A theme-park chain where children pretend to be adults

A theme-park chain where children pretend to be adults
newyorker.com

> "It's simply a matter of correct emphasis. For example, a typical downsider history of, say, the settlement of Orient IV usually gives about fifteen pages to the year of the Brothers' War--a temporary if bizarre social aberration--and about two to the actual hundred or so years of settlement and building-up of the planet. Our text gives one paragraph to the war. But the building of the Witgow trans-trench monorail tunnel, with its subsequent beneficial economic effects to both sides, gets five pages."

> "In short, we emphasize the common instead of the rare, building rather than destruction, the normal at the expense of the abnormal. So that the quaddies may never get the idea that the abnormal is somehow expected of them."

> [...] The degree of censorship imposed upon the quaddies implied by Yei's brief description made his skin crawl--and yet, the idea of a text that devoted whole sections to great engineering works made him want to stand up and cheer.

(Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold.)

Our kids aren't quite old enough to play it yet, but I've been trying to figure out how to hide it from them. Not only is it unimaginative, winning is defined as acquiring certain possessions and building a perfect 1950's-style American family. Not that there's anything wrong with that in real life (my own family fits the stereotype), but there are plenty of other ways to "win" at real life.