Our Children Understand Disney Morality, Why Don’t We?

It's All About Them (yet again)

As a nation, we seem to have a schizophrenic personality where we teach our children one thing, yet we seem to condone the complete opposite through our national policies.

I travel a lot, and while watching the The Emperor’s New Groove (yes, I am prone to fits of nostalgia, pining away for my family), the reality of just how schizophrenic we are came to mind.

The Emperor’s New Groove revolves around “The King of the World” Kuzco, a self-centered young emperor of a mountainous jungle nation, and one of his subjects, Pacha, a humble peasant and family man from a small outlying village.

From the outset of the movie we can tell that although Kuzco is not an overtly cruel ruler, it’s evident that he is self-absorbed and harbors a childish desire to have everything his way. Within moments of the opening scene, Kuzco lets Pacha know that his family home of six generations, is to be destroyed to make way for Kuzco’s new summer residence called “Kuzcotopia”.

No huge mental leaps to be made here, the point is designed for our children to grasp; a selfish ruler wants to take something that isn’t his, and how the wrong is righted.

This is an animated Disney movie, so we all know how this ends… Eventually Kuzco comes around and realizes that it isn’t all about him. As we adults knew he would, Kuzco realizes that what he had planned to do was wrong, and we see a dramatic change in his character with the “happily ever after” we knew was inevitable.

So the big question is; Why does this simple lesson of “taking what isn’t yours is wrong” seem to be lost on adults? Why can’t the Republicans see it? Why can’t the Democrats see it? Why, of all people, can’t the Christians see it?

I was having a conversation with a conservative/republican/Christian co-worker this week and in the middle of our conversation regarding freedom and the free market he stated rather offhandedly, “Being a Christian, I naturally have a little Socialism in me.” I wish I could say that I was shocked, but I wasn’t, as I have heard this from other Christians before. The Church seems to have left it’s search for eternal truth, and has instead found the god of state with the eternal struggle of good vs. evil being replaced with the eternal struggle between political parties, or in America’s case, the democans vs. republicrats.

While our children naturally recoil from the very thought of someone being powerful enough to take what does not belong to them, and rightly so, adults seem to be able to overlook this when it comes to the church of state. This is rather perplexing, because as parents we instill values such as honesty and fairness into our children, yet we condone the outright theft of our fellow citizens wealth by means of extortion. How do we reconcile this?

In the movie, we are able to giggle at Kusco’s antics and take his selfish behavior with a grain of salt, because we just know the movie will have a happy ending. After all, it’s a kid’s movie, they couldn’t show Pacha and his family displaced, or with the emperor having his henchmen kill Pacha for protesting, not in an animated Disney movie. Perhaps, in hindsight, they should rewrite the movie with the alternate endings mentioned above, that way our children at least will know what it is that we really advocate, a kind of “Truth in Full Disclosure” policy, if you will.

So, where did we as adults lose our sense of right and wrong? Why is it when we see a fellow citizen being robbed of his home and his savings plundered by modern day Kuscos, we just shrug our shoulders and thank the heavens it’s not us. How are we able to rationalize it away? Have we been socialized so well that when it happens to our fellow citizen we just accept it, like so many sheep before the wolves; as long as it’s not us, “it’s all good”? Apparently so.

When will we, like the tiny ants of A Bug’s Life, realize that the power our oppressors hold over us via taxation by way of threats of violence and death, comes not from some God given right to oppress, but rather from our own cowardliness and unwillingness to take a unified stand against our outnumbered, thieving, and violent oppressors? When will we quit thinking in terms of political party A or B and instead focus on the only substantive issues of freedom and liberty for all, not just the select few?

Will we learn from our children’s movies before it’s too late, or will this be a tragic ending to what could have been a classic?