Category: The Thief’s Mentality III

The History of Bloodletting by Mark Twain

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“The change from reptile to bird was not as tremendous, it just took longer.” –Mark Twain on bloodletting

In 1890, the satirist Mark Twain published an essay called A Majestic Literary Fossil. In it he detailed “public reverence for old ideas and hostility to new ones” as it pertained to a medical procedure called bloodletting. Bloodletting was a medical practice that began in the age of antiquity, in Egypt. The logic behind the practice, then spread to the Greeks and Romans, the Arabs and Asians, and eventually throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and it remained atop prevailing wisdom for the next 3,000 years, until studies, performed in the 19th century showed that bloodletting could have harmful effects. Twain’s A Majestic Literary Fossil, details the life of those trapped in what we could call is one of history’s first medical findings, findings that the most brilliant minds of medicine theorized could cure all that ailed us.

The theory behind bloodletting can be condensed in one succinct sentence: “A body’s “humors” (fluids) have to be in proper balance to sustain health.” That was the initial, old world translation. A modern translation would be that bloodletting involved the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness or disease. That’s pretty much it, all of the theories that followed either supported, or contributed to that theory. Although Galen of Pergamon made some important discoveries regarding blood, he also contributed to this theory with the belief that blood “was created and eventually used up.” Galen did not know that blood circulated in the manner we do today, and as a result, he believed that some blood could stagnate in the extremities and cause ill health. Thus, he believed that the vagaries inherent in humoral balance were the basis for health and illness. He believed that blood was the dominant humor and the one in most need of control. In order to perpetuate this balance of the humors, a physician would have to either remove excess, or stagnant, blood from the patient, or give them an emetic to induce vomiting, or a diuretic to induce urination. A more modern interpretation of the theory, with less jargon, is that they believed there was “bad blood” and “good blood”. Bad blood caused various ailments, and it had to be drained periodically, or proactively, to signal to the body to start creating good blood, or fresh blood. When the body encountered ailments, their theory suggested, it was because the blood hadn’t been let out sufficiently, or proactively, and reactive bloodletting measures were required to address the ailment sufficiently.   

We can all laugh at the “brilliant minds” of medicine who developed and enhanced these theories now, Mark Twain included, for believing that bloodletting was ahead of its time as a medical marvel, and a cure for what ails you, in those first 3,000 years of modern medicine. Twain believed it too, however, for much of his life, because he was captive to his era, and a man of letters as opposed to medicine. It was only when his modern medical minds corrected the theories behind bloodletting that Twain saw the light, and began mocking the miracle minds of medicine for taking so long to modernize. 

Twain joined hands with those who helped his era see the light on bloodletting, and that’s when he lamented that “The change from reptile to bird was not as tremendous [as the change from bloodletting], it just took longer.” Yet, we might mock Twain’s 1890 definition of “modern medicine” 100 plus years hence, as much as he mocked the archaic practices of his past, and how many future readers will mock our definition 100 plus years from now? Will they be laughing at us for our prolific use of antibiotics to cure so much of what ails us? Will they be looking back at our use of chemotherapy as an archaic treatment of cancer? Are these the best of times in medical knowledge and technology, or will future readers consider our advancements in medicine as laughable as we do those in Twain’s time did with archaic idea of bloodletting as a cure-all?

***

Twain’s essay focuses much of its scorn on the bloodletting theories of the prominent physician, surgeon, and philosopher Galen of Pergamon from Rome (circa 129-216 A.D.). Historians considered Galen the father of Humorism, or bloodletting, and he based his theories on dissections of monkeys.

Twain writes that Galen would’ve been welcomed into his father’s home, but that Galen might have been left waiting, because “our family doctor didn’t allow blood to accumulate in the system.” [Author’s Note: Writings from the era detail that optimum use of bloodletting’s preventative measures required that a proactive doctor bleed his patients at least once a month.] Twain then added, with some spite for Galen and his theories on bloodletting, Whereas, if Galen should appear among us to-day [in the era after bloodletting], he could not stand anybody’s watch; he would inspire no awe; he would be told he was a back number, and it would surprise him to see that that fact counted against him, instead of in his favor. He wouldn’t know our medicines; he wouldn’t know our practice; and the first time he tried to introduce his own, we would hang him.”

The commentary provided in this essay focuses on what Twain knew in his modern age (circa 1890), versus what they thought they knew yesteryear. It focuses some scorn, some objective looks, and some hilarity on the prevailing wisdom of the previous eras. In their “modern era” of medicine, they saw how ridiculous collective wisdom could be, when viewed in the reflective “glare of the open day”. The essay details, without actually stating it, how much deference we offer doctors, their theories, and authority figures in general. The essay also focuses on how scientific theory can appear groundbreaking and miraculous in one era, until the “knowledge of the moderns” reveals the serious flaws of the previous era.   

Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer, humorist, satirist, and essayist who critiqued everything from the past to his definition of the present. Before going through the list of Twain’s hilarious documentation of the manner in which bloodletting was alleged to cure everything from the common to the severe, we should note the qualifiers author Thomas Morris added before “gently mocking” the medical cures of a bygone era in his book The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth.

