18 Comments »

1. Katherine:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 1:32 am

   What a time of it you’re having, hope things start to look up and you get a bit of recovery time.

   Thought the ghosts article was fascinating, I remember being really scared of the idea of ghosts as a child even though I wasn’t sure I believed in them. I think a lot of it comes from other kids, there’s always one obsessed with ghosts…

2. Catha:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 7:10 am

   I loved your article on ghosts. It made me think of the way I handle Santa and the Easter Bunny. For us, Easter’s all about celebrating nature’s rebirth, and we’ve created our own “Winter Solstice Santa” who leaves presents under our solstice tree which has a big sun on top (I’m proud of reclaiming the pagan tradition of decorating with evergreen that so many Christians seem to think came from Christianity! In fact, the bible actually states, “Thou shalt not decorate trees as the heathens do.”) Anyway, I’m teaching my girls to be good skeptics, and when they ask me if our Santa or Easter Bunny is real, I answer with questions to get them thinking: “Hmmm, what do *you* think? Is there any evidence to support that? How might you test that hypothesis? etc., etc. And even when they figure out for sure that mom, Santa, and the Easter Bunny are one and the same, we can still have fun pretending they’re real.

3. Gregg100:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 10:18 am

   Well, “Agnostic Mom” sure got my wife’s attention. A pediatric nurse for many years and mom of an asthmatic, she is urging you to immediately file a complaint concerning that doctor with the state medical board; if not for your own satisfaction, then to protect the lives and well being of others. As she put it, “That child could have died!” Her further comment was, “I have worked with my share of that type of doctor and interestingly many were neurologists and they have forgotten their oath.” “It is standard practice to get a second opinion and in many cases, insurance companies require it.”

   On the subject of ghosts, goblins, angels, fairies, etc., I think you have a good handle on it and recognize the complication you get into when you must deal with the good guys like Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc. Based on how you handled it over the last year, I continue to be impressed with your proactive (even though I hate that yuppie word) approach to the concepts. I hope you’re taking notes to incorporate into a handbook.

4. Stephanie:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 12:33 pm

   I am so sorry that you are going through a tough time right now. It is interesting meeting people online…I feel the need to help, but feel helpless because you do not live close to me.

   I enjoyed your article on ghosts. It brought back memories from my childhood. I had the same reaction from my parents about “Bloody Mary” and other games. I began to wonder how I might react in that situation when my kids are starting to have sleepovers. I still catch myself reverting to reactions that my parents had in some situations, but I usually catch myself and realize how silly I am being. The article also made me think of how Halloween was made out to be an evil holiday when I was young. We always went to church for the “Harvest Festival” on Halloween. I enjoy the holiday much more now with my children and find it a great opportunity to talk about what is real and what is not.

5. Lisa:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 4:56 pm

   I hope that your school holiday is full of healthy, happy days! I’m so glad to hear that all of this trouble didn’t entice you to plead for help from a supernatural. Giving up the idea that a god can solve problems if he wills it, sure makes life a whole lot easier to deal with. Just get stuck into the problem and deal with the real issues at hand. The article about ghosts brings up the subject of death again. I’ve been meaning to mention this — several posts back I made a very stupid comment that we don’t know what happens to us when we die. I guess that was the wishful thinking side pushing its way forward — changing life-long beliefs is a slow process! It was also reflective of a small hope that somehow I would be in my Dad’s presence again. Oh, how I miss him. But wishes don’t make things true. What happens when you die is that you are dead. That’s it. Games up. So, if a person is dead, there is no ghost or spirit to linger around — nothing to be afraid of. I wish that I had understood that when I was around 10-12. I was terrified of spirits. One time I was convinced that they followed me home from a graveyard. Luckily, my nearly 7-year-old son is very grounded and easily points out what is fake and what is real. He still believes in a Santa, but is quick to say that the guy in the red suit at the store is just in costume. I think this might be the year that he will put it all together for himself — especially since he can read and knows my handwriting!

6. Lisa:
   October 12th, 2006 @ 7:40 pm

   Just had to share a funny: Today when we got back to the house after school, I asked for my son’s star chart (reward system for focused attention to school work). He had forgotten it in his desk. I non-the-less offered to go bike riding with him as a reward since he was in a fantastic mood (as he usually is when the day has gone well). He then told me that I was just like the people living in Galileo’s time … I was just guessing and not doing experiments to find out what was right!

