Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

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Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Pages »

We have been lied to. By our parents, teachers, religious leaders, public figures, motivational speakers etc. They used to tell us that you have what it takes to achieve anything irrespective of your family background or whatever factor you are been faced with as long as you work hard enough. Well, now we are older and have realized that that isn't remotely close to the truth. Life is random and it takes luck to be successful. Luck to be born into a privileged home, luck to be raised in a good environment, luck to have the intelligence, luck to be born healthy etc.

So I want to know what you think. Would be better to tell young people that not everyone who works hard makes it in life but, to try the best they can because life does not give anyone insight to who makes it in the end Or to lie to them too until they find it out themselves and then the cycle continues?

Whether you agree or not, disappointments caused by cut expectations can lead to depression and/or suicide.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Terrapin Station »

I'm in my late 50s, with grandkids even, and I don't think that "You can be/achieve anything" is a lie.

I think rather that some people misunderstand the idea as saying, "You can be/achieve anything without too much effort, without needing to make sacrifices." But that's not what it's saying.

At that, of course, not everyone is going to be a Cy Young winner, an Oscar winner, etc.--there aren't enough of those sorts of accolades given out for everyone who does everything they can to win them, but as someone who has managed to make a lifelong career in an entertainment industry, I think that people who consider "You can be/achieve anything" a lie are people who tend to not want to put in the work and make the sacrifices needed to achieve what they'd ideally like to achieve. And sometimes that work requires making personality adjustments that folks don't want to make.

Definitely luck can be a factor--being in the right place at the right time can be very important, but if you're not lucky, you can still make it happen if you make the right moves, persistently put in the right work, and make the right sacrifices. It winds up being a question of how badly you want whatever it is. A lot of people wind up valuing other things more.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

I've been reading William James's "Principles of Psychology" in the bathroom. He discussed the power of habits, and how important it was to start developing good habits when you're young. Want to play concert piano? Start young. Form a habit of rehearsing. This habit will make rehearsing easier. Want to be a doctor? Start thinking like someone who wants to be a doctor and develop habits that will carry you through. Habits reduce effort. They make everything easier.

There's nothing better than a good habit and nothing worse than a bad one.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Ecurb »

Maybe parents should quote Ecclesiastes to their children, and tell them that:
I returned and saw under the sun that— The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Sculptor1 »

Pages wrote: June 5th, 2020, 7:18 am We have been lied to. By our parents, teachers, religious leaders, public figures, motivational speakers etc. They used to tell us that you have what it takes to achieve anything irrespective of your family background or whatever factor you are been faced with as long as you work hard enough. Well, now we are older and have realized that that isn't remotely close to the truth. Life is random and it takes luck to be successful. Luck to be born into a privileged home, luck to be raised in a good environment, luck to have the intelligence, luck to be born healthy etc.

So I want to know what you think. Would be better to tell young people that not everyone who works hard makes it in life but, to try the best they can because life does not give anyone insight to who makes it in the end Or to lie to them too until they find it out themselves and then the cycle continues?

Whether you agree or not, disappointments caused by cut expectations can lead to depression and/or suicide.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by psyreporter »

There is a saying: "the grass is greener on the other side". The idea of luck may be in the eye of the beholder.

A chance to overcome grave difficulties can be seen by some of the perceived 'lucky' ones as the greatest gift of life.

As a child I used to dream concepts of the nature of things and when I woke I had complete comprehension of a concept and could explain it in detail to my parents. My dream as a child was to solve the absolute most difficult problem in the world with my mind.

My idea is that luck is created. Expectations can be set. If ones intention were to be to be nice or sincere to others, one can discover fulfillment and one can achieve something that can be perceived as luck by others.

Philosophy can be used to change one's expectations. An example is stoicism. By using stoicism, people experience life differently and can even think pain away.

(2019) Is it possible to think pain away?
https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/201 ... -pain-away

People who practice stoic philosophy may withstand a flu while others may take it to bed and be sick for weeks.

How Stoicism helped me fight the flu by Monil Shah
https://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/stoic ... fight-flu/

From the perspective of the bedridden patient, the stoic philosopher could be perceived as 'lucky'. But how would that concept be applicable or experienced by the stoic philosopher? Would the term 'luck' apply?

Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius stated the following about luck:

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

“I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.” (Meditations)
PsyReporter.com | “If life were to be good as it was, there would be no reason to exist.”
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Papus79 »

It might be simply time to tell them a more accurately informed story. It's one thing not to tell children under ten much about death camps, gullags, drugs, or sexuality while their minds are still making their own maps to base reality from but it might be better to offer a different framing of the goals of life such as 1) Your life, from this time until your die of old age, will be primarily about the quality of your relationship with yourself - all else extends from there and 2) Life is competitive, so as a child if you'd rather play videogames or do something immedately satisfying rather than spend long hours on guitar, piano, boyscouts/girlscouts knot tying, or whatever else, this is about you gaining the skills that you'll need as an adult.

That would be far and away better than telling them that people are fundamentally good, that there's a supreme deity whose making sure that no human goes through excess harm, that your life experience will have symmetry to your morality or even level of political awareness, etc.. Let them unpack their own relationship with random chance without some bright-eyed adult whose just dying to sell them their own religion or their own politics.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Ecurb »

Papus79 wrote: June 6th, 2020, 11:23 am It might be simply time to tell them a more accurately informed story. It's one thing not to tell children under ten much about death camps, gullags, drugs, or sexuality while their minds are still making their own maps to base reality from but it might be better to offer a different framing of the goals of life such as 1) Your life, from this time until your die of old age, will be primarily about the quality of your relationship with yourself - all else extends from there and 2) Life is competitive, so as a child if you'd rather play videogames or do something immedately satisfying rather than spend long hours on guitar, piano, boyscouts/girlscouts knot tying, or whatever else, this is about you gaining the skills that you'll need as an adult.

That would be far and away better than telling them that people are fundamentally good, that there's a supreme deity whose making sure that no human goes through excess harm, that your life experience will have symmetry to your morality or even level of political awareness, etc.. Let them unpack their own relationship with random chance without some bright-eyed adult whose just dying to sell them their own religion or their own politics.
We all think inculcating our children with our own values and teaching them the truth about the world is important. You suggest "selling" YOUR values, while arguing that other parents shouldn't "sell" theirs. (Of course we all think our values are and our world view are better than others. We would change our world view and values if we didn't.)

I think your "selling points" are iffy. What you mean by "your relationship with yourself" is unclear, but perhaps one's relationships with others are equally important. Life is competitive -- but it is also cooperative. Children are naturally competitive: effective cooperation is a learned skill.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Papus79 »

Ecurb wrote: June 6th, 2020, 12:02 pm We all think inculcating our children with our own values and teaching them the truth about the world is important. You suggest "selling" YOUR values, while arguing that other parents shouldn't "sell" theirs. (Of course we all think our values are and our world view are better than others. We would change our world view and values if we didn't.)
I'm not 100% sure whether you're making the argument that it's all subjective (which I'd strongly disagree with) or whether I don't sound informed enough or like I've thought about this kind of thing long enough to merit an opinion - which is something I could unpack but either way I don't think this is one of those 'taste in music' or 'taste in art' kind of things. People should be given enough leeway, and clearly if some parents want people to functional in the world but also take seriously the idea that there might be a bigger 'game' than this life consists of then - done right - that can actually help stabilize people. I think my biggest objection is when parents set their kids up for both culture-shock and failure later in life because they never get the idea of what speed they're supposed to be running at in order to make successful contact with society.
Ecurb wrote: June 6th, 2020, 12:02 pmI think your "selling points" are iffy. What you mean by "your relationship with yourself" is unclear, but perhaps one's relationships with others are equally important.
So I can add a caveat - if someone is something like a pure extrovert where they have little in the way of sensed interiority and there's nothing they can do with that advice aside from damage themselves - I'd exempt that. For people who do have interiority - it's critical that they get to know themselves as well as they can and that includes their ethics, the sources of their wants and needs, and as a result of that get extremely skilled at drawing all of that into a higher and higher frame of competence where one learns how to manage their emotions, manage their handling of upsets, tragedies, etc. in such a manner that they can be truly resilient and get stronger by life's traumas rather than wrecked by them. People can do that through introspection, they can do that through journalling, they can do it - if they know they're medically and neurologically equiped - through responsible use of either psychedelics, western / eastern mystery tradition techniques, but the point is - get as close as you can to seeing the fillament of your own lightbulb or projector metaphorically speaking, ie. your unconscious / subconscious.