“The methods [doctors] used were consistent with their understanding of how the body worked, and it is not their fault that medical knowledge has advanced considerably since then.”

It’s not their fault, I would add, and it’s wasn’t their doing. The doctors, family practitioners, or ear, nose, and throat specialists of the era were handcuffed by the constraints of knowledge at the time, and as Morris adds they performed admirably under such constraints.  

“One thing that these case histories demonstrate,” Morris adds, “is the admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.” 

Whenever we critique or complain about the constraints of modern medicine, we do so without considering how much time, effort, and concern occurred at every level of the modern medical pyramid. Their goal, no matter what defined their drive, was to redefine what was consider modern medicine for our health and prolonged life. Those at the bottom of this pyramid, our doctors, use that information, technology, and everything at their disposal to treat us. When we look back at what the “most brilliant minds of medicine” and their modern medical pyramid, we just laugh at them for being so foolish without considering how frustrating and agonizing it must’ve been for them to do everything they could, using everything at their disposal, only to lose a patient. They were their patient’s representative of modern technological advancement and knowledge, and when they came up short, their patients blamed them for their failures. How many parents sent their sons and daughters to these “brilliant minds of medicine” desperately seeking a cure, and those doctors desperately sought to satisfy their concerns? The narrative is funny when painted with a broad brush, but when we take a step back, we see the “admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.” 

No matter what era we live in, our family doctor, or our ear, nose and throat (ENT) family practitioner is our face of modern medicine, and we expect them to know every nugget of information our current modern medicine has at its disposal, and we expect them to have the latest, greatest technological assistance at their disposal, but they sit at the bottom of the medical community’s pyramid. They read the latest medical journals to learn what modern marvels and research might take away the pain, or cure us of what ails us. Yet, they play no role in the research that goes into the articles they read. They read it to help them make determinations on what courses to follow with treatment or prescriptions to write. They also use the technological innovations created by others to pinpoint our ailment, so we could say they are both the beneficiaries and captives of their era’s definition of modern medicine.

Thomas Morris’ qualifiers illustrate that as interesting, informative, and entertaining as Twain’s essay is, it is annoying to read an author assume some level of authority with a hint of intellectual superiority directed at the most brilliant minds of another era without similar qualifiers. It is so easy to criticize the past, and authors like Twain and others, critique past knowledge and technology from the pedestal of modern research, acquired knowledge, and technology as if they had something to do with it. Few of these authors acknowledge that they, like the rest of us, are the beneficiaries of modern advancements, even though they have not personally contributed anything to the difference between the eras. 

As low as the ENT sits on the pyramid of modern medicine, the writer and satirist is one step lower, just above us, as the purveyor of such information. Yet, there’s nothing wrong with a skilled satirist, on the level of Mark Twain, ridiculing the past in an entertaining manner, because it cements the George Santayana quote, “Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” We all learn in different ways, some are visual learners, some have brains that need to hear information, but we all know comedy, humor, and mockery. Twain knows this, and he presents his information in an entertaining manner, but he still should’ve added some elements of humility as it pertains to the constraints of his knowledge and expertise in this arena.  

Even after placing Twain’s critiques and complaints of a bygone era in what I find proper context, I still find Twain’s drill down to the bloodletting cures of common ailments entertaining.

“[The change from the practice of bloodletting] is the utter reversal, in a couple of generations, of an attitude which had been maintained without challenge or interruption from the earliest antiquity. It amounts to creating man over again on a new plan; he was a canal boat before, he is an ocean greyhound to-day. The change from reptile to bird was not more tremendous, and it took longer.”

Headache: “One could die of a headache in the age of bloodletting,” Twain writes. “For bloodletting was listed as the proper cure of a headache back then. One such victim “seized with a violent pain in the head” required bloodletting in the arms, the application of leeches to the nostrils, the forehead, the temples, and behind the ears.

“Alas,” observed the doctor, named Bonetus, who was focused on this particular patient, “These procedures were not successful, and the patient dy’d (sic). Had the patient not dy’d, and a surgeon skilled in Arteriotomy been present, that procedure would’ve been called upon.” [Author’s note: Arteriotomy, as defined by Twain, “Is the opening of an artery with a view of taking away more blood” when the opening of the veins proved insufficient to cure what ailed the patient.]

“Here was a person being bled from the arms, forehead, nostrils, back, temples, and behind the ears,” Twain adds, “and when none of this worked the celebrated Bonetus was not satisfied, and he wanted to open an artery for a view of the cure. Now that we know what this celebrated Bonetus did to relive a headache, it is no trouble to infer that if he had a patient that suffered a stomachache, he would disembowel him. Bonetus labels his writings as “observations”. They sound more like to confessions to me.”

Frostbite: Twain cites several remedies listed in the 1745 Dictionary of Medicine by Dr. James of London and Samuel Johnson. According to this book, “One can cure frostbite by mixing the ashes of an ass’s hoof with a woman’s milk” and “Milk is bad for the teeth, for it causes them to rot, and loosens the gums.”

