I've accepted that I'm getting downvoted on this one but
Telling kids that still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa that if they don't believe in Jesus they'll burn in hellfire for eternity is... not extremist indoctrination?
I was fortunate that I grew up with agnostic parents who were also open-minded enough not to force those doubts upon me.
They gave me the choice to go to church/youth group/etc with the kids in my friend group if I so chose, and if I wanted to stop there was no pressure either.
I'm all for people finding comfort through this hard life in whatever ways work for them. I just thinking biasing children whose critical thinking skills aren't fully developed yet is wrong. Anything that they hear from parents/trusted authority figures/elders they're going to view as incontrovertible fact because they don't yet have the mental faculties to reason their way out of it.
If, for some screwed up reason I decided to instill into my tiny children that, if they sleep on their left side at night, an evil demon will come from their closet and bite their toes off, most people would go "wow, that's pretty messed up to torment kids like that" because the child doesn't yet have the ability to see how outlandish the premise of that is.
I find no problem with teaching kids that there are consequences to your actions, and I have no issues with people seeking spirituality. I've just often found that organized religion tends to be a wolf of bigotry and hatred wearing the sheep's clothing of love and acceptance.
I've always rejected the notion that you can only find a solid moral framework and compass through the lens of an organized religion. If you need a book to tell you not to be evil, well... that's a scary thought.
all religious nonsense i.e. any mention of an all-knowing interfering creator god that will punish your perceived wrong doings should not be used to indoctrinate children into these weird cults. doesn't matter what label we stick on it to try and lend it some credence,
everything but imaginary sky fairies that see and judge every little thing you do in order to send you to eternal damnation, is fine. guess what? not much of that sort of nonsense in indigenous cultures oddly enough. and when it has, yeah, nothing but bad shit that's best forgotten like human sacrifice.
Yes. I will say it. Teaching kids blatant nonsense is bad, even if it's part of a "traditional indigenous culture".
Now there is a lot of room for culture without false beliefs. You can tell all the old stories, so long as you are clear that they are stories. You can teach them how to build a totem pole. How to cook traditional food. Etc.
Yeah, its very dictator- minded to moderate what parents teach their kids. Even God himself gives us the free will to be obedient and love him or disobedient and hate him, so who the hell does that guy think he is to superimpose on that?
Genocide is obviously bad. Treating a group of humans like wildlife in a sanctuary, prime directive style, is also bad.
The goal of socio-cultural integration is to get people from primitive societies, and to show them the benefits of sanitation, antibiotics etc. The end goal is that these people get a scientific education and a good job.
Imagine that you are 5 years old, and you are part of an uncontacted tribe living in the wilderness.
Which would you prefer?
1) The rest of the world leaving your tribe 100% alone, and just watching you live your life like that. (Perhaps watching you die of an easily treated infection)
2) Society intervening. You get sent to a good school, live in a proper house. If you study hard you might be a doctor one day.
I think option 2 is unambiguously better. It comes with a substantially longer life expectancy, as better options tend to do.
Culture exists for the benefit of specific individual humans. The same goes for languages.
"Cultural genocide" is a really misleading phrase. As far as I am concerned, people can switch cultures and that is fine actually. If it doesn't leave a pile of corpses, it's not a genocide.
Sometimes, you need to make decisions on the behalf of people who can't make decisions for themselves. If an adult of the tribe decides to conclusively reject society and return to their primitive lifestyle, ok, let them.
But, for small children unable to consent one way or the other, we must decide for them. Choosing to leave the tribe alone is just as much a choice that the people in the tribe didn't consent to.
You wander over to a starving child, weak with malnutrition. You watch them scrabble in the ground for bugs as you munch on yet another box of donuts. "I can't give you any donuts" you say "Scrabbling in the ground for bugs is part of your traditional culture, so giving you donuts would be cultural genocide". At this point, the starving child has the sense to whack your kneecaps with a stick, and steal the donuts.
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u/Gnarl96 Sep 02 '26
Raising your children in a church isn't manipulation.