The reason I consider all of this so important - I can't escape the observation that so much of the barbarism we're seeing in our culture is a rather gainful disconnect between people's rational minds and subconscious minds where they'll let their subconscious minds do all of the work, unfortunatly most of what an untrained or unevaluated subconscious mind wants is along the lines of Darwinian evolution, zero sum games, winning status races at the expense of others, the conscious mind of that person will either abdicate reason and responsibility or spend all kinds of time backward-rationalizing and explaining why they not only took actions completely out of line with their surface-reported values but seem to do so incredibly often and incredibly gainfully (ie. never having a slip of reason that isn't starkly beneficial to them).

The further reason why having fewer people in this position is critical IMHO - we're all children handling deadlier and deadlier weapons by the increase of technology. Without a lot more adults in this world we're not likely to make it. Unfortunately it's in advertiser's interests to keep people limbic and unthinking (parting a fool from his/her money is like taking candy from a baby), with markets there's an unfortunate baseline told in the Fable of the Bees where the idea is that a nation's wealth relies on it's vanity and addiction to fripperies and fads which then keeps people employed (we're now seeing quite serious environmental limitations to how far that can go), and then it's in the interest of party politics to keep people uncritical because persuasion's a much easier game where they can use emotional appeal or buying votes to get around the actual issues, and then bureaucrats love a purile populace because it's great for business. These aren't evil conspiracies, they're just incentive structures actualizing themselves toward the kind of forever-21 culture that we have and the good news for us, bad news for them - we're hitting the limits of peak vanity and outward-pointing, virtue-signalling, etc. where we either pull back from that or we'd be a weak enough society to not be maintainable by liberal democracy much longer (out of zero love of authoritarianism - it's just that any reliable civil sense making would be so broken there'd be no alternatives).
Ecurb wrote: June 6th, 2020, 12:02 pmLife is competitive -- but it is also cooperative. Children are naturally competitive: effective cooperation is a learned skill.
They seem to unlearn that for the most part by their teens and figure out that the literally are their performance - nothing more. For us to pull back from a culture that says that a person's internal values mean practically nothing and that it's only some combination of performance, conformity, and social shibboleths that they know how to filter all of their thinking along (to designate where they are in the meritocratic caste system) we'd have to get our game theory and incentive structures properly straightened out. At this point you do have a few freaks and savants making sense on these sorts of things - like David Sloan Wilson, Bret Weinstein, Robert Sapolsky, etc. - people who are willing to look at human beings as evolved animals, operating quite perfectly within the lines of Darwinian game theory albeit with one feature few if any other animals have which is a massive cultural layer to outsource information to.

The other part of this problem I'm noticing - it seems like as a culture we're absolutely terrible at identifying salient features of crisis and we're great at sidelining anyone who does. For example the race riots in the US over the last few weeks - how many people are certain to their core that the whole story of the riots was a racial tragedy in Minnesota with an abuse of state force, and then how many people would look at the social and economic climate as draught-striken forest that just needed one match thrown - whether there, whether in an ICE holding facility, it could have been anything with memetic or cultural mytho-poetic bells and whistles that would have kicked this reaction off. There's also then the degree to which how great this kind of crisis is for media $$, how great it is for politicians, how great it is for the rioters, how great it is even for peaceful protesters who just wanted to get out of their house after having been locked in for several months and additionally get to look wonderfully virtuous. That's not to say that all of this is cynical, it's to say that almost anything people want to sell you at face value tends to be a bit of a grift - not always but you have to inspect it very carefully before buying the goods hook, line, and sinker. Similarly we can't make good decisions when we can't even think our way to the bottom of causes - and maybe I'd add this to my first two as 3) *** teach children critical thinking skills in school ***.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Ecurb »

I can't think my way to the top of causes, let alone to the bottom. Maybe that's because I have little in the way of sensed interiority. I'm not sure.