Dentures: “They did apparently have false teeth in those days,” Twain writes, “But they were lashed to neighboring teeth with wires or silk threads. Wearers of these teeth were encouraged not to eat with them, or laugh with them, as they usually fell out when not at rest. You could smile with them, but you should not do so without practicing first, or you may run the risk of overdoing it. These false teeth were not for business, just decoration.”

Malaria: The cure for malaria, according to a man named Paracelsus, is a spider, a spider’s web, or water distilled through a spider’s web. As evidence of their homeopathic properties, Paracelsus, notes that when he gave a spider to a monkey for consumption, “That monkey is usually free of the disorders from which they normally suffer.” Paracelsus then backs this up with the case of a dying woman who was bled dozens of times a day without response. When these constant bleedings failed to yield satisfactory results, the desperate doctors forced this woman to swallow several wads of spider web, and the results were immediate. “She straight-way mended,” Paracelsus wrote. “So,” writes Twain, “The sage (Paracelsus) is full of enthusiasm over the miracle cure that the spider web presented while mentioning, in only the most casual way, the discontinuance of the dozens of daily bleedings she had to endure. Paracelsus never suspected that this had anything to do with the cure.”

***

Twain’s essay, and all of the more modern books that followed with documented historical references to archaic medical practices of a bygone era, come equipped with two messages: be grateful for the time you live in, and if you ever achieve a method of time travel, make sure you can get back. Be grateful to all of the minds of medicine who have compiled information, through countless hours of testing and research, for giving you better health and a longer life through better medicine, greater technology, and improving the knowledge doctors have to treat us. We can all enjoy looking back at the procedures and prescriptions with a laugh, but don’t forget to be grateful. And if that ingenious mind ever comes along and figures out a way to thwart the seemingly impossible logistics of physics and achieves time travel, they should heed the warning: make sure you can get back. 

The eventual creator of the time machine should read all of these stories on archaic medical practices and procedures very carefully, and they should note that getting back might be just as important, if not more important than getting there. Before setting the world on fire with your physics defying version of the DeLorean, you might want to delay your incredible adventure a year or two to check and recheck your ability to get back. Going back to Ford’s Theater to see Abe and Mary Todd might be everything you hoped it would be, as everyone on the planet and presumably everyone in the history of man, will know your name as the one who cracked the code, but if you can’t get back, you could be subject to everything Twain, Morris, and others detail in their narratives about the relative definitions of modern medicine. If you are so brilliant that you’ve conquered the final block of physics preventing time travel, and you are able to visit your great grandfather, make sure you have enough gas, electrical power (through atomic fusion), or whatever elements, chemicals, or variations of energy you need to get back, because if you get stuck in his era, and if you’re not immune to everything they have traveling around in their sphere, you might fall prey to a doctor who knows that all they need to do is properly balance your humors.   

Humors of the body were broken down to four basic components by Galen: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. “The theory of the four humors arose out of a Hellenic philosophy that attempted to relate all things to universal laws.” Another component of the theory was that bloodletting could produce beneficial and countering effects on the body that was subjected to deleterious effects incurred as a result of the effects changing seasons could have on humors, how a person’s dietary habits could affect these fluids, the zodiac, a person’s age, and even the compass directions’ effects. The theory held that any, and all, of these exterior forces could shake up a body’s humors and cause a body to produce more of one humor (fluid) than was necessary in that body. By releasing the blood from the body, the body could then re-regulate the humors better in regeneration.

Twain also takes some other cracks at the “home remedy” market of his day. He cites “Alexander’s Golden Antidote” that contains over one hundred ingredients, some of them common, others too complicated to mention, or attain over the counter. Twain concludes the lengthy description of this antidote, “Serve with a shovel,” but, he corrects, “We are only to take an amount that is the quantity of a hazelnut” according to the instruction on the listing. He then mocks the “Aqua Limacum” antidote that lists the “homeopathic” qualities of the garden snail when properly prepared by washing in beer, baked in fires contained in a cleaned chimney until “they make a noise”. “And with a knife and a coarse cloth to wipe away any green froth that develops; then combining those snails with a quart of saline scoured earthworms; which should then be laid on a bed of herbs and combined with two handfuls of goose dung, and two handfuls of sheep dung, then put in three gallons of strong ale, and fixed on the head and refrigeratory until distilled according to art.”

“The book does not say whether this is to be taken in one dose,” Twain writes, “or if you should split it and take a second shot at it … in case you live through the first one. The book does not specify what ailment this concoction is good for,” Twain continues, “But I have found that it is a formidable nostrum for raising good flatulencies from the stomach. It appears as though the advocates of this antidote sought to empty a sewer down the throats of those with malady so as to expel it. It is equivalent to dislodging larva from cheese with artillery fire.”

Most readers of this essay, yours truly included, would infer that Twain stood tall against homeopathy as a cure for anything, but he credits homeopathy for helping advance modern medicine beyond bloodletting and other archaic forms of medicine. He states, “When you reflect upon the fact that your father had to take such medicines as those listed above, and that you would be taking them today yourself but for the introduction of homeopathy, which forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn something of a rational nature about his business, you may honestly feel grateful that homeopathy survived the attempts of the mainstream medical proponents to destroy it, even though you may never employ any homeopath but a mainstream medical proponent in your life.”

