My friend’s daughter had a school project which entailed sending a letter (as in the old fashioned kind on paper). The kid chose to write to Michael Jackson, knowing that he is dead. She even started her letter by telling Michael that she’s sorry he’s dead. Very funny!
Anyway, the letter just bounced back. And my friend is wondering what to do about it. She thought that maybe she’d write a letter to her daughter, pretending to be Michael Jackson’s people. You know, the kind of letter you’d expect his estate/organization to send. She thinks it would upset her daughter very much to know that her letter never made it anywhere.
This bothered me a lot. It’s lying. And I don’t believe in lying to your kids unless there’s an extraordinary circumstance. Truth matters. It is one of the most precious things we have and we need to care for it with reverence and love.
So my friend and I got into a really interesting discussion about truth and kids. She asked me what I felt about Santa and the tooth fairy. My answer: These are existing institutions. I don’t think a parent is required to disabuse a small child of these notions when all their friends will be talking about them. But I do think these falsehoods should be removed from the minds of children as soon as they are mature enough to handle the truth.
I also think that it is wrong for a parent to introduce a new fiction like Santa (i.e., to invent one that is not already part of the culture) to the mind of a child no matter how old the kid is.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. My friend is really into the concept of magic. She talks about how important it is for kids (and adults) to have their magic. What I think she means by that is that our idiosyncratic perspectives on the world are part of our self-definition and individuate us relative to the mass of uniform people. And I think she also values the creative power of the imagination.
Now I hope you will never find me speaking negatively about either individuality or the need for innovation and creativity. But I come at this from, perhaps, a different perspective than she (which I think she would respect quite a bit). In short, I think our ability to apprehend Truth, to construct veridical accounts of the universe is our noblest human quality. [Nobler even than morality which, I think relies on Truth as its foundation. For without Truth, morality is just a fancy word for personal preference.] It is our capacity to truly understand that enables us to shape our world for the better (and, alas, for the worse).
Finding Truth is no simple matter. It requires first and foremost an acceptance of the fact that there is Truth and that this Truth exists apart from us and our desires. Too often, people claim to respect the Truth but really they are just looking for support for their own sense of self or sense of the world. And when they find clues that suggest that they or the world are not as they thought, they ignore, rationalize or repress those clues. I get it. It’s hard to accept that we are not masters of the universe. That the world doesn’t give a damn about us and will go right on trucking when we are gone. It’s hard to accept the fact that we are at the whim of nature. That we could die at a moment’s notice. Or with no notice at all. But, as they say, it is what it is. Truth is not a contrivance that exists for your convenience or pleasure. It is a description of the state of affairs. It just is. Whether you like it or not. You can close your eyes to the light if you wish, but your act of eye-closing does not, in fact, make the lights go out!
Finding Truth requires that we seek it with passionate energy and dispassionate criteria. Having truly accepted the concept of Truth, a Truth seeker must then employ methods of finding Truth and separating it from fiction. The logical and theoretical tools of the philosopher and the observational and analytical tools of the scientist have shown themselves superior in separating Truth from fiction.
But what of the imagination? What of fantasy? Well, to me these certainly have their place. But their place is not a seat at the table next to Truth. Rather, they are tools used in service of the Truth. People who believe the Western tradition is all about linear thinking are misinformed. Imagination has always played a role in science and philosophy. Both of these fields rely on tremendous mental leaps of fancy in order to create hypotheses and theories. Many famous scientists have written about the role of imagination in their work.
Imagination and creativity should be encouraged. People should be encouraged to play with ideas. To imagine states of the world that do not exist or even that could not exist. This mental playfulness gives us the pliability to create new ideas that do reflect Truth. We most definitely should never allow ourselves to be locked into our limited view of what Truth is today. Much of what we consider impossible today is, in fact, very possible. Often, all we need is a re-conceptualization to turn the impossible into the possible.
But we cannot allow ourselves to get lost in the fun of the imagination and to forget that it is a means, not an end. We cannot allow ourselves to become so enamored of the creations of our fancy that we invest them with a credence to which they have no rightful claim. Nor can we fall prey to the relativism under which there can be competing truths. The Truth is the Truth. Instead, we must always keep in mind that imagination and fantasy are valuable tools in helping us see what could be and trying to make it so.
So how to handle children? Well, there is no tooth fairy or Santa Claus (other than the fat guys in costume at the mall). There just isn’t. If you don’t agree, please stop reading this right now and run to the closest psychiatric facility. I do not see the need to put these silly ideas in the minds of children. I cannot imagine what that contributes to their abilities or their productivity or their happiness. Still, these things are out in the culture and I don’t think you have to be the parent of the one kid who gets made fun of for telling the other 3 year olds that Santa doesn’t exist. But I do think it is perfectly OK to conjure up fantastic stories with your kids. To role play with them. To dress up and pretend to be pirates. Or unicorns. Or French maids. Oops. Got a little ahead of myself there. Maybe it’s best not to do the French maid thing with your kids. But you get my point.
But there is no reason why you cannot do these things while also explicitly acknowledging that these are just games. That it’s just pretend. That they aren’t True.
