This essay is a section-for-section response to Lies We Tell Kids by Paul Graham, so read that first, or this probably won't make sense. Heck, even if you do read that one first, it might not.
Allow me to begin with a brief snippet from an essay by another writer with whom I have always enjoyed disagreeing:
"...the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully..."
Mark Twain's satirical essay, On the Decay of the Art of Lying, makes the same overall point as Paul Graham: "Though 'lie' has negative connotations, I don't mean to suggest we should never do this—just that we should pay attention when we do." It is my fond hope that should he ever encounter this essay, Paul Graham will take it in the spirit it is intended: helping him pay attention to the lies he tells.
To end my introduction by beginning with a conclusion, I am tempted to conclude that Paul Graham is neither an accomplished liar, nor closely associated with children. I will introduce my conclusion by concluding this introduction.
Protection
I am sorry for Paul Graham that his parents raised him in the suburbs. Of course, the suburbs have changed a great deal since then, and if he were growing up today, he could have experienced public violence even in the suburbs. Cities have changed too, and even taking my kids on the notoriously nasty buses of Washington DC where I live, people are always really nice to (and around) my kids.
But I digress.
The primary place we should protect our children is in our homes. It's a place where everyone loves them, and where threats can be mitigated, though never eliminated. It's a place where, when something bad does happen, someone else is always there to help pick up the pieces.
This is not a lie. It is not misleading. It is not misplaced. Anything else is a lie, and a lie of such epic proportions and astonishingly bad repercussions, that many children will never recover from it. Children need to be protected, and not doing so is a failure.
Another kind of failure is not teaching children to protect themselves, both inside and outside the home. Kids run into stuff at home and elsewhere that could do them harm: those things intended to do harm- guns and knives; and others that are merely byproducts of a dangerous world- cars, malfunctions, diseases, relatives, and, yes, lies.
Not teaching kids how to protect themselves in the world is stupid. I'm not sure if it's a lie or some other kind of stupid, but it's definitely not smart. I think Paul Graham and I agree on this.
Sex (and Drugs)
I am sorry for Paul Graham that he lost his virginity so much later than his college friends. I wonder if this has anything to do with the reasons for writing about sex in the same section with drugs.
I mean, seriously?
Let me just start with drugs. Drugs are stupid because they are addictive, dangerous, and harmful to overall health. Taking them under the care of a physician can help mitigate those factors. Drugs are great because they can also help reduce some kinds of problems, such as social anxiety or sexual dysfunction or low energy. That doesn't make them less addictive, dangerous, or deleterious to overall health.
My drugs of choice are caffeine and alcohol. I use them, primarily, because they are legal. Some drugs are illegal, and the reason to avoid them is that if you are caught with them, it can result in long jail sentences and future recriminations. I used to smoke cigarettes, because I really like smoking, and they are also legal. Unfortunately, they also made me stinky and tense, so I stopped. They also cause cancer.
That's the truth about drugs, as I see it. I'm sure I missed some stuff. But on to the more important topic: sex.
We lie to kids about sex for all sorts of reasons, some of which the author noted, some of which he missed. We lie because we are repressed. We lie because we are embarrassed. We lie because we don't know what to say. We lie because we feel guilty or afraid or jealous or entitled. We lie because we can't think of what else to do.
We live in a hyper-sexed culture, where we (and our kids) are constantly bombarded by conflicting messages from all around them: do it, don't do it, look like you're doing it, do it longer, do it with more people, do it with less people, do it sooner, do it later. How could we not be confused?
The author downplays the dangers, and totally misses one. The people trying to have sex with our kids are either other kids with equally bad judgment and even less home training, or sexual predators. As for the risks listed by Paul Graham? Teen pregnancy sucks. Having the kid sucks, getting an abortion sucks. Lots of the diseases you can get, you're just stuck with them until you die, which may come sooner with HIV or Hepatitis, or even HPV.
The truth is, when you get it right, sex is great. When you get it wrong, it can be terrible. On balance, sex is probably a bad thing to lie about, especially to kids.
Innocence
If a pre-adolescent kid is "having sex" it is child abuse. An authority should immediately be notified, and parents should seek professional counseling for the child and themselves.
And as much as it bothers us, our adolescent kids are having sex. And if not, probably wanting to. It's worth talking to them about it somewhat honestly, before one of the aforementioned risks manifest.
But on to innocence. I liked Graham's point about us being pre-programmed to respond to innocence. I think he's right that this is a reason we lie to kids sometimes- to keep them innocent. I have a better plan, though. It's called "parental naivety." All our parents had it, I've definitely got it in a healthy dose already, and my kids are still small.
Death
I'm sorry Paul Graham's cat died. I also think his parents should have carried that lie a little further, to avoid his mentioning that his sister killed it in his otherwise very good essay.
But seriously, kids afraid of death? That's just not true. We lie to kids about death because we are afraid of it. And to the extent that kids are afraid of it, it's because we've trained them to be. In the past year, our family has seen the death of a dog, a cat, a grandmother, and a grandfather. When Meme was sick, our daughter asked, "is Meme sick?" and I said "yes." "Is Meme going to die?" I have no idea where she got that notion, but I also responded, "Yes."
Her response? "Oh."
