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Interesting concept. Been followed for years and I wonder why?
There is NO Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny, but we tell kids that these figures of the imagination are true so we can present them with treats and get them to sleep.
Then as they grow up, they realize we were lying all the time.
So then what?
What else have you told them that might be a lie?
Perhaps we want our children to fantasize into a dream world of wizards and dragons and pink flying ponies to avoid the reality of war and death and stress of living life.
Perhaps we think they cannot handle the reality of homeless people or unemployment or amputee soldiers.
Perhaps we live through their dreams of a better world only to know that it will end.
So why do we lie to children.
Let’s make them strong. Show them the reality of life.
Then again, maybe we ourselves want to fantasize and drift off into the dream world and lose the bills and chores and duties of the day.
But is that what we want for the next generation? Drugs do that very well.
Children are just little people looking up to the grown ups to guide them into the world.
So why do we lie to children?
2 comments:
What about Sunday schools?
I commented within Facebook, and now I comment here. The following is from a book by Terry Pratchett entitled "Hogfather" (who is the Discworld version of Santa Claus)
This is a conversation between Death (an anthromorphic personification) and his greanddaugher Susan concerning belief:
Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
URL: http://able2know.org/topic/108529-1
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