7. Ron:
   October 13th, 2006 @ 9:46 pm

   I just emailed you a few minutes ago – before reading this post, I said ‘glad to hear nothing major has discouraged you in the health arena’ or something of the sort – DOH!
   Sorry to hear of the difficulties – sounds like you are getting a handle on it well – I’m with Greg100, pursuing some official complaint about the doctor that rejected your children’s care (because you were concerned enough to get a second opinion) seems in order! Your family is in my thoughts and I wish you all the best.

   on to the spooks

   I love ghosts, goblins, monsters, santa, etc.
   They are real to the extent that people want to play with them – as ideas and thought-forms. They play an important role in the organizing of our psyches – as they assume the roles of some of the more blatant archetypes of mythology (an incredibly valid and important tool for our minds).

   To eliminate them is to erase such joys in life as Shakespeare, Jung, cave paintings, fantasy and the joys of fiction.
   A thing can be real as well as fictional, after all – I cried during the experience of many a fiction (Charlette’s Web comes to mind for some reason), because they moved me to feel raw pure personifications of life’s greatest truths, peaks and pits.

   I’m not sure that I’m disagreeing with anything you intended to communicate in your installment, but I want to stress the importance of things that are not strictly REAL (in the measurable, touchable way).
   I’d never want to keep ghost stories from being spooky. I seek out scary stories from time to time because of how much they give to me, focus me, suspend my disbelief so I can hang with Morpheus for a little while in the waking world. These are honestly some of the times of my life connecting me most directly to the human experience.

   The sad stories that usually accompany ghosts are real – the pain they share is universally understood and echoes through the ages as though the deceased are with us looking for sympathy, passing along a cautionary tale, or just reminding us that we are lucky to be alive. Letting their story die with the meat on their bones is foolish when we can learn from them – take some kind of comfort – or just be prompted to hold the ones we love a little closer while we have them.

   One statement you made in your column was questionable:
   “I love that I can state unequivocally to my children that there are …. no mysterious and unnamed forces that can hurt them.”
   Something we are all engaged in today is bringing on increases in heart disease, autism, and asthma (to name a very few conditions) for a population that didn’t used to experience these things as often (longer life expectancy is not the culprit). The origin is mysterious and as yet unnamed. They can just appear – like a monster from under the bed, a faerie changeling, or a sinister ghost portending doom. Somebody in peak condition can die while out for a jog. Accidents and violence often appear as mysterious and the details go unnamed. Someone’s (mysterious unnamed) change of heart can tear your world apart.
   This is why we have monsters – because sh%t happens and there is no ‘fair’ or dependably predictable in nature.

   The fantasy beings serve as placeholders for the variables that will shape our lives as much as (or more than) anything approaching self determinism.

   Dunno if this adds to the conversation, but its my 2 cents.
   And somebody needs to stick up for the monsters (seeing as though they are not around to talk for themselves in any conventional way) – after all, this is their season!

8. Gregg100:
   October 14th, 2006 @ 9:15 am

   Ron,

   Your comment was a challenge for me to assimilate and get my arms around. I’m going to try to respond. It is quite true that ghost stories have been with us since the dawn of written or pictorial communication and they have clearly been an integral part of the human development. On the other side of the coin, I think it is important to recognize them for the fictions they are. It is a pleasure to enjoy Shakespeare as a piece of masterful fiction but quite a different thing to consider ghosts/goblins/devils/angels etc. as real, naturally existing entities. I see it as a matter of keeping one’s perspective in order.

   The random events you refer to such as heart attacks that seem to unfairly fell a young person are not caused by some unseen, undetectable bad Karma or stalking Grim Reaper. They are the result of naturally occurring, causal phenomena and can be explained scientifically.

   It is a very short step from the harmless enjoyment of fictional ghost stories to the very major mental transition to deism. The idea of keeping them as “placeholders for the variable that shape or lives” may be even closer. Accepting deism is, of course, a personal choice and now becomes, in my opinion, an unchallengeable position. It would be like me trying to argue that your favorite color really isn’t blue (or red or yellow or whatever it is). Deism can be challenged when advocates make claims relating to natural phenomena such as parting of seas, rivers turning to blood, unconsumed burning bushes, massive wooden boats to save the fauna and other such events but that is a very different subject.

   I think Noell is quite right in making sure her children see ghosts and fairies and purely fictional characters that are fun to play with as such but there really are no monsters waiting to grab their legs when they get out of bed at night.

9. Ron:
   October 14th, 2006 @ 3:55 pm

   I hear you G100 -

   I’m talking about my unwillingness to say that fiction has no real, literal benefits – and is not itself, therefore, real.

   I know I don’t do a good job of discussing the subject – because I’ve confused others with it before.

   Fiction has a very important role in shaping our minds – and that we often select from a cast of characters that is similar among the diverse cultures of our species is fascinating to me. One of these characters is a ghost, or monster, or fairy, or god for that matter. That doesn’t mean they are real in the sense that you can touch them – but is does mean that they are real as concepts.