That's it. Then, several weeks later, I heard her playing with her dolls, pretending one of them was dead. We told her that when a person dies, it means their body stops working, and they won't be able to hug and kiss and hold us any more, and that makes us sad. But really, it bothered us way more than it did her.
Kids certainly understand missing someone. Now, I don't know if the author intended to call "in a better place" a lie or not. But young kids won't understand why someone left when they die. Saying they are "in a better place" is one way of mitigating the hurt feelings that may ensue. But that's not the main reason for saying it.
The main reason for this statement is that people BELIEVE IT TO BE TRUE. Yes, I know it's astonishing, but people believe in heaven, and they believe people they love are there. If it's a lie, there are all sorts of things to blame it on, but "kids are afraid of death" is not one of them.
As for Paul Graham's delayed sense of his own mortality, he should talk to Ray Kurzweil. That guy still thinks he's never going to die.
Identity
I get from the author's section on identity that he does not have much use for religion:
This probably accounts for a lot of the spread of modern religions, and explains why their doctrines are a combination of the useful and the bizarre. The bizarre half is what makes the religion stick, and the useful half is the payload.
If I had to explain the rise of "modern religions" I would probably cite fear and greed before useful payloads. Modern religion is a profit-making enterprise that takes advantage of people who are afraid of dying. See the previous section, in which I explain that kids are a notable exception to this rule. If kids accept religion for reasons other than personal conviction, it is probably because they must, and because it is fun.
But I like the part about useful payload. Society is like that. It's a whole big set of bizarre rituals like shaking hands and kissing, with a few side-effects that are beneficial, and a few that are not. War and the like.
Now, that being said, the useful payload is really just a stereotype of oneself, and for the most part, such payloads tend to come along with stereotypes of others. Things like "religious people are liars."
If I had to cite a single reason for the promulgation of identity-based lies, it would be that people actually believe them. See the previous section about death for a religious example. I think what I believe is that my own salvation doesn't really have anything to do with other people, especially not my merit relative to them.
So, if I can teach my kids something about identity, I hope it will be to work it out for themselves. It certainly won't be that identity is a group hallucination with useful side-effects. That seems like a lie to me.
Authority
The first reason I assumed Paul Graham did not have kids was when he said the thing about kids being afraid of death. The second was when he seemed to indicate that any parent might think lying is a good way to maintain authority over a child.
I guess maybe if your kids were really stupid, or if your lies were particularly well crafted, this might be true. But every time I've tried it (e.g. "we're out of jelly beans now"), I've just gotten caught in a lie by a one-year-old. It is very embarrassing to be caught lying by a one-year-old.
Now, to be fair, this whole section of his essay doesn't really talk about authority. The long example the author writes is about how his teacher was wrong one time, and it surprised him.
So, let me say this. We lie to kids and adults sometimes so that we won't seem stupid or weak or incompetent. And if we were more confident, we would probably tell these lies less frequently. But since the section on authority was really a lead-up to the section about schools, on to that topic.
School
Public schools suck. Paul Graham knows it, and it's true. His example is a funny one, though. Of all the things to take issue with, it's that he learned about the accomplishments of a black man and a woman alongside Einstein, and that he deemed those accomplishments to be lesser. Wouldn't just about anyone fall into the category of "lesser accomplishments than Einstein"?
At least he was right about one thing: following the rules is for suckers. How he failed to learn this in school is beyond me- for me, school was a nearly ideal ecology in which to learn it. I learned early on that getting along well with teachers meant I didn't really have to follow many rules. I also learned that breaking rules which I did need to follow, however arbitrary or capricious they might be, can have consequences. Not a terrible life lesson either.
Learning to conform in a group is also an important lesson. We all go through life in various kinds of groups, and getting along with the others in our groups, whatever they might be, is important. Having and following rules is one limited way to help make that happen. Certainly not the only one, but a frequent enough one to be worth learning.
In many other ways, school was useless. Paul Graham, for instance, miserably failed at learning even the most basic manners about how to talk about the shortcomings of others, even if they are famous. I obviously failed at learning not to pick fights with my elders and betters on the Internet.
Peace
Lying is as poor a method of keeping peace as it is of maintaining authority, particularly with children. "Yes, the turkey wanted to die," strikes me as a way to get caught lying by a two-year-old. Would probably work on a one-year-old, though. I would try it out this coming Thanksgiving, except my one-year-old will be almost two by then, and I don't want to push it.
Detox
I loved this essay, as chock-full of lies as it was. Earlier I said I would introduce my conclusion by concluding my introduction, but that was a lie. I'm just going to talk a little bit more about Paul Graham's wonderful failure of an essay.
We lie because we believe lies. We lie because we are afraid. We lie because we don't know, but are in some situation that demands an answer anyhow. We lie because we are in the habit of lying.
We lie to children, for the most part, for the same reasons we lie to others. And we are told the same lies our children are told. And we even read them in essays by Paul Graham, even when he's trying real hard not to lie.
Like Paul Graham, like Mark Twain, I think it's worth thinking carefully about the lies we tell. I also think it's worth thinking about the lies we are told. The quote he concludes with is going on my wall:
"It's not enough to consider your mind a blank slate. You have to consciously erase it."
Paul Graham, consider your essay duly erased.