive my parents for teaching me to not forgive easily. Fortunately, my parents (my dad in particular) have demonstrated a willingness to communicate even when it is difficult… and there is a type of forgiveness in this attitude. I realize that blaming my parents isn’t helpful in all of this, certainly not helpful in becoming more forgiving. In general toward all people, I deeply want to be forgiving. The corrolary desire for communication ultimately comes down to a desire for understanding. I’ve been attracted to the idea that the best way to be understood is to seek to understand others. I’ve practiced this well at times, but not often enough.

It sounds like I’m making a New Year’s resolution. I’m not sure about forgiveness, but I think I could manage trying to be more understanding.