The World of Childish Unreality

The World of Childish Unreality September 28, 2016

One of the marks of childishness is the strange conviction that one’s will can really make reality conform merely through ones magical words or actions.

So we see the child shut his eyes and declare that he is invisible, or drop food on the floor and declare that he ate it.  And the will can be so strong with children that when you tell them you see them anyway, they will passionately deny it and even get angry with reality.  They want to believe it, therefore it is so.

Normally children have healthy encounters with reality which painfully and rudely awaken them to the fact that reality does not care.

But some children never grow out of this.  Perhaps it is something developmentally delayed.  Perhaps it is brain chemistry.  Or perhaps the child is so cocooned from the consequences of their  actions by, oh, I don’t know, let’s say money and power, that they never have to acknowledge that what they lie about even to themselves is not real.

Take for instance, the case of a grown man who seeks to compensate for his failure by claiming that, due to some conspiracy, his microphone was not working (despite the fact literally millions of people heard every word he said) and who denies that he sniffled throughout the debate despite the fact that those millions of people heard him constantly sniffling on the microphone he says was not working.

People grounded in reality point out they could hear him the whole time and he sniffled a lot.  People moving further away from reality seek “the real explanation” and join him in his unreal world of conspiracy theories where Obama is a Kenyan Muslim and Ted Cruz’ dad killed JFK and he never has to apologize for saying it.

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