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| The condom was hung on his chimney with care... |
Mentality, where everything is OK as long as you don't make the cardinal (and only) sin of getting caught. It's a morality dependent on the constant threat of surveillance and punishment from some kind of ubiquitous Authority Figure in whose absence all manner of depravity is all but guaranteed to take place because it is completely dependent on external forces and does not require any sort of deep internalization or encourage independent thought, which, for some, is kind of the point. It's safe to say that the concept of Santa Claus is not particularly conducive to any form of Modified Altruism, where an individual can critically analyze a situation, empathize to some degree with a variety of other social agents (both immediate and potential), and make some kind of a decisions based on the nebula of concepts surrounding the dictum "the most good for the greatest number of people"...
But on the other hand, the tradition of Santa Claus is something of a cultural boon for atheists and all manner of freethinkers from various walks of life. I admit that recently after I had freed my mind from religious tyranny, I quickly added a clause to my worldview that took a hardline stance against teaching fairy tales and superstitions in any way that conflated mythology and reality. Yes, for a short while I was among the ranks of douchebags who don't let their kids believe in Santa Claus. Thankfully, a little perspective and a lot of booze helped me on the road to enlightenment and to not strip my children's childhood of all Awe and Wonder like a selfish prick. In fact, upon further consideration and a healthy dose of whiskey in addition to the beer (and a few Tylenol 3s, because fuck it), I realized how the tradition of the myth of Santa Claus was, in fact, the perfect atheist tradition and counterpoint to the rigid application of religious dogma and blind faith.
The myth of Santa Claus is a secular parable in rational thought. Santa Claus has about as much in common with religion as Justin Bieber does with that lion at the zoo who tried to pee on us last year, which is to say absolutely nothing. There are two main reasons why Santa Claus is tha shit when it comes to positive life lessons, dog:
Round 1: I Am the (All-Knowing and
All-Seeing) Walrus
God - whichever of the thousands of deities
that humankind has worshiped and/or continues to worship - is always held up as
an absolute. That is, figures of
religious authority outrightly discourage any critical analysis of their god
and any and all related paraphernalia.
Critical thinking, logic, and reason in all their wonderful forms have
been and are actively disparaged by religious authorities and other true
believers while Blind Faith is actually encouraged as a legitimate paradigm to construct
an effective worldview.
On the other hand, Santa Claus encourages
critical thinking skills in children.
Well, the myth of Santa Claus fosters these skills not Santa himself
because that portly motherfucker doesn't really exist. From a culturally objective standpoint it
does seem a bit odd that a large segment of our culture spends the amount of
time and energy it does to convince our children that some magical dude with a
sled and flying ungulates annually delivers presents only to all of the
well-behaved children of the world whose families can already afford to get
them presents, the Santa myth is great.
The great thing about the Santa myth is
that when our children get old enough to critically analyze the myth and
realize that it's bullshit, we verify that it is, indeed, bullshit. And furthermore, we don't penalize them for
questioning the myth and using their evolutionarily-bestowed mental faculties
to question the world around them. Santa
Claus is like a code that kids have to learn how to crack. As children grow older, they start to examine
the quantifiable, empirical evidence and weigh it against their own beliefs to
see if the two are compatible. And once
they get to the cognitive point that they cannot reconcile observable reality
with a deeply-held belief, they fucking change or abandon that belief. And what's more, they are encouraged to do
so.
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| All you haterz can lick my North Pole. |
A 35-year-old man who legitimately believes
in Santa Claus would, in today's world, be looked at as suspect and potentially
mentally unstable. Belief in Santa Claus
requires the same Blind Faith that belief in a god or gods does; the only difference
is that the faith in one is dogmatically defended despite no supporting
evidence and in the face of all evidence to the contrary. The Santa Claus myth represents the perfect
model for one important component of self-actualization - the willingness and requisite
mental plasticity to modify one's worldview based on critically analyzing and
weighing all available evidence and drawing conclusions based on the countless
forms of logical thinking and scientific inquiry at our disposal.
Round 2: Because Because, That's Why
Religious beliefs are based on
hierarchy. Especially here in Western
Civilization, religion has a particularly useful tool for establishing the
"inherent" authority of some human beings over others. A belief in god, and particularly the
Judeo-Christian version of the bloke, necessitates a similar belief in a
natural order where each member of a given community has a clearly-defined role
within a hierarchy of authority and upward mobility is not tolerated. A few related concepts include the Great
Chain of Being, the Divine Right of Kings, and the conflict between the AIs and
humans in THE MATRIX. (Also, to a lesser
extent, the slaves on Tatooine in THE PHANTOM MENACE that Qui Gon Jinn chose
not to help for some reason.) However,
the purpose is always the same: to justify imbalances of power, particularly in
the oppression of the common majority for the benefit of the elite minority. Without these kinds of social systems in
place, people might object to being fucked over while their king owned more
land, and collected more taxes, and just fucking told people what to do or
while bankers, stockbrokers, and executives squandered the future of the many
to fund the present of the few.
