Young children and past lives

[Bronze Dog]

Yep, the "prosaic" version's logic is impeccable: "However, although he was excited by the planes, the images of WWII battles also frightened him, and they soon began to give him nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire." So parents beware: Don't take your young children to see WWII planes!

Yeah. Let's just shelter them in a blank white cubical room and only show them Teletubbies.

How about the REAL lesson: Don't over-interpret perfectly normal dreams.

 

[RichardR]

gumboot:

Great research - thanks. I'll update the blog post.

 

[RichardR]

Yep, the "prosaic" version's logic is impeccable: "However, although he was excited by the planes, the images of WWII battles also frightened him, and they soon began to give him nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire."

Glad you finally saw sense.

 

[Rodney]

gumboot:

Great research - thanks. I'll update the blog post.

Certainly as great as the blog post -- no question about that.

 

[RichardR]

Unfortunately, your research came up much shorter than the father's. See this article -- http://www.ntcsites.com/acadianhouse/nss-folder/publicfolder/AP/cover_feature_24_3.htm -- which notes that James didn't explicitly state that he died on a Corsair -- only that he flew Corsairs.

Not quite true. From your link:

From July to September of 2000, James began to tell his parents that the plane in his nightmares was shot down by the Japanese after it had taken off from a ship on the water. When James was asked if he knew who the pilot was, he simply replied “James.”

Andrea asked James what type of plane he was flying in his dreams, and he said it was a “Corsair.” Then, after repeated attempts to push for more information right after the nightmares, Bruce and Andrea got the word “Natoma.”

(My bold.)

The plane in his nightmares where he was shot down - was a Corsair. Later:

After vigorously checking into the squadron’s aircraft action records, he found out that Huston was shot down in a FM2 Wildcat fighter plane – not a Corsair

Speaks for itself.

 

[KingMerv00]

Yep, the "prosaic" version's logic is impeccable: "However, although he was excited by the planes, the images of WWII battles also frightened him, and they soon began to give him nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire." So parents beware: Don't take your young children to see WWII planes!

I disagree, YOUR logic is impeccable:

1)Child has rudimentary knowledge of WWII aircraft and has nightmares about crashing planes.

ergo

2)His consciousness is a non-physical entity immune to the laws of nature as we know them and traveled from a dying man's body into the body of a child decades later.

Air tight. Bravo.

 

[bjb]

Rodney, what do you think of the possibility that the kid was asked leading questions and merely confirmed what he was expected to confirm? The article states:

...after repeated attempts to push for more information right after the nightmares, Bruce and Andrea got the word “Natoma.”

It is clear to me that Bruce and Andrea are creating false memories in this kid. No wonder he has nightmares. What do you think about that, Rodney?

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

Rodney, what do you think of the possibility that the kid was asked leading questions and merely confirmed what he was expected to confirm? The article states:

...after repeated attempts to push for more information right after the nightmares, Bruce and Andrea got the word “Natoma.”

It is clear to me that Bruce and Andrea are creating false memories in this kid. No wonder he has nightmares. What do you think about that, Rodney?

Hey, Rodney isn't making any conclusions, just asking some questions.

 

[Ashles]

Yep, the "prosaic" version's logic is impeccable: "However, although he was excited by the planes, the images of WWII battles also frightened him, and they soon began to give him nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire." So parents beware: Don't take your young children to see WWII planes!

What a weird thing to say.

It seems perfectly acceptable to suggest that seeing a fighter plane might be followed by nightmares involving being trapped in one.

You seem to be strangely opposed to this perfectly mundane explanation.

When I was little I watched the pilot for Streethawk. That night I had a nightmare about being trapped under a pile of motorbikes.
This doesn't lead to the conclusion that no children should be allowed to watch films involving motorbikes.

Although it seems that you really just don't like the mundane possible explanation.

 

[Bronze Dog]

I might be imagining this, but does it seem like Rodney's carrying around an enthymeme that children can't have vivid dreams?

 

[Psiload]

How long before this poor kid's parents jump on the "Indigo Children" bandwagon?

