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When we are growing up descriptions of events and people are always simplified into a neat story that is memorable and clear. Any fine details that deviate from the simple message we are trying to deliver are ignored in an effort to keep the story simple and easy to understand for the child.

We tell our children stories in simple terms of Good Guys & Bad Guys with clear winners and clear losers. We set out with a moral message that we want to instill into our children and we tailor the details of the story to meet that objective.

When a child asks a question, we give them a simple answer:
Who discovered America? Columbus.
Why did we fight the civil war? To free slaves.
Who free’d the slaves? Abe Lincoln.
Why do terrorists hate us? They hate our freedom.

For children we do this because we feel that kids will be unable to comprehend a story that contains subtlety and nuance. We tend to believe that the added details will only confuse the “moral of the story” and the “message” will be lost.

We recognize and accept this blatant dumb’ing down of information for children, but it astonishes me how much we continue to do it for adults.

Just today I heard several news pundits on television dumb it down for adults. Tiger Woods was a hero. A perfect champion and because he could hit the ball well and had a terrific smile, we created a story that he was an alter boy. Of course soon after we find out he’s like most other married people on the planet and he cheated. Now we are supposed to be shocked???

We dumb down politics too. If you believe in low taxation - you are a republican. If you believe in helping others, you’re a democrat. Yet, in real life, I have never met a single person that is all republican or all democrat. Everyone is a mixture of something in the middle.

We say things like “sports figures shouldn’t be role models” — oh really, who then _should_ be our kids role models? Our hypocritical pastors like Ted Haggard that claim to be a righteous believer in god that hates gays, yet turns out to be gay himself?

Or maybe our children should have polticians as role models? Politicians like Mark Sanford (or the many others) that regularly cheat on their spouse?

Or maybe our children should worship Teachers? Teachers like Debra Jean LaFave that had sex with her 14 year old student.

We like to prepetuate a myth that things can be classified neatly into clear Black and White categories. That either a person is bad, or good. That a person is either right, or wrong. That in any event there is a good guy and a bad guy.

This is a dangerous myth.

You will never find a person that is all good, or all bad. This simplistic and childish act of categorizing everything into neat classifications is a futile effort that attempts to help a simple mind understand complex situations.

I have never met anyone that can be classified neatly.