Santa Claus for adults?

[kaiten123]

What would happen if we tried to create a santa for adults? I mean if we literally took the reason for the santa myths and tried to create an equivalent version for adults. What would we end up with? This post will only be a brief start for you to build off of so try and think of your own ideas while reading.

First, lets think about what purpose santa is supposed to serve. The santa myth makes it pretty clear that it is a tool for controling children. They behave well and they get presents, behave poorly and they only get coal, etc.

Now, what parts of the myth prevent it from working on adults? Well, one simple reason is the fact that it is falsifiable, you could explore enough of the north pole and essentially show the myth to be false. To fix this lets try moving him somewhere unreachable. We could move him to space, but we might eventually explore enough to show he isn't there so another universe, an alternate plane of reality, or something equally unreachable would be better.

Another, perhapse easier, way to falsify it would be to simply stay up on christmas and wait for the delivery of the presents/coal to show that santa never came. To fix this, we'll need to make it impossible to tell whether or not he delivered the reward/punishment. There are a few ways to do this, but the most obvious is to simply delay the reward/punishment so long that they never get it anyway. We simply make the reward/punishment come after death.

Our last solution is wonderful, but it creates another smaller issue. Most people probably wouldn't alter their entire life to get a toy after they die. This problem has an obvious solution. We simply make the reward better and the punishment worse. How good/bad do we make them? well, they never get it anyway so why not infinitely good/bad?

This is far from finished, but so far we have Santa in an unreachable place who gives you an infinitely good/bad reward/punishment after your death based on whether you've been good or bad.

What do you think? Any ideas on how to make sure that our santa cannot be falsified? How about ideas to ensure a lot of epople believe it? Maybe you have a better solution to an earlier problem than the one i provided.

[boomakuaku]

Is this an obvious attempt at what I think it is? Personally I think you are alluding to Christianity or some other religion, though I could be wrong.

I find it hard to answer any of your questions because you are trying to create a lie and just have people believe it by making the circumstances of its origin unknown and the promise of its myth, good or bad, an unknown.

Assuming we can't change the parameters you gave us, getting a lot of people to believe something actually isn't that hard. Making it last through time as something like a tradition, that I think is entirely different and much more difficult.

Though to combat the original question, I'd say Santa is as much for the adults as it is for the kids. I guess I'm actually referring to Christmas in general. Not everyone does the whole Santa thing. Some families exclude him, some families literally go out of their way to play the part.

Before I go on any further I am going to wait for others to post. I am having trouble constructing thoughts when my views of Santa,er, the ones I had as a child and I guess as an adult are much different than yours. For instance my parents did push the Santa myth on me, but never mentioned anything about how I behave will determine the outcome of what I get as a present.

[DossarLX ODI]

You've basically just made Santa Claus sound like God for kids. For kids it's about presents and coal, for adults it's about burning and suffering in hell or heaven.

This is literally a metaphor for religion. Religions always have some kind of code of conduct to follow and discuss extreme punishments and propose rewards.

However, take all those religions together and see how different they are. Too many differences make it a human construct arriving at the same purpose: Trying to make a code for people to follow and believe there is some higher power up there. The logic of self interest dominates.

[qqwref]

About unfalsifiability...

"Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." - Bertrand Russell

[TheSaxRunner05]

We would have to make sure this Santa stand in had a book written about him by several other people several decades after his life based on passed down, word of mouth stories. Oh, and even though he didn't actually write it, it needs to be taken literally, word for word as such.

[kaiten123]

Originally Posted by boomakuaku

Is this an obvious attempt at what I think it is?

No, but that inspired the idea. I'm legitimately interested in what a literal "santa for adults" might look like.

And you don't have to agree with/follow anything in my post other than the "santa for adults". I was also under the impression that the presents/coal system was almost universal (parents always give presents, but the myth still says you need to be nice) with books and songs that explicitly mention checking a list to find out who is "naughty or nice". Perhaps thats more of an American thing?

@dossar:
It certainly looks a lot like many religions but this is still just the broad outline. If we keep going does it still look like them? Are there alternate solutions to problems i posed that make it look different?

@qqwref:
Yes, unfalsifiability will not prove our sant or even make it reasonable to belive in, but it may not have to. Unfalsifiability simply makes it possible to believe in without glaring contradictions with everyday life which may be enough.

@TheSaxRunner05:
I dont think those ideas would help much. I see that you're trying to make it even closer to certain religions but i would like to avoid doing that when it isn't otherwise helpful.

[TheSaxRunner05]

On a more constructive vein, there should be no need for a 'figure,' or mascot if you will, for the type of moralistic entity of which you wish us to create. Santa can be replaced with an idea rather than a set of fabricated myths. One way I could see this going would be to embrace the phrase 'first, do no harm.' There can be an understanding amoung people under this slogan that the world is a better place under this slogan.

You won't get very far creating additional myths and legends, but proliferating an idea can serve the same means - to show people the world can be a better place, with more freedoms, from a world that cooperates with each other. If you want to engineer a morality code for adults, why hide it in such a convoluted manner? Encourage thought and reason by using a doctrine founded in thought and reason.

[kaiten123]

The reason why i'm attached to santa as the mascot for the idea is because what I'm interested in right now is literally "santa for adults". It is a phrase I have seen/heard/used many times but never seen an explanation for that was more substantial than my own 30second thought experiment.

What you suggest seems much more useful for real world application though. It should also be usefull in modifying santa, I might write up more tomorrow.

[Afrobean]

Originally Posted by boomakuaku

Is this an obvious attempt at what I think it is?

Duh.

The jokey way he went about it is kind of stupid, but it's not an invalid point. Religion functions in the same way that Santa Claus does for children who believe in it. It's a supernatural idea that attempts to manipulate people into doing "good" for a reward, but also attempts to scare them away from doing "evil" with a punishment.

Santa Claus isn't an invention though, and neither is religion. Such things are almost impossible to actively invent. They're social constructs that evolved on their own without any active "creation" from any single person. They serve their societal functions just the same, of course, but the memes evolved naturally. Religion can be used to subjugate, but that is generally not the actual intent of the people behind it. The folks behind it typically truthfully believe that preaching their supernatural beliefs will help them in their own afterlife and help others in theirs as well. The difference here is that Santa Claus IS a lie that parents all actively use to subjugate children.

As rational adults, we don't need a magic book to tell us right from wrong; we have ethics and philosophy for that. But children? I guess they're just stupid. Or rather, parents have collectively decided that children are stupid and that children need to believe in this lie to behave themselves.

[boomakuaku]

Hmmm. I'd say that your goal is to create a myth for adults? But you still want to use Santa Clause (an already existing myth)?

As Joseph Campbell pointed out, myths serve as a guide for certain things. he believed them to be inextricably linked with the human psyche, it helps us cope with the vast mysteriousness of the world. At least while we are children, until one is ready to shoulder the burdens of their myths. What I'm trying to say is making myths for adults is pretty absurd seeing as they should be on an intellectual level beyond mythological belief.