The takeaway from this essay, as I see it, harkens back to the Dickens’ quote: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…” Are we living in the best of times in regards to medical technology and advancement, or have we “advanced” to the worst of times where we run the risks of foregoing the natural, homeopathic, and organic cures of our forebears?

Twain writes that the collective brains of modern medicine might still be bleeding us if it hadn’t been for homeopaths injecting some sense into the conversation, but such a statement leads us to a confusing fork in the road that asks whether we should continue to follow homeopathy or the advancements in modern medicine, or as Twain seems to suggest a healthy combination of the two?

In our more modern era, there is a move toward advancements in modern medicine that is just as strong, in some quarters, as the movement against it. There is a common sentiment, among those against, that states that proponents of modern medicine are relatively neglectful of the consequences of modernity. An old biology teacher of mine captured this when he said, “Any time you put a foreign substance into your body; there will be other ramifications.” When a patient puts something foreign in their body, this theory states, something else might fall out as a result. When the patient repeatedly takes a foreign, synthetic substance to solve an ailment of the left eye, it might deplete the stomach of bile, or they might not be able to hear out of their right ear in a year. We’ve all read the research, heard the disclaimers, and experienced horror stories, but which side of medical knowledge do we trust more? Did the relative scarcity of medicinal techniques force our forebears to brilliantly, if simplistically, derive more natural –and in some opinions more effective– methods of survival in their age? Does our suspicion of advancement and technology cause us to reference old world, home remedies, and those remedies used by Native Americans, the Ancients, or any of those generations who preceded us, because they were forced to be more attuned to natural, more organic, and thus healthier cures?

Most of us are not students in the field of medicine, and we don’t understand how some guy in a lab can synthetically create some substance that makes our body work better, and what we don’t understand, we don’t trust. We’d much rather put our trust in the time-honored tradition of homeopathic remedies. Or, as my Biology teacher alluded, we’d much rather not introduce foreign, synthetic substances into our biology if we can avoid it, for fear of something else falling out. What if, as the idiot states, the cure is worse than the disease? What if it works? What if the medical marvel procures a cure with acceptable side effects? Will we trust it, or do we prefer nature’s natural products, because that just makes more sense than taking something, some egghead developed in a chemistry lab?

How many of us have watched those commercials promising cures that are so laced with disclaimers that the disclaimers take up the majority of the commercial. It’s almost laughable. It’s so ridiculous that we might want to put out a call on the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to up the average twelve to twenty-four years of testing on medicinal drugs before they hit our shelves. “I don’t trust them,” we say when the Big Pharmaceutical Company puts another drug on the market, and we resort to the antidote that calls for snails, worms, goose dung, and lamb dung for a cure. “I just prefer the natural cures that we’re learning so much about nowadays,” we say, and that does sound more intelligent than those who seek modern, Western advancements in medical technology. “They’re only in it for profit.” Fair enough, but if one of those Big Pharmaceutical puts a drug on the market that leads to negative nationwide headlines, the effect those stories can have on the company stock, and the resultant effect on their quarterly profit statements are such that they want to do everything in their power to prevent it. They may not care about their customers in the sense that they only care about their stock price, their profit margin, and their corporate bottom line, but the results are often the same.

Bottom line for those who look back to a more natural, less synthetic era for their cures may want to consider the science that informed bloodletting and other cures and preventative measures that they considered sound science. Much of the science that informed those more traditional cures led to a 42.5 life expectancy, whereas modern science and medicine have our current life expectancy at 78.7. For every Eastern, homeopathic remedy that worked in Twain’s era, and could work now, there are also about one hundred, bloodletting type cures listed in the 1745 Dictionary of Medicine by Dr. James of London and Samuel Johnson that did not. Or, as the old saying goes, be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.

The Psychology of the Super Sports Fan

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Sports are an institution in America today. If you are a male, you are almost required to be a sports fan. I’ve seen numerous males try to escape this fact of life in America, but I’ve seen very few pull it off. Those who are able to escape this super sport fan requirement deserve a hat-tip, in some ways, because they don’t have to endure the pain and sorrow watching sports can inflict on a person. It’s too late for me. I’ve had too many teams disappoint me to ever enjoy watching sports in the manner we all should. Super sports fans hate sports as much as we love it, but we’ve found no cure for this ailment other than more sports and other disappointments that help us forget the past ones.

In 2012, The Atlanta Falcons won their first playoff game in four years of unsuccessful attempts. As a fanatic Falcons fan, I’m prepared for the discussions that will follow. I know that the discussions will involve attacks that I’ll deem personal, as a result of my life-long affiliation with this team. If they lose in the next three weeks, I will be guilty by association. If they win, I will be permitted a temporary amount of basking, but I will soon have to reconfigure my psychology in preparation for the next game, and the next season. A super fan’s job is never over.

