Do people still tell their kiddies about Santa? (I am so out-of-touch with modern childhood!) If they did, wouldn't the 3-year-old just whip out their smartphone and look up Santa on the internet?
Earlier in life I used to disapprove of the Santa Claus tradition. It seemed like a bad policy for adults to teach children something that makes them distrust adults. In fact the Santa tradition should be praised. How many beliefs become unbelieved as easily as Santa? How many beliefs and delusions only waste a couple years of your life? How many are imposed by The Rulers (parents and adults) with genuine affection for The Ruled?
You'd think that the moral of the story for children is that the Santa tradition is good practice at learning to disbelieve nonsense in general. Apparently some children decide that the Santa tradition is the exception rather than the rule for the rest of your life.
Thus they continue to believe in shibboleths such as phony pragmatism and busy-ness, cleanliness is next to godliness, the rat-race, romantic love, the American Empire, shop 'til you drop, YHWH has turned people into a pillar of salt, paper masks block viruses, a priest can turn a cookie into the body of Jesus, the Wizard of Oz, television commercials, and... Democracy.
They maintain a blind faith in a political system that produces leaders like this:
Comments