This is an interesting question. I need to check if I am taking part in some weird Russian parlor game where I will be humiliated by what I say. Oh, no way to know.

I think the biggest lie I was told by my parents only became known to me when I became a parent, namely:

One can hide one's shame from your children.

That isn't to recommend that one saddle your progeny with what you most deeply regret but let them know the person doing the regretting. I am visible. I was brought up to think that was an option.

@Valentinus. But a parent CAN hide his or her shame from the children...at least while the parent lives...

My aunt had an affair with the barber, and produced her only son, but, despite evidence that came out surreptitiously over the years, she denied it to her dying day, and the son only learned of it after his mom was dead.

When he did learn of it he attempted to contact his half-brothers in the barber’s, his dad’s, family: they accepted him coolly...

The moral is, what your mama wished to remain hidden, so should you wish.

I get that. One can hide incidents. I will too. But the effort is visible. The pretense of being free of what your children will suffer is the lie.

I attribute some of my worst experiences to family and I'm still working on myself to erase the negative impressions created during my growing years. — OneTwoMany

Of course! Family is where we all come from, and we are approximately as screwed-up as they are. Good, bad, and indifferent genes have been biologically transmitted; good, bad, and indifferent ideas and practices have been socially transmitted.

It's not so much that I was conditioned by so many lies, as it took a long time to figure out that much of what I thought I knew was actually false--mistaken, inaccurate, mythical, misleading, wrong, and so on. For example, you can be anything you want to be isn't a lie as much as a myth--not to be taken literally. Actually, nobody ever told me that--expectations were too low. So that was one lie I missed out on.

I seemed to have absorbed a lot of "non-reality" growing up. Hollywood reality, maybe. Or religious magic. Villager idiocy. Whatever it was, all that crap, I took as TRUE whether it was intended that way or not. A lifetime has been required for decontamination.

Santa Claus was good while he lasted, but the hope for some sort of imaginary gift-giver, some sort of sugar-daddy, lingers on.

That the more difficult something is to believe the more “genuine” or “correct” it is.

A morphing from “Truth can hurt” to “What hurts is the truth”.

Don’t know if anyone else shares this.

I have been skeptical since I left the womb. I trust nothing, and have always been extremely questioning as a child. Even down to religion I was kicked out of Sunday school and put on suicide watch at 5 years old for questioning the teachers too much. Even after vigorous attempts to hammer these lies into me, they never added up. It just never "clicked". I just sat still and did my studies like a good girl i.e., point of lease resistance for social efficiency and counterproductive conflict.

I was not really absorbing this stuff in any interesting way. I would just go home and read the opposite and what I wanted.

I was lucky being private schooled and going to a Montessori school started before I was 3 years old, so you can imagine "religious thought" didn't do well against my thinking style, and Montessoris unique style of learning emphasized on independent, freethinking thought, knowledge-seeking, child curiosity/free will and critical thinking; I blame that. But now I am a distrusting dismissive avoidant with no track record, so it hasn't all be good.

yes, these are some of those universal ones.

Growing up, it was my family constantly reminding me that the world outside is a 'bad place'. — OneTwoMany

Good Lord. What foolish people. Don't they know the media makes up famine, starvation, violence, rape, and war? Thank God you survived that deathtrap of a family. How I cannot even begin to imagine. They truly had your worst interests at heart.

On the contrary, I learned some of my best values after I left home for college and later for work. — OneTwoMany

You mean, you began to discover life and perhaps had the best time of your life in your college years after being kept safe and sound and able to do so? Eh sounds like a bit of a stretch to me but even astronomical odds offer an even it would seem.

I attribute some of my worst experiences to family and I'm still working on myself to erase the negative impressions created during my growing years. — OneTwoMany

Well surely life is just a rose garden of pleasure and opportunity, people being open with you and not strangers, friends, or acquaintances bound by the implied social contract and/or law must have been purposefully tormenting you for no purpose other than to do so. They must have done so willfully, stashing their billions and near infinite love, wisdom, and understanding offshore, just so you could suffer just a bit more with each passing day.

Who knows maybe I'm right about everything I said. One or more posts here would seem to lend credence.

In the States at least...

All it takes to become successful and financially secure(rich, if you like) is hard work, saving your money, and obeying the laws. Many people are told that one, to this day.

Another...

...with liberty and justice for all!

That one, is perhaps one of the worst.

Like they say, The greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist. — baker

I sympathize with that sentiment, another name for the devil being the deceiver, one par excellence in all probability and hence, the greatest lie being the devil's successful concealment of faer own existence.

The pretense of being free of what your children will suffer is the lie.

Well put.

This is the Philosophy forum, not the Christian forum. If you can't answer the topic on this thread, move on.

with liberty and justice for all!

I agree.

being a free thinker can be hard with groups or cabals that keep out anyone that doesn't conform. It's easy to label independent thinkers as trouble makers or day dreamers. Find your own tribe and you will grow.

Of course! Family is where we all come from, and we are approximately as screwed-up as they are. Good, bad, and indifferent genes have been biologically transmitted; good, bad, and indifferent ideas and practices have been socially transmitted.

True.

Santa Claus was good while he lasted, but the hope for some sort of imaginary gift-giver, some sort of sugar-daddy, lingers on.

Lol

In fact I'd add 'the self' itself. As in 'true to yourself, 'not being yourself'... As if there were some sacred fixed point from which certain feelings rebelliously deviate. — Isaac

I think this "just be true to yourself" (BTW, funny how people love to quote that line from Hamlet, when it's said by the one of the dumbest characters in the play) is not a lie, but a domination strategy and a self-defense strategy, and I suspect that people are aware of this.

Santa Claus was good while he lasted, but the hope for some sort of imaginary gift-giver, some sort of sugar-daddy, lingers on. — Bitter Crank

The Santa Claus story is an age-appropriate strategy to instill in children this hope, so that they can later on become sugar daddies and sugar mamas themselves (such as to their parents, ideally), and to not have qualms about looking for a sugar daddy or sugar mama and to use such relationships to their advantage.
It's corporate primig for toddlers!

That the more difficult something is to believe the more “genuine” or “correct” it is.

A morphing from “Truth can hurt” to “What hurts is the truth”. — khaled

Yes. If it doesn't hurt, it ain't the truth.

I was even told once, and I remember this verbatim: A truth that doesn't condemn the one who speaks it is no truth at all.

2+2=4 doesn't hurt.

"I should kill myself" is about the most hurtful belief I can think of, that makes it true?

Sarcasm travels poorly online.

I was agreeing with you. I don't know why some people believe that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't the truth.

Personally, I believe that the truth can never hurt.
There is a certain feeling that can come with a sobering realization or discovery, but that feeling is not hurt.

Sarcasm travels poorly online. — baker

Ha! Case in point, I tend to think that the more difficult thing to believe is the case. I miss sarcasm often (because taking it seriously is the more hurtful option) especially online. Even though I’m very sarcastic myself.