Falcon fan face painterImmersing one’s self in the world of sports’ super fandom can be stressful, for a super fan is required to be unsatisfied with their team’s progress, regardless how well they do. A super fan is never happy. A casual sports fan can enjoy a good tussle between two opponents, measuring one another’s physical abilities, but a super fan doesn’t enjoy a good game that involves their team, unless their team blows the other team out. Close games are stressful, and they suggest an obvious deficiency in their team that must be rectified before the next game. Unadulterated blowouts confirm superiority.

A coach says they’re not satisfied with their team’s accomplishments, and the team’s players echo this sentiment. The two factions echo this sentiment so many times that super fans have now incorporated it into their lexicon. I can understand a player, or a coach, issuing such statements, for they are always on trial, they are always pushing themselves to be better today than they were yesterday. It’s the very essence of sports for the participants to be unsatisfied. Why does this mentality also have to exist for those who aren’t participants, but spectators? A super sports fan doesn’t question why they have this mentality, they just have it.

Most normal people regard watching sports as a frivolity, a conversation piece to engage in with friends and family. To them, sporting events provide a simple event, or an excuse, to get together with friends and family. For these people, sports is little more than background noise that cover the lulls that may occur at get-togethers. They may keep up on some sport’s headlines, but they often do so to engage in superficial, meaningless conversations. They also use what little knowledge they have to needle the obnoxious diehards on their team’s loss.

There’s nothing wrong with this needling on the surface. Needling is what super sports fans do to one another, but in the world of super sports fans everyone has something on the line. When you mock a super sports fan’s team, you had better be ready to take as well as you give for a super sports fan will always come back ten times as hard. It’s as much a part of the super sports fan culture as watching the sport itself. For the non-sports fan, for whom sports is but a casual conversation piece, needling a super sports fan is revenge for all the years that super sports fans have ridiculed them for being non-sports fans, or if they haven’t been ridiculed, they have at least been ostracized from the all the conversations that revolve around sports, and they’ve built up some resentment for sports fans that comes out in these needling sessions. It also gives them great joy, when the conversation turns back on them, and the super fan says, “Who’s your favorite team?” that they don’t have one. The fact that they don’t have one gives them an immunity card against reprisals. It’s what they’ve dreamed of dating back to their pre-pubescent days when their peers ridiculed them for preferring Star Wars and Legos to sports.

In the world of the super fan, it is seen as a testament to their character that they remain unsatisfied with their team’s performance? Even a fan of a traditional doormat, such as the Atlanta Falcons, is informed that the best record in the regular season should mean nothing to them, and their first playoff victory in almost a decade should mean nothing to them. You want that ring. If we’re in any way happy with the progress they’ve made, we’re satisfied, and being satisfied equates to being weak, and soft, and everyone around us knows this, and they won’t have much time for us if we don’t demand perfection of your team.

I once heard that the reason the Chicago Cubs are perennial losers is that their fan base will turn out regardless how they perform. I’ve heard it said that they’re more concerned with beer than baseball, and that they enjoy the confines of Wrigley Field more than they do a winner. There is a certain amount of truth in this when one considers the actual attendance figures in Wrigley Field, of course, but are they saying that a Cubs’ General Manager is apt to forego a prized free agent signing, because he knows that the fans will show up anyway? Is a manager going to inform the organization that he is not going to call up a star prospect, because he knows that the fans will show up regardless if the team is better or not? Their job is on the line every year. Get in the playoffs or get out is the motto in most of professional sports, and I dare say this is no different in Chicago regardless of their team’s ‘lovable loser’ tradition.

The radio show host who said this about the Cubs was making a general point that there isn’t the sense of urgency in the Cubs organization that there is in the Yankee organization. Yankee fans are adamant that their team win the World Series every year, and they’re quite vocal with their displeasure when the organization puts anything less than a championship team on the field. I can’t say that this is without merit, but should this same requirement be made of the fan sitting in a bar discussing sports with a fellow super fan? Why is it elemental to the respect of his peers that the super fan maintain an unsatisfied persona to maintain the respect of his super fan friends?

Super fans who have listened to sports talk radio for far too long, have had it pounded into our head that there’s no glory in meaningless victories … if you don’t have that ring. If you were a Buffalo Bills fan, in the 90’s, and you were happy with an appearance in the Super Bowl for four straight years, you were soft, because those teams lost all of those Super Bowls. The super fan would’ve preferred that the Bills failed to make it to the playoffs in the face of all that losing. That was embarrassing. The Bills proved to be historic choke artists. Nothing more. It didn’t matter to the superfan that they were able to do something unprecedented when they made it to the Super Bowl after three consecutive losses. They lost the fourth one too! Bunch of choke artists is what they were.

Did it matter to anyone that the Atlanta Braves made it to the playoffs fourteen consecutive years in a span that stretched from the 90’s to the 00’s? It didn’t to the super fan. They grew tired of all that losing. Did it matter to the super fan that they made the NLCS nine out of ten years? It did not. Did it matter that they made it to the World Series in five of those years? If you’re a loser it did. They won one World Series throughout this stretch, and the super fan remained unsatisfied throughout.