One of my pet peeves is the notion that the powerful are manipulating the hoi palloi, and that a puerile public is somehow brainwashed into buying things they don't really want, and voting for candidates who won't actually help them. The reason this peeves me is that I've never met anyone who thinks that he or she is being manipulated or brainwashed. NO! Everyone who mentions these manipulative tactics sees through them and acts rationally. It's all those silly OTHER PEOPLE who are manipulated (since they were never taught critical thinking skills in school). But why should you and I be immune, Papus?
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Papus79 »

Ecurb wrote: June 7th, 2020, 10:44 am One of my pet peeves is the notion that the powerful are manipulating the hoi palloi, and that a puerile public is somehow brainwashed into buying things they don't really want, and voting for candidates who won't actually help them. The reason this peeves me is that I've never met anyone who thinks that he or she is being manipulated or brainwashed. NO! Everyone who mentions these manipulative tactics sees through them and acts rationally. It's all those silly OTHER PEOPLE who are manipulated (since they were never taught critical thinking skills in school). But why should you and I be immune, Papus?
Well, I can at least offer some tools to peel that apart.

On one hand if someone likes to arrogantly call other people 'sheeple' they're's a good chance, not 100% but strong nonetheless, that this is just their own game-theorhetic behavior trying to get self-appointed status at a discount, and it's part of why some people love conspiracy theories.

To the last thought - conspiracies themselves, to the degree that they are an actual think they're reactionary and motivated by incentive structures. For example there'd be no grand cabal capable of organizing much of anything because it's simply not possible, the world is too complex and the capacity to persuade people into knots too small. For example allowing an enemy attack through to get public support for a war is an example of a conspiracy with ample plausible deniability and one could note it's not a group of people breaking their backs to propagandize, it's simply a strategic act of acquiescence. Similarly in the Covid crisis there were similar acts of incentive-grabbing or accountability-avoidance, whether it was hospitals inflating cause of death by Covid when cause of death was some other issue (increase funding perhaps?), nursing homes trying maneuvers to hide that people in those nursing homes had gotten Covid, and there was the concern about essentially 'baked' experiments that would look like science but be too poorly designed or overlook significant details in what was assigned placebo (like using vitamin C) to bunk off-patent drugs and make certain that whatever drug was used to treat Covid was on-patent.

The one thing that seems to be more powerful than individual people is incentive structures. People are trying to live, trying to get from one day to the next, they're trying to support themselves or a family, and quite often when they go to work it's just a job. If the numbers or performance metrics weren't designed well then they have to assume they're too far down the chain of command to be bothered. You have some degree of this up to the professional level and I get the impression that professionals or even tradesmen/tradeswomen whose actions are getting direct feedback from reality have to say some scathing things back to their managers or whoever's a layer or two detached from the action what's actually happening and what needs to be done differently, however I get the impression that our service sector - where it's just people dealing with people and the brute force of nature is abstracted off, there's no push or motivation. For example I remember in high school working at Little Caesers or Taco Bell - a lot of things just aren't your problem and you only have a store that's doing well if your manager actually gets what's happening, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

So this is where I'd have to argue what I think one of the biggest faults in our system - as far as I can see it - lies. I get the impression that we just haven't figured out how to do technocracy well. Data-driven approaches to businesses and systems, making sure they're efficient, etc. is important but at the same time you have to know what the full color-depth of that function or role is and if you evaluate various businesses, NGO's, or charitable organizations on too few metrics then the range of what they do for people can easily dry up against those metrics.

