There’s quite a spectrum between lying to your kids about Santa or an 8,000-year-old Earth or otherwise trying to forcefeed them a “magical” childhood filled with nothing but faeries, will-o’-the-wisps, magic, or round-the-clock daydreams, and nailing nothing but The Facts As You Understand Them into their heads. If we’re honest with ourselves, I don’t think any of us here will discount the value of daydreaming and fantasizing about things that popular consensus might declare “impossible.” My mother’s grandfather might have been one of those who declared with utter conviction, “if humans were meant to fly they would have been born with wings,” and the vast majority of his neighbors might have applauded his wisdom for declaiming so. But a couple of bicycle-mechanic brothers in Ohio were among those who thought it might be good fun to, well, fly in the face of popular “wisdom.” And sure enough, my mother’s grandfather lived long enough to see the skies filled with airplanes.
As for the guys who have walked on the moon, I wonder how many of them grew up believing that that big white orb in the night sky is a cold, lifeless, colorless desertscape similar to Death Valley but without the comforting charms of a blue sky, some warm air to breathe, and maybe a chance to see a Gila monster. How many of them fought for the chance to be among the very few humans to walk on that surface without ever once trying to see The Man In The Moon as a kid, or debating its green cheesiness, or thrilling to early science fiction tales that attempted to imagine what things might really be like up there… or what they might be like in a more fantastical universe than our own? Who would bother to make the trek without first wondering “what if…?”
I think imagination needs to be nurtured and occasionally watered and fertilized. A diet of nothing but cold, hard facts will atrophy the imagination and stifle innovation, leading to stagnation sooner rather than later. I don’t recommend raising a generation of credulous nincompoops, but surely there’s a happy medium in there somewhere.