“No one remembers the team that lost in the championship.” “One team wins, and the other team chokes.” These are some of the most common tropes of the language of the super fan that you’ll have to adopt, if you ever hope to garner the type of respect necessary to sit with super fans in bars discussing sports.

If our team loses, but we’re satisfied just to be there, that says something about our character. In these conversations, we are our team, and our team is us. If such conversations make us uncomfortable, the best way for us to retain our identity will be to distance yourself from our team by informing our friends that we disagreed with a move or a decision that they made, but often times this is not enough to leave us unscathed. Regardless what we say, we cannot avoid having them consider us a choke artist based on the fact that our team “choked” in the championship. We could switch teams, of course, but that is what super fans call a fair weather fan, and a fair weather fan is the lowest form of life in the world of super fandom, save for the needling non-fan. Our best bet is to just sit there and take it. Our friends will enjoy that a lot less than our struggle to stick up for our team.

Even if our team wins it all, we super fans will have no glory. We’re never satisfied, and winning it all for one year, just means that our concentration flips to next year. We don’t just want a championship, we want a dynasty. The true fan is the superfan, always seeking definition of their character through constant calls for perfection. Even if their team wins a championship, they didn’t win by much. Our team should’ve slaughtered that bunch. There is room for improvement, and we’ll scour the draft pool and the free agent list, to find that perfect component for next year’s run. If our team doesn’t do what we think they should do, we gain some distance by proclaiming that the team doesn’t know what they’re doing. We know this because we’re super fans, but most of us have never played the game, or had to deal with team play, salary caps, or prima donnas who generate excellent stats with no regard for the team.

The one thing that every fan, and every super fan, should be required to recite before every game is “You’re just a fan”. I don’t care if you wear your hat inside out and backwards, or you sit on half a cheek for a week, and you don’t speak of your team’s progress for fear of jinxing them, you’re just a fan. I don’t care if you have seven different jerseys for the seven days of the week, that you paint your face, or brave the cold and go shirtless. You’re just a fan. You’re no more instrumental in the way they play the game than the guy at the end of the bar who doesn’t care for sports. So, does this line of thought make it any easier to be a super fan? It does not, because as a super fan, we know that our reputation is on the line every time our team takes the field, court, diamond, or rink. We know that our friends are just dying to call our team (i.e. you) a loser, a choke-artist, and that can make it super stressful to be a super fan.

Indigo Children: The Next Step in Human Evolution

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Is your child special? Have you ever looked deep into their eyes and walked away thinking that there was something special about them? Really special? Do they exhibit traits that you consider so beautiful they might be otherworldly special? Do they express a degree of intelligence that you consider unfathomable? Are your children different and special? Do they do things that are different and abnormal? Do they have problems getting along with children their age? Have you ever considered the idea that you may have an Indigo Child?

Indigo Children learn that they are different at a young age, and most of them believe it with enough persuasion. Some Indigo Children claim to have invisible friends, they say that they see dead people, and they have inter-spatial relationships with inanimate objects like products from their Great Grandmothers, teddy bears, and rubber duckies.

Experts in this field suggest that Indigo Children have a different aura about them, a special, blue aura. Experts claim that Indigo Children see the auras of other kids and adults who surround them. Indigos struggle with the belief that they are normal, because they have experiences that appear to be normal, but they aren’t, and they know it, because their parents, teachers, and psychotherapists tell them so.

Indigo Children, we are informed, are the next step in human evolution, and they came into being, according to CNN reporter Gary Tuchman, following the great Harmonic Convergence of 1978{1}. This Great Harmonic Convergence was an important and celebrated New Age event that many link to the completion of our sun’s 26,000-year orbital cycle around the Pleiades star system and the alignment of our winter solstice with the Galactic Center/Hunab Ku. Many also suggest that this transitional period is reflected in the shift of astrological ages from Pisces to Aquarius.

As is the case with any story of this nature, a little fact checking is necessary. The second entry in a Google search performed on the term “Harmonic Convergence” shows that this “first, great synchronized, global meditation”, announced by Jose Arguelles, occurred between August 16th and 17th in 1987. There appears to be a discrepancy in the dates between this Harmonic Convergence and the next step in human evolution we call Indigo, but this discrepancy is explained by a “crop circle” bridge. Either Gary Tuchman didn’t know of the first reported appearance of a crop circle that occurred in 1978, and the manner in which it bridged the gap between the great Harmonic Convergence and the Indigo evolution, or he didn’t report it. Whatever the case, it appears that the first reported “Consciousness Crop Circles of the New Earth” bridged the progressive gap from The Great Convergence to the Indigo evolution, as referenced in archived data provided by the good people at Crop Circle Connector. {2}

Crop circles have become a joke in some quarters, as most of the crop circles that appeared in the past decades were later declared man-made, but others are of unknown origins. Many believe that the non-man-made crop circles are being impressed upon earth’s grain fields by extraterrestrial, or inter-dimensional intelligences, for the sole purpose of activating dormant sections of human DNA to catalyze the spiritual evolution of the species we call Indigo.{3}

Any who doubt there was a progression from the first reported “Consciousness Crop Circles of the New Earth” to the “Great Harmonic Convergence” and Indigo Children, need look to the numbers. Between the first, reported crop circles in 1978 to the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, there were only forty-nine crop circles reported, for a low average of near ten a year. Following the Great Harmonic Convergence to the last reported crop circle on CropCircleConnector.com, in 2010, there were 3,281 crop circles cited, for an average of 149 reports a year. So while Gary Tuchman’s report on the actual date of The Great Harmonic Convergence may be a little off, it all ties in together with the escalation of crop circle reports, and the emergence, and progression, of the next step in human evolution, otherwise known as Indigo Children.

