Well, where to start? Parents and society lie to children all the time. One could argue that in most respects the "world" children are brought into is vastly different than the one they eventually will live in. We can start with the simple stuff like Santa Claus, but we can also include historical/etc fallacies and outlooks (like focusing on ridiculous, false trivia like Washington's supposed super-honesty and tree chopping rather than actual events), and modern-day fallacies.
I mean, a lot of things kids learn don't get retaught sufficiently, and that foundation will serve them for a long time until it is appropriately challenged by new experience.
Now he learns some things later on, sure, but that fundamental image and perspective aren't easily shaken.
The framing of the story is just as important as the story. He gets told eventually of reality, but it's told in a soothing tone, he is reassured by the authority figure handing him the new information that it isn't something to be worried about. His mother, his teacher, he trusts them. Attacking his belief is attacking that figure also.
And now you come to one of the great dilemmas: how to get people to put in the time and effort to realize that things are not what they seem (it's actually quite a regular thing), when everything they heard as a child said otherwise? They have at this point a very resistant outlook, and for many reasons. And in large part that's because they grew into a lifestyle that was founded on that romantic perspective, and having grown used to it and having become complicit in the system, they now have significant psychological mechanisms at work against new learning.
So, why fill their heads with lies and romanticized falsities in the first place? Why teach people crap that is fundamentally wrong, misleading, or unimportant in the first place? Why teach them that authority figures lying to them is acceptable practice? Why teach them that they are too stupid to think for themselves, that they need someone else to manipulate them, handle the truth for them?
Aren't we just raising a society of weak-minded people? Why lie? What benefit does it serve?
Santa Claus is the devil in disguise to all but the dyslexic (ooh, quotable!)
I mean, a lot of things kids learn don't get retaught sufficiently, and that foundation will serve them for a long time until it is appropriately challenged by new experience.
Now he learns some things later on, sure, but that fundamental image and perspective aren't easily shaken.
The framing of the story is just as important as the story. He gets told eventually of reality, but it's told in a soothing tone, he is reassured by the authority figure handing him the new information that it isn't something to be worried about. His mother, his teacher, he trusts them. Attacking his belief is attacking that figure also.
And now you come to one of the great dilemmas: how to get people to put in the time and effort to realize that things are not what they seem (it's actually quite a regular thing), when everything they heard as a child said otherwise? They have at this point a very resistant outlook, and for many reasons. And in large part that's because they grew into a lifestyle that was founded on that romantic perspective, and having grown used to it and having become complicit in the system, they now have significant psychological mechanisms at work against new learning.
So, why fill their heads with lies and romanticized falsities in the first place? Why teach people crap that is fundamentally wrong, misleading, or unimportant in the first place? Why teach them that authority figures lying to them is acceptable practice? Why teach them that they are too stupid to think for themselves, that they need someone else to manipulate them, handle the truth for them?
Aren't we just raising a society of weak-minded people? Why lie? What benefit does it serve?
Santa Claus is the devil in disguise to all but the dyslexic (ooh, quotable!)
