Can We Maybe Stop With All The Bullsh*t?
Start by auditing your own beliefs, everything you, yourself, accepted as true growing up, and everything you tell your own children.
Introduction
As a kid (and I'm sure this applies to all of us), I was often told or taught so-called 'facts' about reality that I simply accepted as true, believed well into adulthood and then even ended up sharing with others.
Now, I understand that we grow up believing a whole bunch of nonsense, and that it is our responsibility (as we grow up) to perform at least some due diligence instead of just lazily, mindlessly promoting something simply because 'we heard it somewhere, sometime'.
The thing is, kids' minds are like sponges, and they trust the adults in their lives to teach them the truth about existence as well as the truth about the world around them.
Who can blame them?
Children don't expect to be lied to, so they take on what they hear as incontrovertible truth. They then communicate that information to others (believing it to be true) as they go about interacting with those around them.
Wouldn't you agree that it's our responsibility as adults to only tell and teach children that which we know (with a reasonable degree of certainty) to be true? If we are not confident in our knowledge regarding a particular topic, shouldn't we put aside our egos and just say that we don't know or are not sure?
The sad thing is that we, too, most probably communicate many falsehoods to others believing that they are true. I'm sure that much of what we believed as children has been brought with us into adulthood, which we then pass down to our own kids as truth... exactly as the adults in our lives did to us. So, it becomes a vicious cycle, and it will continue until we actively break the chain of deception.
I wish I could remember every (seemingly trivial) instance where I was misled as a child (outside of the obvious religious lies)... but, unfortunately, I'm drawing a blank right now. I'll have to return to this post at a later stage and add in said examples as they come back to me.
However, the point I'm about to make is an important one, regardless. And, since it's that Passover / Easter time of year again (and, considering that this is also something I'd like to discuss herein while it's still relevant), I'm just going to go ahead and publish this post sans the aforementioned anecdotes/examples.
The Importance of Truth
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" – Voltaire
It may seem inconsequential, but waving away children with lies as answers to their questions – or forcing your own delusions on them with blatant disregard to the veracity of your beliefs/claims... simply because the lies you tell yourself make you sleep better at night – have a profound impact on their mental-health & growth.
Ask yourself, do you really want your children to be so easily deceived? Because this is what you accept whenever you 'impart knowledge' without also encouraging them to seek out the necessary evidence for themselves, or guiding them to the resources that you rely on to discover the truth.
I guess what I'm saying is, instead of teaching your kids what you know, it is in their best interests that you rather explain the importance of epistemology. It is better to give someone the tools necessary to discover the truth, rather than simply regurgitate an opinion you believe to be true. And it is equally as important to apply the same scrutiny to your own life.
Question Everything You Think You Know About Everything You Have Been Told, Taught & Brainwashed Into Believing
Only in my late twenties did I finally realise that I've simply been eating up all the bullshit society has been feeding me all of these years. And, we just accept it, too. But, honestly, this kind of negligent deception is borderline criminal.
From being utterly convinced that I was damned to hell for my same-sex attractions (and the associated trauma I'm still busy undoing), to the absolutely ludicrous, disgusting, and outright evil notion that we require the flesh of animals (as well as the shit that comes out of their bodies) in order to survive and be healthy... what fucking crap!
Honestly now, can you really blame me for being seethingly furious, frustrated and completely fucked off at having trusted the adults in my life (as well as society in general) for so long?
I even remember, as an animal-loving kid, raising my doubts to (supposedly) animal-loving parents regarding the true necessity of having to eat animals to survive. I remember being told, while unfortunate that animals (who are no morally different to the companion animals we love as our family) had to be killed to become 'food', that same was absolutely essential for my survival.
What a fucking joke!
It genuinely sickens & baffles me that otherwise good and decent people not only bought into this propaganda themselves, but then went ahead and pushed the narrative onto their children without even giving it a glancing second thought.
And don’t even get me started on the indifference with which we mutilate the genitals of our children (when same is not medically necessary).
What the actual fuck? Disgraceful! Truly.
This is beyond ignorant. It’s frighteningly evil! Especially when you take into account the complicity of people who think they understand morality and regard themselves as ethical people.
And Then There Was Religion
Which allows us to segue smoothly into my next point…
In order to not make this post unnecessarily lengthy, I'm going to keep this last bit focused on Passover (i.e., the Exodus) as an example of another big lie I believed for way too long.
[I will have to get to Easter another time.]
It is important to remember that those who allege must prove, as well as the fact that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. It is not the atheist's burden to prove that the biblical claims are not true, but rather it is the theist who must support their belief that the biblical claims are true with proof beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You'd think that, sure, the supernatural claims are impossible to prove, but at the very least the historical claims put forward in scripture must be able to survive scrutiny, right?
For the longest time (even after I rejected the superstitious nonsense of theism) I held onto the belief that the Jews did, indeed, wander the desert for forty years, that they were enslaved by the Egyptians and that they were a crucial element in the construction of the Pyramids.
Yet, there is no significant archaeological evidence to support any of this. In fact, outside of scripture, there is hardly any extra-biblical evidence to support the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt.
And, every piece of so-called 'evidence' brought forward in support of the above has been unconvincing (at best) or otherwise clearly fabricated. The best that people can come up with (as with everything scripture-related) is that the Exodus story is some sort of allegory – that it is a tale told to impart the message of Jewish resilience against the darkness of adversity and a people condemned to constant attack.
Yet, how many modern-day examples exist that speak to Jews' resilience in times of adversity? The Holocaust and persistent anti-semitism in the modern era can surely attest to this fact. We don't need to hold onto millennia-old myths to accomplish this.
Conclusion
I hope to write a more concise diatribe against childhood indoctrination at some later stage.
However, in the interim, it should be fairly obvious what harm can be achieved by feeding impressionable minds absolute trash. Even if there was no identifiable harm, wouldn't you rather believe as many true things and as few false things as possible?
We rely on information every day to make important decisions that can have a profound and far-reaching impact on our lives. Yet, when we rely on false information, we end up making decisions that aren't always in our best interests (and can even end up hurting us as well as others... as my 'eating animals' example above illustrates).
Granted, young children depend on their guardians to make the majority of the important decisions in their lives until they grow up, but they are still listening and learning all the same.
So, it goes without saying that as we grow up, much of what we are taught is embedded, solidified through time and thoroughly integrated as core beliefs due to the innocence of our corruptible minds.
That's why I’m sure so many of us are so incredibly fucked up as we enter adulthood.
Our childhood brainwashing has slipped into our subconscious minds, but it still dictates how we behave, the attitudes we hold and what we believe (about ourselves and the world around us).
Until we uncover and reprogram the baggage of our bullshit childhood beliefs, we will be damned to making bad choices, based on faulty reasoning, built upon the shoddy foundations of misinformation, dishonesty & status quo indoctrination.