I had a while, after graduating college, where I bounced around as a temp (had an auditing job for 6 or 7 years and found out - regardless of how much I knew about accounts payable, purchasing, and receiving - people wanted exact-match experience and it meant nothing on a resume). I saw a common thread with a lot of these companies that I worked with. They'd start off as strong and thrifty family businesses, they grew in the community for decades, maybe somewhere around the late 1980's or early 1990's they made their first acquisition of another company, then by the early 2000's it started going like gangbusters, and eventually these balloon into holding companies. Holding companies, IMHO, are a bit like the 'red giant' phase of a business quite often before it goes supernova and other companies are there to scrape up what assets they can. The sense I get of this problem is as follows - the real whip-hand of the company is people who are far too divorced from the realities of daily operations. Thinking of a company I went to work at for a while who did sheeting for a whole bunch of different auto manufacturers - it's not the foremen who are making the decisions, it's not the plant managers, they might get some say in daily operations but they don't get to say much in terms of steering. The people in the front office are buried in the cold-data which gives them a sense of profitability but they might need more. Then you get to the CEO, someone whose running around like crazy trying to sync it all up, ultimately the real power is in the board of directors. What bothers me about this model is when I see so many companies refusing to think outside of a three-month window. They can't / won't think long-range. It's run full-speed at monthly / quarterly profitability targets or bust. The problem with that - it's too efficient for innovation, too efficient for R&D, too efficient to sniff the environment to see what's changing and shift product lines much, it's that company, with hundreds or thousands of employees flying by the seat of its pants and running too fast to look around.

Another thing I've noticed, with people, is that it's very easy to end up on the social out if you spend a lot of time reading and educating yourself beyond what they have in a practical sense. When I've talked to other people who've seen the same thing (typically people older than myself who've had a longer view of it) their suggestion is that a lot of these people are extremely hard working but that their ego is deeply anchored to the idea that their college education made them a deeply educated person, I see some reflection of this in that my dad took karate a bit back in the 1960's and while I'm sure he can handle himself okay it's a bit like he knows everything he needs to know and while he's never been a guy to look for conflict I don't think he necessarily realized just how many people around him had supremacy over him in that area. Similarly for people who collapse against the sunk costs in their lives and take the stance that 'I know everything I need to know because I sunk years of effort into it - I can't possibly be wrong and the people who sent me there can't possibly be wrong' gets factored into their thinking.

Ecurb - I'd be curious as to which region or what kind of culture you live in, mainly because I live in the midwest US and it's very nose-to-the-grindstone and anyone whose looking up or around is showing signs of laziness, autism, or both. It's probably not like that in places like Silicon Valley but here, and many other places, it's a bit like if you're not doing exactly what everyone else around you is it's deemed that there's something wrong with you. Heck, for me in that case if trying to read Sir Roger Penrose to learn the current state of mathematical physics, if listening to long-form discussions like Eric Weinstein's The Portal, Sam Harris's Waking Up / Making Sense, or reading a lot and getting engaged in depth psychology and Hermetic philosophy from the Renaissance onward is what most people would see as tantamount to smoking weed, playing videogames, and shirking responsibility (I have to hope that's not true but I see a lot of evidence to the contrary) - then I have to accept the likelihood that I'm in a world where people are addicted to mismeasuring each other, mismeasuring themselves, mismeasuring what it is they're supposed to be doing, and to the degree that vanity and shallowness seem to quite often personify the run at social status I think we have to be careful that our incentive structures as a society aren't destroying us. The problem with the wealthiest (take a listen to Daniel Markovits on Sam Harris's Making Sense #205 - I've heard this before and he's reiterating it) - they're running like hell too! The sense right now is that anyone who stops running gets eaten, and in some sense that means falling out of consideration as a human being under the consternation of all of the people who are still running full speed in what's really gotten to be an idiotic self-perpetuating social Darwinist monoculture where you're either in it or you've joined something akin to the untouchable caste.

That last part is also why I think the very worst form of incentive is an arms race where it's a deal most people can't refuse and thus it constantly reinforces itself through coercion. That seems to be exactly what we have. That's not to say we don't have incredibly complex problems on the other side of that - like making sure we don't breed ourselves to extinction if things get easy or go bankrupt because without any coercion there's no professionalism, it's just that - at a given threshold - that coercion starts ripping society apart and children get the sense that they're coming into a world of total war where it's every man and woman for themselves (and the breakup of extended families strongly points to the likelihood of that). Those children won't grow up to seed a culture, their values will likely be too zero-sum and sadder still, those among them who weren't thinking zero-sum either may not make it to adulthood or will be irrelevant because their elbows weren't sharp enough to take the lead.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by Marvin_Edwards »