Another parallel theory on Indigo Children, states that the Indigo Children theory was based on concepts developed in the 1970s by Nancy Ann Tappe, and further developed by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll. The concepts involved in this theory gained popular interest with the publication of a series of books in the late 1990s and the release of several films in the following decade. The interpretations of these beliefs range from Indigoes being the next stage in human evolution, in some cases possessing paranormal abilities such as telepathy, to the belief that they may be evolved creatures that are more empathetic and creative than their peer group.

Indigo Children are said to be children with blessed with higher I.Q.s, in some quarters, that have a heightened intuition, psychic powers, and an ability to see dead people. Some also say they are hard-wired into a sort of supernatural highway. Indigos tend to be rebellious children who may be hypersensitive, but they have been known to display a generosity that allows them to share their special gifts with others. There are even some psychotherapists, like Julie Rosenshine, who have chosen to specialize in specific dealings with the special needs of Indigo Children.

Indigo children display indigo colored energy fields, or auras, about them that some state they can capture in photographs with an aura sensitive camera. Aura camera specialist Nancy Stevens says she can capture such auras on her aura sensitive camera. She says that the auras captured by her camera locate “your physical energy, your emotional energy, and perhaps most important your spiritual energy in photographs.” Manufacturers did not create Aura sensitive cameras with the specific intention of detecting Indigo Children, however, as they also have the ability to give those struggling with their identity insight into whom they are. They can detail for you any strengths or weaknesses you may have, and they can capture some of the challenges you may go through in life.

Such cameras have been able to capture auras of Indigo Children in their natural state, and this has led numerous children to finding out that they are an Indigo Child. This, in turn, has led to less depression in some, to doing better in school, and to performing better in social arenas in areas where they may have felt disoriented about their placement. It has also led them to being more comfortable with their identity, in that they no longer feel like outsiders in life, cursed with the feelings of being different.

Skeptics have said that these children may, in fact, be suffering from an overactive imagination, and that they may also be victims of an ADD, ADHD, or any number of operational defiant disorders. Labeling them as Indigo Children, these skeptics further may assist these kids in having a stronger ego and better self-esteem with such positive, spiritual, and unique labels attached to them, but it may also mask a disorder that requires treatment, through counseling or pharmaceuticals.

Skeptics have also stated that promotion of the idea of Indigo Children might provide unqualified people a way to make money from credulous parents through the sales of related products and services. Mental health experts are concerned that labeling a disruptive child an “Indigo” may delay proper diagnosis and treatment that could help the child. Others have stated that many of the traits of Indigo Children are open to interpretation that provides a more prosaic climate as simple unruliness and alertness. {4} One gastroenterologist has even claimed that the sensitivity that these Indigo Children have may be because of heightened food sensitivities. Parents disavow all such attempts to mislabel their children on the basis that they’ve “seen too many things.”

Some have speculated that a mere 3% of the world’s population may be Indigo Children, but that that 3% are advanced beyond their years, and that they are hyper-sensitive to things in their environment. Indigo Children tend to have a higher I.Q. than most children do, but it isn’t clear whether the evidence for this is anecdotal. Indigo Children do not lay claim to the idea that they know more about concretized facts in History, Math, the Sciences, or any other quantifiable precepts of human knowledge, but that they are smarter about that aspect of the human experience that occurs between the lines, or on the supernatural highway. Those who make such claims declare that Indigos are able to tune into something different and in some cases higher realm of thought patterns that are out of the realm of normal thought patterns.

The unquantifiable intelligence they use to see another’s aura allows them to predict the future, or learn things about you that you might not otherwise want known. Parents of these unique children use the words paranormal intelligence to describe their children’s gifts. They are special children, but they don’t enjoy the term abnormal. They want to play, and run, and build sand castles just like any child, so please don’t ask them to predict the outcome of boxing matches or the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Industrial rate.

Are your children Indigo Children? If you’re curious, you can seek out a number of sources on the net that define Indigo Children. At last check, there were 4,920,000 results on the Google.com search engine. The one qualifier that the curious should take into account before pursuing this information, however, is an observation called the Forer Effect.

