watched a discovery channel documentary about lying. they said that a child first tells the truth by instinct, but they learn to lie as they grow up. it was discovered that the higher the IQ, the sooner they learn to lie. that is because they have realised that other people may not know what they know. they use that to their advantage, and keep away from trouble.

so, without aesop fables, morals and civics textbooks, and the fairy tale about the old man who dropped his rusty iron axe into the river, would we lie more often? are they neccessary?

Assuming that it is true that it is in the human instincts to tell the truth, there would need to be a force acting against this instinct, such that people would want to lie. It may be a reward from lying, or a punishment from telling the truth. Either case, the force has to be strong enough to make a person want to lie.

My hypothesis is that all these fairy tales and fables and things that they teach us since we are young are there not to reinforce this instinct, but to add an extra reward for telling the truth: the faith that you would be rewarded someday, somehow, for telling the truth. This is conditioned and subconscious, and it affects the way we make our decisions .

So, after this conditioning, not only does a person need to got against his instincts to tell the truth in order to lie, he also has to give up the benefits of telling the truth he has faith in. This, in effect, would mean that there would need to be a better reason for him to lie, before he would. Hence, moral and civics education would indeed help in making people lie less often when they don't need to.

However, a problem occurs when people finally realise that the fables they have been hearing since young, are, after all, fables. They must eventually learn the benefits of lying, and the consequences of not lying.

Allow me to sidetrack a bit, and let me give u a scenario(it happened before). During CLE lesson, your form teacher did a sharing session on Dr William Tan's speech, and it was obvious that she felt very inspired. Then she ask: are you inspired by his speech? Someone shouted, "YES! i'll chop off my legs!" You know who that person is. The teacher doesn't. The teacher was very upset about that comment and proceeded to lecture the class for the next 30 minutes. After class, the teacher asks you if you know who the person who made that comment was. What would you do? (Let's say you don't hate that person to the core)

Whatever it is it wouldn't pay to tell the truth under those circumstances.

So, when the people realise the power that deception can give them, they become cynnical about what they have learnt in civics and moral education. Now that they realise that what they hoped is true is not true, they would have a more bleak outlook of life.

I think that is why people feel happy when reading happy stories. It makes them feel that by following their conscience, their future would hold lots of hope and joy for them. After reading the story, they feel that if they continue to do what is right, and avoid what is wrong and bad, they can have a wonderful future. Effectively, this makes them feel that they can control their future, and hence they would be happy. However, this is most often not the case in real life.

But the thing is, there is a chance that we would be able to have a happy ending, albeit the chance being rather low. If all of us become cynnical, we would not be motivated to work towards that goal, and the chance of attaining it would be even less.