The concept of a god or gods emphasizes not
just Blind Faith, but specifically Blind Faith in an unquestionable and
"right" figure of authority within an equally unquestionable and
"right" chain of command. The
purposes of espousing this sort of worldview are strictly for the manipulation,
exploitation, and oppression of one group of people by another. I'm not saying that religion or a belief in a
deity or deities is the absolute cause of all institutionalized social systems
of manipulation, exploitation, and oppression in the world today, but I am
saying that the mindset of those who do embrace the notion of gods is
thoroughly and completely in line with those systems.
Those in positions of power have found
religion to be a useful tool for maintaining social hierarchies for three main
reasons. Firstly, most religious beliefs
involving deities also incorporate some variation of the Perfect Plan trope,
which is to say everything that happens in the world is driven by the conscious
design of some sort of higher being.
Secondly, a great deal of religious dogma revolves around strict
adherence to the status quo and hence a resistance to change in any shape or
form. Thirdly, most - if not all -
religious belief systems include some concept of Supernatural Justice, whether
that be some variant of the heaven/hell dichotomy or karma or spiritual
enlightenment. On the basis of these
three ideological tenets alone, a belief in a god or gods, then, can be easily
exploited by those who know how and for those whose best interests lie in exploiting
it.
How do you quell rebellion from the masses?
Step 1: Convince the exploited that their
exploitation is, in fact, not exploitation at all but instead part of a larger
plan that they just can't comprehend.
Bonus points if you can convince them that everybody's station in
society is preordained by a deity or deities.
Step 2: Simplify all of the complexity of
human social interaction into two extremes - Order and Chaos. Use some variation of the "it could
always be worse" trope to make the subjugated majority believe that any
change is away from the Order of the current social system towards the only
viable alternative that is Chaos. Bonus
points if you can actually get the exploited people to fear change so much that
they actively work against their own best self interests and allow their basic
human rights to be violated.
Step 3: Persuade the huddled masses that
their suffering is transitory and that they should endure suffering without
question because it's either a test from a Higher Power or because True Justice
awaits everyone after death. This is a
key step, because people will endure a lot of shit if they believe that the
people inflicting the shit on them are due for some kind of cosmic comeuppance
and they are due for some kind of eternal reward during the final reckoning. Bonus points if you can get them to freely
give even more money/possessions than are already stolen from them by
institutionally established means.
The Santa Claus myth, on the other hand, is
pretty much the polar opposite (some North Pole humour for you there) of this
sort of dogma. Santa Claus is
established among children as an omniscient authority figure that arbitrarily
metes out justice. However, the social
negotiations surrounding Santa Claus as a child ages provides a model for
entering into effective dialogue with figures of authority. This is a rite of passage that not only
teaches children to question what they're told but also how to challenge
authority in a constructive way. Within
this particular cultural model, people are encouraged to call other people out
on their bullshit but in a negative way like "You've been lying to me for
12 years, motherfucker, and I'm going to carve your dead, black heart out of
your chest with your own broken femur," but in a rational, thoughtful way
like "Based on the available evidence, I don't believe that your
assertions of one man's supernatural toy distribution system should have any
bearing on my worldview and I respectfully challenge the validity of this dominant
social narrative."
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| But you see, abortion is wrong because then we have less children to molest. |
That's the fucking brilliance of Santa
Claus. Without even realizing it, the
model for peaceful social progression has been sitting under our noses. Rational, logical thought based on effective
interpretations of available evidence coupled with ongoing dialogical processes.
The point is not to deny our children fairy
tales; it's to make sure they develop the critical thinking skills necessary to
not confuse myth with reality. Neither
is the point to deny our children a sense of wonder or awe at the
universe. Fairy tales are OK when
they're used to inspire or for entertainment or educational purposes but not
when they are proselytized as facts in order to foster blind adherence to
potentially harmful and regressive dogma for some ulterior motive whether that
motive be some kind of financial or material gain, the abusive exercise of
power, the subjugation or alienation of fellow human beings, or, in the case of
the Catholic church, the raping of young boys. In a nutshell, as long as we acknowledge
fairy tales and myths as fairy tales and myths and don't elevate them to the
status of religion then we'll all be a lot better off.
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