The Forer Effect (also called the Barnum Effect after P.T. Barnum’s observation that “we’ve got something for everyone”) is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions tailored to their personality, but are in fact vague and general enough to be assigned to a wide range of people. This effect can provide a partial explanation for the widespread acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as astrology, fortune telling, graphology, and some types of personality tests. {5}

Descriptions of Indigo Children from the net include:

  • the belief that they (Indigo Children) are empathetic, curious, strong-willed, independent, and often perceived by friends and family as being strange;
  • they possess a clear sense of self-definition and purpose;
  • they exhibit a strong innate sub-conscious spirituality from early childhood (which, however, does not necessarily imply a direct interest in spiritual or religious areas);
  • they have a strong feeling of entitlement, or “deserving to be here.”

Other alleged traits include:

  • a high intelligence quotient (I.Q.), an inherent intuitive ability; and
  • a resistance to rigid, control-based paradigms of authority*.

According to Tober and Carroll, Indigo Children may not function well in conventional schools due to their rejection of rigid authority*, being smarter (or of a more spiritual mature) than their teachers, and a lack of response to guilt-, fear- or manipulation-based discipline.

*We list the idea that Indigo Children reject rigid authority with an asterisk to provide the explanation: “Presumed to be related to the fact that their parents’ reject the rigid authority figures that might categorize their children as normal, under-achieving young ones that may otherwise provide consternation to their parents.”

As a future parent, I can attest to the fact that I, too, want to have a perfect child. I want my child to soar high above the levels kids his age achieve in every category designed by men and women that rate my child’s various abilities, and when he doesn’t I don’t want to blame myself for insufficient parenting. I also don’t want to blame my child, in an unnecessary way, for being lazy, rebellious, head strong, or so smart that the schools I send him to dumb down their learning exercises for the dumbest kids in the class to a point that my kid gets bored and acts out.

I’ll also want to tell any that challenge my ability to raise my child, that they cannot hold my child to normal standards, because he’s different. He suffers from a clinical case of ADD, ADHD, that he is an Indigo Child, or that he has had some sort of paranormal experience that has hampered his ability to learn at the same rate theirs has. I will also tell these detractors that my child’s difficulties have nothing to do with me, because I am one heck of a good guy. I’ll know that I’ve tried my damndest, even if I haven’t. Even if some teacher, or parent, tells me that it might be possible that I may have made some mistake, somewhere along the line, I’ll reject that, because (again) I’ll know that I’m one heck of a good guy. I’ll also know that there is always going to be some sort of scientist out there, somewhere that can explain to me why my child is having some sort of difficulty. As I run out of money trying to find explanations for it, I know I’ll run into some guy, some doctor, or some pseudoscientist or psychotherapist that has some sort of Forer Effect to explain it, since it cannot be “explained” to me to my satisfaction by “normal” measures.

We love our kids so much, and they’re so cute and funny, that we cannot accept the fact that there’s something wrong with them, even if there isn’t, and if our kids just aren’t able to meet our expectations in the manner we require. We give tangible love to our kids by doing something to help them, even if they don’t need anything. We want to do that something that someone should’ve done for us to put us on an equal level with our peer group, and to assist them through life, but some of the times the best course of action to take is to do nothing. It may go against every parental instinct we have, but it might be the best thing we ever did for our children.

***

In his book: Late Talkers: What to do if your child isn’t Talking Yet, Thomas Sowell states that there are some children that need to be tested. “Silence may be a sign of a hearing loss or a neurological disorder, and that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.” He also adds, “There can be negative consequences to endless evaluations and needless testing.” As a father of a late-talker Sowell notes that some parents may want to adopt a “wait and see”, approach for not all late-talkers occur because of a lack of intelligence. This, he states, is best displayed by the fact that one of the greatest minds of all time, Albert Einstein, did not speak until he was three years old.{6}

Most parents are frustrated that their children haven’t escalated to the top of the class soon enough; they are frustrated that their kids haven’t displayed the athletic prowess that they believed their children would; and they tend to grow frustrated that their offspring hasn’t yet developed the ability to stand out in the manner their friends’ have. We vie for some sort of validation, vindication, or explanation regarding why their children aren’t regarded as special in the quantifiable manner that they believe they should be. Is there some sort of frontal lobe damage that they’ve attained from the swing set accident they had when they were three? Was there damage done to them in the birthing process, or the inoculations they received from the hospital before dismissal? Are they Indigo Children, or do they have ADD, ADHD, or some other operational defiant disorder? We need something that relieves us of the guilt of having a child we define as insufficient, strange, or in all other ways difficult. We need a diagnosis, so we can begin treatment, and in some cases we don’t care how bizarre that diagnosis is, because nothing the doctor, the teacher, or the theories of our fellow parents have worked yet. There is help out there, and if the internet has proven nothing else it has shown that it can provide “something for everyone”.

{1} http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8B3EhxnoFE

{2} http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/interface2005.htm

{3} http://causeyourlife.com/2011/02/harmonic-convergence-and-crop-circles/

{4} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_children

{5} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

{6}http://books.google.com/books?id=9aIS36Ls1BUC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=slow+homas+homas+sowell&source=bl&ots=nZ-seJyK1F&sig=GnalTbnTctoQj6yT9N3P1oMOoTs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uHHLULXYFuqc2QwfkYCICQ&ved=0CG0Q6AewCA#v=onepage&q=slow%20talkers%20thomas%20sowell&f=false