As I sat home with my four year old son this morning, I started to think a little more deeply about the shows he was watching on television. With a few exceptions they mostly were the same shows I watched when I was a kid: Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, etc. In addition to the admirable effort to give pre-schoolers a jump start on counting and reading, they have a few messages for them, messages about sharing and tolerance and forgiveness. While in certain cases these can be good qualities, the attempt to indoctrinate young children with the idea that you should share everything, love everyone and forgive anything doesn't prepare children for the harsh realities of the real world.

At first it seems like a great idea. If everyone shared everything, everybody would have exactly what they needed. Except that that only works if everyone has something to offer. What happens when the number of people with something to offer becomes outnumbered by the number of people without anything to offer? The idea that the average human being will produce anything he doesn't have to, much less enough to justify sharing with others, is an unrealistic approach to human nature. For every person willing to work extra hard for the good of society there will be two willing to reap the benefits of that persons hard work without giving anything in return.

Why not love everyone? Because everyone doesn't love you. In fact there are plenty of people who want to rob you, rape you, or even kill you. Someone who truly loves everyone is at a serious disadvantage in the game of survival compared to someone who has a healthy distrust of people and skepticism of their motives. Admittedly there are programs which do attempt to inform children of these dangers, but they are vastly outnumbered by the lovey dovey ones.

A society filled with people willing to forgive anything will give rise to citizens who know they could get away with anything. While the threat of severe punishment isn't what keeps all people from committing crimes it surely is the reason for some, maybe even most. Even on a personal level, some things are just unforgivable. Accepting that there are somethings you just can't forgive allows you to take a harsher more realistic stance when trying to prevent those things from happening.

I don't really think that kids everywhere are emerging into world with the warped views of reality created by these shows. Even children who don't have active and involved parents will learn the hard way long before that. I just find the contradictory values we try to instill in our children amazingly stupid.