Nervous System

With greater frequency we are finding that science is able to explain so much about human behavior and why childhood trauma can affect a person’s physical and mental health throughout their life. In a new and exciting book reviewed here: http://www.salon.com/2012/01/02/how_stress_is_really_hurting_our_kids/?source=newsletter we are told that here in the USA we are not doing nearly enough to protect our children and how our attitude towards children and parenting is affecting not only individuals but society as a whole.

One of the most intriguing points was a comparison of the trauma faced by children in previous generations to the ones we see today. The key point of difference seems to be that familial and tribal connections of times past inoculated the young brain from much of the kind of stress we see today. The strong hand parenting of earlier generations as compared to the relatively benign structure of modern parenting gives the advantage to previous generations. Further, greater amounts of poverty and over exposure to information are the reasons we are seeing so many more diseases and illnesses that were rarely heard about just a generation ago. All of this is connected to the nervous system which ultimately has a physiological effect on the immune system. 

Religion would explain this as the breakdown of the family and all of the social implications that go with it. I prefer to call it the blueprint vs. the machine effect. A designer or engineer will create something using a blueprint model, perhaps using previous inventions incorporated into the design. Eventually, the machine is made. However over time, the machine is refined, is replaced by a better invention or evolves into whole other machinery. The phone and the automobile might be good examples of that. Well, humans are no different. God is the engineer and he drew up the blueprints. Where I differ with the religionists here is that I believe God left the rest of the work to us. Sometimes, we do a good job and sometimes we fail miserably. But the important thing to remember is that it’s in our hands to fix. True, we might go back to the engineer or architect for advice but ultimately the hard work is done with the labor force.  

I think we need to realize that what God gave us is awesome thus every action and word we use has an implication. To those like me who believe in God, the science is just the proof of His blueprint, the ills and the gains are what we do with it. Ultimately, we use the Godly blueprint to make our own creations but it appears we are not using the data of our experience enough to perfect it. We can end wars, conflict, poverty, trauma and all its effects but time and again we fail at it. Our tendency seems to refer to just the original blueprint and not all the changes and corrections made to it since then. Too bad! We can do so much but rather than take one step forward we often just take two steps back.  

There are things we cannot prevent in bringing up our children as individuals. What we can do is learn from the science how our behavior can be modified to correct much of what ails us and use it as a society to do what we can. Much is being made about personal liberty today but more and more the science is proving what God told us all along when he created us, which is that what we do as a family, a tribe, a village or a race matters. We are responsible for one another and now more than ever we have the science to prove it.