Namely, hiding from or denying, reality.
Parents have stopped reading traditional fairytales to their children because they are too scary and not politically correct, according to research.
Favourites such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella and Rapunzel are being dropped by some families who fear children are being emotionally damaged.
A third of parents refused to read Little Red Riding Hood because she walks through woods alone and finds her grandmother eaten by a wolf.
One in 10 said Snow White should be re-named because "the dwarf reference is not PC".
Rapunzel was considered "too dark" and Cinderella has been dumped amid fears she is treated like a slave and forced to do all the housework.
The poll of 3,000 British parents - by TheBabyWebsite.com - revealed a quarter of mothers now rejected some classic fairy tales.
Sarah Pilkinton, 36, a mother-of-three from Sevenoaks, Kent, told researchers: "I loved the old fairy stories when I was growing up. I still read my children some of the classics like Sleeping Beauty and Goldilocks, but I must admit I've not read them The Gingerbread Man or Hansel and Gretel.
"They are both a bit scary and I remember having difficulty sleeping after being read those ones when I was little."
Two-thirds of parents said traditional fairytales had stronger morality messages than many modern children's stories.
But many said they were no longer appropriate to soothe youngsters before bed.
Those stories were never meant to sooth, but to warn. They presented allegories that reflected the cold, hard truth of reality.
Life is not full of sunshine and lollipops. Life is, at its best, difficult and at its worst, a menace.
Truth is generally not pleasant, which is why lies are so appealing.
Lies are always sweet to the tongue but poisonous when consumed. Lies seduce our whims and play on our wants, and even on our sympathies. They manipulate us away from light and lead us into the dark parts of the forest.
That is what fairytales tried to impart. Guilt, shame and fear are all healthy and necessary to navigating life; to knowing when you've taken the wrong path and for knowing who is and who isn't to be trusted.
Yes, any or all of those things can be over done, but to completely delude yourself into a world of pure, "Happily Ever After" fantasy is the broad road to insanity.
Which brings us to article number two.
Below are excerpts.
Let me suggest a third form of evil-doing that combines both elements: a group—not an individual—deliberately hurting itself. To simplify, we’ll call the pathology Social Kevorkianism, after the infamous Dr. Jack Kevorkian, inventor of the suicide-facilitating machine. Its defining element is the pursuit of destructive policies whose injurious collective nature is patently observable, and, of the utmost importance, behavior continues regardless of demonstrable harm. Serious destruction is now welcomed by recipients though they might not fully understand its evil character and perpetrators may believe themselves blameless.
It is, unfortunately, a bountiful catalogue and includes such well-known, black-lauded toxic “cures” as Afrocentric instruction, inculcating inflated self-esteem at the expense of genuine academic accomplishment, treating street slang as a bona fide language (Ebonics) so as not to stigmatize the inarticulate, insisting that black teachers be hired as role models regardless of competence, litigation to bestow diplomas on those incapable of reading them, forced racial integration for zero academic gain even if this pushes white taxpayers out, and demanding racial quotas when expelling or otherwise punishing troublemakers. For higher education, add vacuous vocationally worthless majors like Black Studies, lowered admission standards to ensure a mismatch between a student’s ability and the college, giving credit for remedial work to inflate graduation rates, teaching blatant feel-good falsehoods as “history,” whose net benefits are decidedly negative.
This is far more than Newspeak “war is peace” dishonesty; this imposes genuine harm under the guise of kindness. So, rather than punish Joe Gangbanger for violent insubordination, some black educators “solve” the problem by twisting his noxious outbursts into something more laudatory—giftedness! And, if outsiders object, naively insisting that disorderly conduct totally subverts learning, defend this reconstructed reality as culturally valid, a lifting of the accomplish-killing stigma beleaguering black youngster. No matter the miscreant will leave school illiterate despite his or her alleged “talents.” Nor does it matter that this “helpfulness” so as to gloss over impertinence will drive decent, committed teachers out of the profession. The battle is over cosmetic, supposedly helpful labeling, and the costs be dammed even if the casualty is one’s own supposedly cherished racial or ethnic group. To an intellectually unsophisticated outsider, however, a gifted program must appear almost magical and thus worthy of forced entry. Children enter these programs and then, in some mysterious way, attain super test scores, are admitted to Ivy League schools, and then earn big bucks. That this accomplishment flows from superior innate intelligence, diligence and relentless parental pressure typically goes unnoticed—one “gets” this fantastic capacity merely by showing up as if one grows into a hulking Hercules simply by visiting an NFL weight room. And here’s the problem that sets Dr. Kovorkian in motion: blacks and Hispanics are severely under-represented in these programs while Asians are grossly over-represented. So, since these experiences “bestow” immense economic advantages for those admitted, and since all education-related advantages should not racially discriminate, it therefore follows that blacks and Hispanics should get their “fair share” of these magical, life-enhancing opportunities.
Ford begins by claiming that no universally accepted precise definition of intelligence exists, so almost anything can be “intelligence.” Fuzziness established, Ford then asserts that black children can be gifted though not according to existing flawed definitions. In particular, blacks are disproportionately endowed with certain under-recognized, under-appreciated abilities qualifying them as intellectually superior. These include a knack for expressing emotions, a language rich in imagery, a skill at improvisation, a superior sense of rhythm, a flair for humor, expressive body language among other “gifted” attributes. This hardly exhausts black giftedness and she compiles multiple commendable “black cultural styles” to be added to this stellar inventory, notably spirituality, oral tradition, harmonious communalism, and expressive individuality.
-more here
I agree that there is no universal standard of Intelligence. Just like there is no universal standard of morality or even what constitutes a Civilization.
Each race has its own definition of these things and each definition is valid.
Thus, what is civilization to us, is not civilization to them.
What is moral for us, is not necessarily so for them.
What is poverty for us, is not poverty for them.
What is Quality of life for us, is not the same for them.
And so on.
And of course when races are mixed in societies that assume "Equality", chaos ensues.
If the modern left had a flag which represented its essential philosophical approach to life, it might be composed of three symbols.......a hammer, a square peg and a hole.
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