Saturday, January 26, 2013
Would Fried say parents are harmful?
In "The Evil of Lying," Fried argues that lying to someone is harmful. Parents lie to their children quite often and do not reveal the truth until the child is much older. The most obvious cases would be Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the stork. So in this case, Fried would say that parents are harmful to their children and that they are morally wrong. I wonder if/how this changes once the parents reveal their lies to the child.
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deep dude.....deep, small lies are small wrongs; despite the consequent lack of joy in a child's soul
ReplyDeleteAlthough I would hate to say that lying is justifiable in some cases because I really feel that it is not...I am going to continue by saying that lying is acceptable in some cases. And this is acceptable--not right.I understand Fried's point in that you are stripping someone away of their ability to perceive reality for what it is. But at the same time, in the case of a child, this stripping away of reality is sometimes necessary to ensure the health and advancement of the child. It's no surprise that children who are seen as "having to grow up too fast" appear to carry a permanent mark or scar that will remain with them for the rest of their lives because they themselves suffered, i.e. missing out on childhood. I believe that parents lie to, or deceive their children in an attempt to retain their innocence and protect them from the world. Although I do not necessarily agree with telling children the stories about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I do believe that there are some situations that even the most matured mind of a child cannot handle. When children are young, the majority of them have no conceptualization of what is good for them and what is bad. And the lies that parents sometimes tell their children are good.
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