Someday he will realize this situation was staged, but he will forever appreciate the sense of exploration and adventure that you instilled in him.
In a society truth is less important than relationships, communication, shared "knowledge" (myths).
It may be one of the reason why the Santa Claus character (among other ones) stays "alive" in the culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Sy6oiJbEk
Ps. Watching this scene feels like almost all the employee stock option situations I OH in the Bay Area. Thankfully Carta is there to show you how little you get as an employee if and only if you go public.
Then he should have create a relationship of honesty. it's good to know that somebody wont lie to you, even to make you happy.
Adults do it all the time as well, when we consume fiction. It feels good to escape our current reality and inhabit another, magical reality, if only for a while. It’s a healthy thing to do as long as it doesn’t lead to a breakdown in our relationships and other aspects of our lives.
I'm really more and more convinced that each and every human group has such foundations ("myths"), and that the larger the group, the larger the distortion between the myth and reality.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas_Holt3/publicati...
Are you sure Wikipedia supports your assertion?
There is an hypothesis about the origin of the "hacker" state of mind (as a strong urge to understand how things work) stating that many of them think/thought that, as youngsters, they were lied to (cannot find the reference, though).
With a pathologist father, 3rd grade biology questions digressed into two hour linked list lectures on biochemistry.
I distinctly remember the joy inspired by finding out about the-thing-behind-the-thing though!
I was a grown up before it dawned to me that if it wasn't for us they could have gone somewhere else and caught real fish.
They never said anything but today I do the same: sometimes we go hiking on Sundays before or after church, "expeditions into the wilderness", tenting in the garden.
I think it would be a really amazing experience, but I would be bummed out to find that my favorite childhood memory wasn’t real.
Don't agree at all. Do you feel betrayed that Santa is not real or there is no such thing as a tooth fairy?
I really don't understand the urge to lie to your children because your parents lied to you.
Which is better, telling your child:
"yeah you will lose all your baby teeth and each one will hurt and bleed and make you look silly with big gaps in your mouth"
or
"oooh you lost a tooth, now let's put it under your pillow and the tooth fairy will exchange it for a little gift while you sleep"
You have a wide variety of choices as to what to tell your child that doesn't include lieing. You can celebrate the loss of a tooth as a positive step of growing up without telling a lie about a creepy fairy that sneeks into houses and collects teeth.
Adults may rationalize to themselves that they lie to children to protect the children, but I think it is often more motivated by the adults' desire to avoid having an uncomfortable and difficult conversation.
Memories are real, experiences are as real as one wants them to be.
We all learn critical thinking and separating fact from fiction eventually, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look back fondly on experiences you enjoyed as a kid.