   I’m happy to have clarified for myself through the years that they are not objectively real – but it is a continuing interest for me to understand their usefulness as subjective reality, as a cast drawn from the mind to understand things creatively before I understand them scientifically.

   I’m a guy who currently makes a decent living by visually depicting folktales from cultures around the world, some including ghosts, faeries and the like – maybe that explains my mindset a little better. I’m also entering the world of the Muppets with my little daughter – and I am in awe of what Henson and co. accomplished with their post modern fictions. They had 300 million viewers tuning in to see a maudlin stage director frog puppet that started his life as a sock.

   Maybe this is a silly subject for me to discuss – especially since it seems like I am argumentative about it. I think there may be a way in which what you call deism is a part of my creative process – but I can assure you I don’t believe in god or the supernatural beyond how our minds similarly draw from a cast of dream characters to understand life.

10. Noell:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 4:17 pm

    Ron–having read your first comment, I was in complete agreement with G100 (I like your shortened version!). I was a bit confused with many of your points.

    Having read your second comment (and putting those initial confusing point aside), I really don’t understand what your disagreement could be. I wrote about encouraging the kids to write their own fictional stories and create their own imaginative beings as a way to keep the fun of ghosts and gobblins while helping them comprehend the objective reality of their not actually being real. It seems from your second comment that maybe you didn’t read that part of the article.

    I also criticized my mother’s approach of taking the scary games too seriously and forbidding me from participating in them.

    I think you must have misunderstood the article. Unless you are really saying that we should tell our children that ghosts really do exist (I don’t think you really meant that), I’d be happy if you’d like to read it again and then let me know how we differ, if you still think we do.

11. Noell:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 4:23 pm

    I really enjoyed all of the fun stories everybody shared about their children growing up with a healthy dose of skepticism!!! Today Trinity called Blake out on his use of language when Blake was holding up a water bottle for me to take and he said, “This water bottle is getting heavy.” Trinity said, “How can it be getting heavy when it’s weight is staying the same?”

    Catha–I take the same approach with Santa and the Easter Bunny and even wrote an article about it last spring!

    Gregg100–Your advice has been very helpful to me. I have been intending on writing the medical board and I plan to do so tomorrow. I asked the secretary for the neurologist’s fax number so I can send him a copy. I will also be sending a copy to our pediatrician who always refers his patients to him. If he is going to continue to do so, he should know this guy’s policy so he can at least warn the patients ahead of time. I was wondering if I could also locate the head of neurology in the state of AZ.

    Anyway, carry on, folks, I am enjoying all the comments.

12. Gregg100:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 4:37 pm

    I think I’m starting to see your distinction and for my own clarity I would have those concepts categorized in the world of imagination and creativity; both very valid and usually beneficial faculties of the human brain. I guess that is quite removed from the concept of deism and I don’t see any need to connect them.

    I say “Well done!” on your creative endeavors. I wish I had that skill. I have thought for years that it would be a great project to create a children’s book that parallels the Bible but instead has all scientific presentations. For example the equivalent to the book of Genesis would have a story illustrated at the child level but would follow the concepts presented in Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and the concepts of evolution and I can easily imagine many other chapters with alternative presentations. It would be a major project but the illustrations would make it or break it.

    All fun stuff to think about.

13. Lisa:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 8:01 pm

    “Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story” by Lisa Westberg Peters and illustrated by Lauren Stringer is a beautiful book that could be your Genesis-style children’s story.

14. Terry S.:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 11:02 pm

    Noell, G100, Ron, Etal,

    I’m not sure what I can add to this discussion of note, but first I will say that I can empathise to some extent with your recent difficulties concerning your children’s health issues.

    My younger son had a serious bout with asthma from the time he was around 2 until he was 6 or 7 years old. He spent collectively several days in hospital over that period. At times it was wrenching to watch his protractive breathing, knowing he was, in effect suffocating. Happily, he eventually outgrew the affliction for the most part by the time he was 9 or 10. The only serious remnant of it appears to be a severe allergy to cats.

    We were fortunate in that we had a wonderful pediatrician, Dr. Hubert Grimes, who generally left no stone unturned in the care of our children. It is unconscionable that a doctor would treat you and your son so shabbily. It really put your son at risk. As with the others chiming in here, I hope things settle down for both of your young ones soon. It is harrowing to be the parent of a sick child.

    As to ghosts, again, a good deal has been said here, along with your own article which set this crazy roller coaster off on its perilous journey. (Just had to write that as it came to me, even though it doesn’t really make much sense.)

    I find ghosts, angels, fairies and the like, especially as a parent, a tangly issue at best. We want to foster our children’s imagination on the one hand, but on the other, we do not want to (overly) frighten them or confuse them as regards reality.