The problem is not with the truth. The problem is how it is presented. There are unsolved problems in the world, but the world is working on them. As they grow up, they will find some problems that they would like to work on. Everything that each person contributes to this process will help make the world better for everyone.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by h_k_s »

Pages wrote: June 5th, 2020, 7:18 am We have been lied to. By our parents, teachers, religious leaders, public figures, motivational speakers etc. They used to tell us that you have what it takes to achieve anything irrespective of your family background or whatever factor you are been faced with as long as you work hard enough. Well, now we are older and have realized that that isn't remotely close to the truth. Life is random and it takes luck to be successful. Luck to be born into a privileged home, luck to be raised in a good environment, luck to have the intelligence, luck to be born healthy etc.

So I want to know what you think. Would be better to tell young people that not everyone who works hard makes it in life but, to try the best they can because life does not give anyone insight to who makes it in the end Or to lie to them too until they find it out themselves and then the cycle continues?

Whether you agree or not, disappointments caused by cut expectations can lead to depression and/or suicide.
We protect children from the horror of the world by telling them lies and fantasies.

For example, regarding the deaths of relatives, we say "they are sleeping." But we don't clarify that they will never awaken and also that their bodies will now dissolve into terribly stinky fluids and gasses and even their bones will eventually crumble and disappear given enough time, say a few decades or centuries.

And regarding where babies come from, we don't tell them about sex until they are much older.

We often don't mention crime to them at all, nor war, nor economic disasters such as unemployment or homelessness.

We lie, and we tell these lies to them to protect them while they are still very young.

Is it moral? It would be immoral not to.
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by evolution »

h_k_s wrote: June 9th, 2020, 7:41 pm
Pages wrote: June 5th, 2020, 7:18 am We have been lied to. By our parents, teachers, religious leaders, public figures, motivational speakers etc. They used to tell us that you have what it takes to achieve anything irrespective of your family background or whatever factor you are been faced with as long as you work hard enough. Well, now we are older and have realized that that isn't remotely close to the truth. Life is random and it takes luck to be successful. Luck to be born into a privileged home, luck to be raised in a good environment, luck to have the intelligence, luck to be born healthy etc.

So I want to know what you think. Would be better to tell young people that not everyone who works hard makes it in life but, to try the best they can because life does not give anyone insight to who makes it in the end Or to lie to them too until they find it out themselves and then the cycle continues?

Whether you agree or not, disappointments caused by cut expectations can lead to depression and/or suicide.
We protect children from the horror of the world by telling them lies and fantasies.

For example, regarding the deaths of relatives, we say "they are sleeping." But we don't clarify that they will never awaken and also that their bodies will now dissolve into terribly stinky fluids and gasses and even their bones will eventually crumble and disappear given enough time, say a few decades or centuries.

And regarding where babies come from, we don't tell them about sex until they are much older.

We often don't mention crime to them at all, nor war, nor economic disasters such as unemployment or homelessness.

We lie, and we tell these lies to them to protect them while they are still very young.

Is it moral? It would be immoral not to.
LOL Do you really believe that it would be immoral to tell the truth?
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Re: Would it be moraly right to tell young people the truth about life?

Post by evolution »

Pages wrote: June 5th, 2020, 7:18 am We have been lied to. By our parents, teachers, religious leaders, public figures, motivational speakers etc. They used to tell us that you have what it takes to achieve anything irrespective of your family background or whatever factor you are been faced with as long as you work hard enough. Well, now we are older and have realized that that isn't remotely close to the truth. Life is random and it takes luck to be successful. Luck to be born into a privileged home, luck to be raised in a good environment, luck to have the intelligence, luck to be born healthy etc.

So I want to know what you think. Would be better to tell young people that not everyone who works hard makes it in life but, to try the best they can because life does not give anyone insight to who makes it in the end Or to lie to them too until they find it out themselves and then the cycle continues?

Whether you agree or not, disappointments caused by cut expectations can lead to depression and/or suicide.
There is a difference between 'really wanting some thing' and just 'wanting some thing'.

If you 'really' want some thing, then what is there stopping you from getting/achieving it?

Will you provide examples of you not being able to get what you 'truly' want?
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2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021