*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Tuesday 1 December 2009

'Suck it up!' Fairy Tales

We lie to our children.  We deceive them with morality tales to make them behave conveniently for their supervision.  I've come to see that the morality tales I swallowed, including the Gospels, left me unsuited for living among the humans, few of whom are as scrupulous. Why should I leave my son so poorly prepared?  Why not write a set of stories about who really prospers, the `psychopath in the corner office', the kid born to wealth and connections, or the heartless arriviste, rather than anyone with empathy?  My cynicism shouldn't turn him into a sociopath, but even if it should, I'm just setting him up to succeed!

A fine template for a book of short stories, or a picture book.  Whether the characters are animals, a la Aesop, or some other archetype, I can assign a simple characteristic to each `winner' and `loser'. I just need to avoid giving all of the `good' losers an obvious shared physical characteristic, and so with the `bad' winners: glasses, or their lack, in `Crimes and Misdemeanors'.

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