What's the biggest lie you were conditioned with?
Growing up, it was my family constantly reminding me that the world outside is a 'bad place'. On the contrary, I learned some of my best values after I left home for college and later for work. I attribute some of my worst experiences to family and I'm still working on myself to erase the negative impressions created during my growing years.
Comments (50)
The lie has the function of convincing someone pulled by the hideous strength of life's currents that thrashing their arms and legs in the roil counts as "swimming" and thus helps them stay afloat. The deeper truth is that the lie must nevertheless be believed on pain of drowning.
I would say that the most ridiculous lie children are taught is the idea of Father Christmas. You might think that I am being ridiculous but I do believe that it is a damaging idea. Personally, my parents only went along with it superficially and I stopped believing it at about 4 years old because I was aware that our family home fireplace was blocked off by a piece of wood and that it was not possible for Father Christmas to be everywhere at once. However, when I started school everyone else in my class believed in the idea and I didn't say anything because they needed to think for themselves and it seems that some children believe in this until about age 7. Children often seem let down when they discover it is a lie.
The reason why I think that the idea is not good is that I think it encourages people to adopt foolish foundations and illusions. It is rather different from religious beliefs because they are held genuinely, whereas Father Christmas is a nonsensical lie and does not have any benefit in helping children's understanding of reality.
Fortunately my father always chose to give me alternate perspectives, a healthy dose of reality, I suppose. To the chagrin of my mother, we'd always watch "America's Most Wanted" every Sunday at 9. I'd always be coming up with "what would I do if..." scenarios as a result.
I disagree with the idea of Santa Claus being akin to a "cruel, counterproductive lie" though. Depending on the circumstance, the occasional glimmer of magic and wonder in an otherwise mundane world can make for happy times, at least early on. Besides, depending on where you live, the possibility of a strange old man breaking into your house and attempting to offer you presents in exchange for you to "be a good boy and listen" is very real. Holidays are weird like that. On Halloween, you dress up your kids in shiny outfits and send them off to stranger's homes unsupervised with the implied rule of eating anything they wish to give you. On Easter, if you happen to be in the woods on an Easter Egg hunt, if you ever run into a strange man in a bunny costume you "won" and need to follow him to wherever he may lead you. Etc. Jeez what a world.
Quoting fdrake
...as the biggest. So the second biggest
That the things people say actually reflect in one-to-one correspondence some picture of the world as they believe it to be.
Related - that the things people do actually reflect a one-to-one relationship with some picture of wordly mechanism by which those actions have the desired effect.
The opposite: I was expected to believe, on pain of physical punishment, that the world is a good place.
Eventually everybody grows-up and gets over it.
Parents are what they are, but at some point you have to take responsibility for your own behavior.
:up:
Another one for the pile: the immediacy of revelation/self evidence/unmediated cognition. The it "just seems this way to me" brigade vs the wealth of evidence for the self as the internal documents of a vast bodily bureaucracy.
Recovery from what?
Quoting OneTwoMany
Negative impressions? Life is tough, my friend. Who promised you a picnic?
We? You put this out there. Answer the questions.
Stop pissing on each other for pissing on each other.
Intelligence is set.
Yes.
In fact I'd add 'the self' itself. As in 'true to yourself, 'not being yourself'... As if there were some sacred fixed point from which certain feelings rebelliously deviate.
It is hard to distinguish between lies and misconceptions. I was taught how Mary gave birth to Jesus, as in the virgin birth, and I somehow thought that was how all children were conceived. When children at school told me the facts of life, I refused to believe, until they showed me it in writing, in a book.
• caste (i.e. social/class hierarchy)
• gender (i.e. sex roles/hierarchy)
• race (i.e. color/ethnic hierarchy)
• romantic love :yawn:
• non-technological progress (i.e. utopias)
• The Truth (e.g. "the media", "the absolute", "the one")
• moral / just deserts
• ghosts (i.e. souls, disembodied subjects, "afterlife")
• "prayer works" ...
• magic (i.e. magical thinking e.g. "Santa Claus" (for adults aka "God")) ... hope, providence, destiny
This is an interesting question. I need to check if I am taking part in some weird Russian parlor game where I will be humiliated by what I say. Oh, no way to know.
I think the biggest lie I was told by my parents only became known to me when I became a parent, namely:
One can hide one's shame from your children.
That isn't to recommend that one saddle your progeny with what you most deeply regret but let them know the person doing the regretting. I am visible. I was brought up to think that was an option.
My aunt had an affair with the barber, and produced her only son, but, despite evidence that came out surreptitiously over the years, she denied it to her dying day, and the son only learned of it after his mom was dead.
