have children forgotten that we had a flower power/summer of love/ hippie generation and the impacts of that are still being felt today? jim henson, mister rogers, public broadcasting... all that stuff was a ripple effect from a generation of people who were fed up with protestant america's quiet stoicism.
never forget that shit. those people changed western culture for the better. pick up the torch.
PBS was just one of many sources, but it probably helped. A lot of their programs for children include that message. It was particularly central to Mister Rodger's Neighborhood. Fred Rodger's was a national treasure.
Yup.
Growing up I also learned that violence begets violence and hate leads to more hate. Then I grew up and realized nobody cares about that.
Did it ever occur to you that the writers of that show saw the horrors and apathy of the world and tried to shape a generation. The goal wasn't to teach us how to exist in the world we have but to create a more wholesome one.
Thats cool and all but the people who make the rules havent changed and the younger 'kids' (now thirty somethings and younger) that have been hit with that messaging are woefully under represented in favor of politicians who grew up on a diet of lead paint chips. At some point we have to adjust ourselves for the world we live in after it's so brazenly told us it will not change for us.
Maybe. To one extent kids seem to think this way when they are very young. They are just innocent. So a show where no one is really bad is going to appeal to their preconceived notions of the world. Which means more of them watch. Which means more success.
At the same time the data on human happiness is there. You really are going to be a happier healthier longer lived person if you have a big social network of people who love you. Given that in the modern world no one really is stuck with anyone and relationships are by choice your best self interested way to live is to be kind and generous. And what kind of monster wouldn't teach the best way to live to children?
Now you are free to be miserable angry loner. That is your choice as well.
Growing up I learned that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.
Growing up I learned through passion I gain Strength.
"Fear is the mind killer"
If im remembering the quote correctly
Growing up kids generally know it's OK to love everyone, what you should be asking is who teaches us it isn't, and why..
Well, if your like me you might forget who taught you and think maybe you were taught wrong. Knowing it was PBS reassures me that it wasn't some bullshit I read on a snapple cap but something we all learned and society had accepted as a universal truth.
I really don't think relying on something having come from PBS to prove it isn't bullshit, or worse, "a universal truth", is the best plan..
To reiterate my previous point - human beings don't need to be taught to love or be kind or share or cooperate, those things are hardwired in us, have been for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, so there is no need for you to remember who taught you these things, because no one did.
What we are taught, in large by the media as well as education systems (beyond maybe pre-school where kids are still allowed to just be kids rather than worker drones in training), and our parents, who were indoctrinated in the same ways we are, is that the opposite is true and that we are designed to compete, and "the strongest survive" and all that other capitalistic, white supremacist, patriarchal, cisheteronormative, ableist bullshit designed to divide us and keep us from turning on those imposing these artificial systems.
So again - asking where you learned to love will never get you an answer, because you were born that way. If you want to know why, as an adult, it doesn't seem true or acceptable anymore, but more importantly - to combat the problem, you have to be asking who is engineering this natural instinct out of society and making you believe it isn't ok to love everyone, and why.
Humans have hit living things with sticks and rocks since we learned it hurts them more than us. You can't blame patriarchy or the media for that.
Hate and fear are inherent to people. But that's like how we have an inherent appetite for sugar, fat, and salt.
Love is like exercise. Sometimes kids want to do nothing, sometimes all they want to do it run around. They need to learn that it is good for them and ultimately makes them feel good. Some do on their own, some need to be taught, and some don't learn it and make a point to avoid it. And the longer you go without doing it, the harder it is to start again.
We built societies and civilizations on the very idea of being greater than our nature.
That's why representation definitely matters.
I grew up in Redneckville, US with a population-of-color totaling zero. Primetime shows with minority or diverse casts (Family Matters, Martin, Ghostwriter, Sister Sister, Hangin' WIth Mr. Cooper, etc) showed me very early on that people are just people.
I have mentioned this before and few agree with me but whatever. Modern Family is one of the best things that has happened in the media for the LGBT. Seriously watch the show. You got a gay couple having normal relatable problems hetrosexual couples have. Yeah they are a bit flat stereotypes but it's a family sitcom not Shakespeare.
There are a lot of people out there like me. I only know two members of the LGBT population in person and neither all that well. Everyone around me is straight or in the closet. For people in my situation that show normalizes it.
I think "Will & Grace" was all we had in the 90s on that front.
If you were lucky, that is.
Here's a good video on it. . The whole channel is worthwhile. Goes through queer history and pretty much every sitcom. This one on Seinfeld is good.
That video explained it so much better than I did. Thanks for sharing!
Compassion likely was taught by many parts of your local community as well as human creative endeavours in general.
I'm going to give this W to reruns of next gen and John Stewart.
I grew up Catholic, and went to Catholic schools, and weirdly was never taught to not love everyone and to believe and trust in science.
I remember seeing a clip of an ItalianAmerican comedian in NY..
He asked the audience if anyone-there had gone to Catholic school..
..some hands went up..
He asked those if they remember the names of the nuns teaching in that school..
..names like "Lefty" & "Knuckles"..
..camera showed people in the audience nodding..
iirc, a nun in the Catholic grade-school I was in, broke one boy's arm, when she flipped his desk on him.
Catholic school values had nothing, whatsoever, to do with the religion of Catholicism's root-guru.
The "Residential Schools" that we forced on the Indigenous children, with their super-high suicide-rates, were a whole category worse, too.
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Family friend of ours was chatting with me and my wife and I mentioned I was thinking of a religious study program for the kids*. She turned red and pretty much growled out to us something along the lines: if you put them in a Catholic program I am going to lose it. They beat me. I am not happy with my response of nervous laughing but it was involuntary.
*I am an atheist. If you teach a kid one religion you indoctrinate them, if you teach them more than one you vaccinate them.
Yeah just go ask indigenous peoples across the world what Catholic love was like at their schools.
Oh, I'm well aware of how bad Catholicism it and I am not defending it. I was raised Catholic, definitely am not now.
I brought it up because my school was somehow the exception to the typical religious schooling.
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