 

[Meffy]

I'm less concerned for the parents, who seem already immersed in woo, than for the child whose life they might be screwing up. Hope the young'un is able to put this kind of silliness behind him and have a reasonably normal life. I did, despite how coooool it would've been if I'd actually had the psychic powers the U.Va. researchers said I had. But even when very young I understood the diff between reality and wishful thinking.

 

[Jimbo07]

I did, despite how coooool it would've been if I'd actually had the psychic powers the U.Va. researchers said I had.

I don't know the motivations of your mother, but this raises an interesting general point...

... why do people look so hard for such mundane examples of woo?

For example, if a parent couldn't predict every single lottery number, past and future, while simultaneously turning back time, why would they be proud that their child could show a better-than-average performance at guessing playing cards?

Pretending for a moment that psychic abilities even exist, the first parents to have a genuinely powerful psychic child who can both stay ahead of them due to advanced telepathy and manipulate their environment through strong telekinesis will quickly go from being proud to manifestly terrified.

 

[Kaarjuus]

Given the apparent abundance of psychic gifts, I wonder why nobody ever remembers future lives?

Come on, get your feet back on the ground. Everybody knows reincarnation works in one way only.

 

[drkitten]

... why do people look so hard for such mundane examples of woo?

Because everyone wants their children to be special (in a positive way).

For example, if a parent couldn't predict every single lottery number, past and future, while simultaneously turning back time, why would they be proud that their child could show a better-than-average performance at guessing playing cards?

Pretending for a moment that psychic abilities even exist, the first parents to have a genuinely powerful psychic child who can both stay ahead of them due to advanced telepathy and manipulate their environment through strong telekinesis will quickly go from being proud to manifestly terrified.

I disagree. In my line of work, I meet a fair number of dumb parents with bright children, and no one seems to be terrified that their child has the ability to stay ahead of them and manipulate the enviroment through the astonishing power of sequencing and logical reasoning.

They're typically much more proud of their child's gifts, even if they think that logical reasoning and a good memory are something magical. But if they're proud of "magical" intelligence, why not of precognition and telepathy?

 

[Kaarjuus]

Yep, the "prosaic" version's logic is impeccable: "However, although he was excited by the planes, the images of WWII battles also frightened him, and they soon began to give him nightmares about being trapped in a plane on fire." So parents beware: Don't take your young children to see WWII planes!

What's the problem here, really? You do not believe children can have nightmares about battles? I had nightmares about an old sinister fusebox at my aunt's house.

 

[Ashles]

What's the problem here, really? You do not believe children can have nightmares about battles? I had nightmares about an old sinister fusebox at my aunt's house.

If I believed that "prosaic" version, I would believe that all children who visit aunt's houses with old sinister fuseboxes would have nightmares about being killed while flying those planes.

Apparently.

 

[Psiload]

Because everyone wants their children to be special (in a positive way).

Can't you just see them driving around town with a bumper sticker on their car that reads:

Proud Parent of a WWII Fighter Pilot

 

[Meffy]

My mother believed (half-believed might be more accurate) that I'd been -- no jokes, now! -- "touched by the fairies." That is, the Irish part of her ancestry had transmitted supernatural abilities to me.

Admittedly I was a very unusual kit. But that was mostly because of what she taught me (reading at age two; proof- and copy-reading, which was what she did for a living back then, by age three; and always to be interested in the world, not to take it for granted). At age five or six I routinely did better at the tests in my father's college chemistry textbooks than he did. With all that "specialness" (ick) I hardly needed more. But there ya go.

The mostly-good side was that a lot of my agemates believed my nonexistent abilities were real. They weren't, I just learned plenty of clever tricks that gave me power over some of the other kits and pups and whatnot. But the bad side was that even after explaining the tricks some insisted I could perform genuine magic and so forth. :-( And that's when I learned that not everyone considered the supernatural to be just a lark. *sigh*

 

[bjb]

Pretending for a moment that psychic abilities even exist, the first parents to have a genuinely powerful psychic child who can both stay ahead of them due to advanced telepathy and manipulate their environment through strong telekinesis will quickly go from being proud to manifestly terrified.

You're describing something very much like Jerome Bixby's short story "It's A Good Life", which was made into a Twilight Zone episode:

http://www.llywelyn.net/docs/greats/its_a_good_life.html

That was a good thing you done, Jimbo07, that was a real good thing.