When he did learn of it he attempted to contact his half-brothers in the barber’s, his dad’s, family: they accepted him coolly...
The moral is, what your mama wished to remain hidden, so should you wish.
I get that. One can hide incidents. I will too. But the effort is visible. The pretense of being free of what your children will suffer is the lie.
Of course! Family is where we all come from, and we are approximately as screwed-up as they are. Good, bad, and indifferent genes have been biologically transmitted; good, bad, and indifferent ideas and practices have been socially transmitted.
It's not so much that I was conditioned by so many lies, as it took a long time to figure out that much of what I thought I knew was actually false--mistaken, inaccurate, mythical, misleading, wrong, and so on. For example, you can be anything you want to be isn't a lie as much as a myth--not to be taken literally. Actually, nobody ever told me that--expectations were too low. So that was one lie I missed out on.
I seemed to have absorbed a lot of "non-reality" growing up. Hollywood reality, maybe. Or religious magic. Villager idiocy. Whatever it was, all that crap, I took as TRUE whether it was intended that way or not. A lifetime has been required for decontamination.
Santa Claus was good while he lasted, but the hope for some sort of imaginary gift-giver, some sort of sugar-daddy, lingers on.
A morphing from “Truth can hurt” to “What hurts is the truth”.
Don’t know if anyone else shares this.
I have been skeptical since I left the womb. I trust nothing, and have always been extremely questioning as a child. Even down to religion I was kicked out of Sunday school and put on suicide watch at 5 years old for questioning the teachers too much. Even after vigorous attempts to hammer these lies into me, they never added up. It just never "clicked". I just sat still and did my studies like a good girl i.e., point of lease resistance for social efficiency and counterproductive conflict.
I was not really absorbing this stuff in any interesting way. I would just go home and read the opposite and what I wanted.
I was lucky being private schooled and going to a Montessori school started before I was 3 years old, so you can imagine "religious thought" didn't do well against my thinking style, and Montessoris unique style of learning emphasized on independent, freethinking thought, knowledge-seeking, child curiosity/free will and critical thinking; I blame that. But now I am a distrusting dismissive avoidant with no track record, so it hasn't all be good.
Good Lord. What foolish people. Don't they know the media makes up famine, starvation, violence, rape, and war? Thank God you survived that deathtrap of a family. How I cannot even begin to imagine. They truly had your worst interests at heart.
Quoting OneTwoMany
You mean, you began to discover life and perhaps had the best time of your life in your college years after being kept safe and sound and able to do so? Eh sounds like a bit of a stretch to me but even astronomical odds offer an even it would seem.
Quoting OneTwoMany
Well surely life is just a rose garden of pleasure and opportunity, people being open with you and not strangers, friends, or acquaintances bound by the implied social contract and/or law must have been purposefully tormenting you for no purpose other than to do so. They must have done so willfully, stashing their billions and near infinite love, wisdom, and understanding offshore, just so you could suffer just a bit more with each passing day.
Who knows maybe I'm right about everything I said. One or more posts here would seem to lend credence.
All it takes to become successful and financially secure(rich, if you like) is hard work, saving your money, and obeying the laws. Many people are told that one, to this day.
Another...
...with liberty and justice for all!
That one, is perhaps one of the worst.
I sympathize with that sentiment, another name for the devil being the deceiver, one par excellence in all probability and hence, the greatest lie being the devil's successful concealment of faer own existence.
Well put.
I agree.
True.
Lol
I think this "just be true to yourself" (BTW, funny how people love to quote that line from Hamlet, when it's said by the one of the dumbest characters in the play) is not a lie, but a domination strategy and a self-defense strategy, and I suspect that people are aware of this.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The Santa Claus story is an age-appropriate strategy to instill in children this hope, so that they can later on become sugar daddies and sugar mamas themselves (such as to their parents, ideally), and to not have qualms about looking for a sugar daddy or sugar mama and to use such relationships to their advantage.
It's corporate primig for toddlers!
Yes. If it doesn't hurt, it ain't the truth.
I was even told once, and I remember this verbatim: A truth that doesn't condemn the one who speaks it is no truth at all.
"I should kill myself" is about the most hurtful belief I can think of, that makes it true?
I was agreeing with you. I don't know why some people believe that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't the truth.
Personally, I believe that the truth can never hurt.
There is a certain feeling that can come with a sobering realization or discovery, but that feeling is not hurt.
Ha! Case in point, I tend to think that the more difficult thing to believe is the case. I miss sarcasm often (because taking it seriously is the more hurtful option) especially online. Even though I’m very sarcastic myself.