    I was never particularly frightened by, nor did I ever altogether believe in ghosts, angels and such. If memory serves, I began to doubt the existence of Santa fairly early, even though I always encouraged my mother to continue with the milk and cookies, as I began sneaking out and eating the cookies myself. (For some reason, I am still to this day, in silhouette, reflective of those cookie sorties.)

    My first REAL fright came with seeing the original film of “War of the Worlds” back in the 50s. That, and a subsequent viewing of one of the werewolf movies sent me through a period of nearly nightly terror which had the unfortunate effect of prolonging my bed wetting until I was – well – much too old to be doing that. I was terrified at the prospect of trying to run the gauntlet of 3 eyed Martians, werewolves and other undescribable beasts to get to the bathroom which was some 20 feet from my bedside. I preferred to lie in my sodden, smelly coldness than venture out among the demons lurking in the dark. I was an impressionable child.

    I heartily agree with G100 as regards sudden and supposedly unexplanable death and other phenomena which we currently cannot fully explain. It may be a conceit, but as I have iterated before, I do believe that man has the capacity to answer all – given enough time, incentive, access to information, and opportunity. The fact of someone’s sudden, unexplainable death, or the “miraculous” recovery of someone from the brink of death should not be taken as an act of some unknown force – god or whatever. There is always a rational, usually physiological reason for such occurrences. Doctors or pathologists may not be able to discern just how or why someone survived or died, but eventually those answers will be found – probably on some episode of “CSI Miami.” There certainly remain a number of “mysteries” in life. But in time, if we don’t annihilate ourselves in the interim, we may well solve every last one of them. Knowing is better than not knowing. Sapere aude!

    TLS

15. Ron:
    October 14th, 2006 @ 11:12 pm

    N –
    My ramblings have been about whether or not fictions are real in their own way. We are impacted by them in our imagination, and have independant psychological (thus physiological?) propensities for imaginging the same symbols as a species.
    In my first post I said how I wasn’t nessesarily disagreeing with you.
    I just felt the need to emphasize that imaginary things are real in their own fashion.

    They are not kid’s stuff – they are useful ciphers. Scientists use their dreams – even when they are crazy dreams.
    For me, imaginary things are as crucial to creative discovery as any other tool at our mind’s disposal.

    I don’t think we are in disagreement – I’m just trying to give credit to the imaginary where credit is due.
    I’m handling a lot of imaginary things lately, and I’m on friendly terms with them, so I wanted to speak on their behalf.

16. MeL:
    October 15th, 2006 @ 6:19 am

    The fear of evil spirits was sometimes paralyzing when I was a child. Raised in the mormon faith, as you were, I heard stories of people “wrestling” with evil spirits, or spirits attacking them. As an adult, I recognize the stories for the sort of hysteria they were. As a child, it was debilitating.

    The one thing I think my parents handled very well, in regards to magical thinking, was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, et al. Being religious, we focused on them as a separate entity from the reason for the holiday; that aside, when I got old enough to question the reality of Santa, etc, my mother was wise enough to look at me with a twinkle in her eye and say “That’s a good question. Here’s how I look at it — if you’re too old to believe in Santa, you’re probably too old for him to bring you presents…”
    And then we BOTH knew what the reality was, and instead of feeling betrayed I felt “in” on the secret. And so we pretended together – and still do – to believe in the magic of Santa. The important point is that we understand it’s pretending.

    The irony is not lost on me, when it comes to comparing this circumstance to believing in a religion relying heavily on magical thinking…

17. Noell:
    October 15th, 2006 @ 6:29 am

    Oops, Ron, it looks like I am the one who misunderstood. I thought you specifically said you had a disagreement and I just couldn’t figure out where exactly the disagreement was. Sorry!

    BTW, G100 (now Terry S. is using the nickname, too, so I guess it’s a keeper)–Ron is an excellent artist. I am lucky that I get to see pictures of the library mural he is working on it is amazing.

    Terry S–Thank you for always making me laugh!!!!!

    Mel–Yes! While I didn’t include it in my article, I also grew up around stories of demonic visits and such. There were times when I was sure I was surrounded and I thought I might go crazy. Very sad.

18. Ron:
    October 16th, 2006 @ 11:14 am

    On the subject of the church encouraging fear – a good friend of mine told me of special tent revivals his church used to hold.
    There was a section for ‘casting out demons’. The ground was covered in wood chips – and when the pastor would do his thing – objects were moved under the wood chips to make it look like demons were racing away from the ‘afflicted’.
    My friend was affected pretty deeply – and years later whenever something would go less than perfect with his own child he and his wife were afraid it was demons… they performed rituals with holy water at 3am (the way most parents pace and nurse a restless baby at that hour).

    I didn’t mean to minimize any of the terrors instilled in children by the church, or monster movies or anything else.
    I hope to protect my own child from imaginary fears the best I can.

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