Indigo children: Evolutionarily advanced or annoying? You decide.

Precocious children are nothing new; they've been around for as long as there have been embittered adults to be annoyed by them because of their infuriating innocence, and because they haven't yet squandered the limitless potential of their youth on cocaine and get-rich-quick schemes like we did. On the other...

By Jef Otte

April 28, 2011

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Precocious children are nothing new; they've been around for as long as there have been embittered adults to be annoyed by them because of their infuriating innocence, and because they haven't yet squandered the limitless potential of their youth on cocaine and get-rich-quick schemes like we did. On the other hand, that exact irritating innocence is also what makes precocious children so charming sometimes, and because of it, they have a perspective on the world that is often surprisingly insightful and true -- and these days, kids like that have a new term devoted to them: They're called "indigo children," and it might be some quasi-metaphysical bullshit. Or it might not.

So-called because certain folks claim to see blue auras around them, indigo children are said to possess a wisdom far beyond their years, and tend to be particularly eccentric, independent and creative -- they're also said to possess powers of knowing beyond the realm of normal human experience. Here's Diane Sawyer interviewing a self-proclaimed family of indigo children:

Actually, that didn't prove much except that these children have a particularly overbearing mother -- but they do have some blue eyes, right?

Hopefully, The Indigo Evolution will have slightly more success. A full-length documentary dedicated to exploring the phenomenon, Indigo takes an in-depth look at several particularly gifted children and asks what we can learn from them. Either that or it's a truckload of hippie baloney. Here's a segment from the documentary, featuring singer-songwriter Elijah Ray:

Is it true? Does a child possess a gift of the spirit when that child learns to play the pan flute for some reason? Decide for yourself tonight when The Indigo Evolution screens at eventgallery 910Arts tonight at 7:30 p.m. -- the screening is free, so you really don't have a whole lot to lose except your patience with Elijah Ray's lengthy sword metaphor.

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