Hi Jow Forums. I don't know where else to talk about this, but here goes.
When I was a little kid, my dad took me on camping trips all the time. I learned to read at an early age and I often read atlases, as well as my dad's field guides to wildlife. People probably thought that I was a weird kid, but I remember that I was happy that way.
I didn't really get into video games and TV until I was around ten, and it was largely due to peer pressure.
I'm starting to think the we, as a society, need to re-think what "normal childhood" is. We take it for granted that kids are naturally going to obsess over cartoons and video games. Of course, kids probably obsess over these things because we expose kids to the manipulative power of advertising at an early age … and because some parents just park their kids in front of the TV in order to make parenting easier.
Most people on Jow Forums probably know that our society is stupid because the masses obsess over popular culture and celebrities. My hypothesis is that this is not inevitable, but socially manufactured. It's natural for human beings to be curious regarding the natural world from an early age. We live in a world of cancerous Hollywood celebrity nonsense because this natural curiosity is supressed by the mainstream media. This could be an accident … though it could just as easily be a deliberate ploy by the corporate media. After all, people are easier to control if they believe that human civilization is all that matters.
>In before "This is not political."
Jow Forums is constantly full of barely political threads like "Did you go to church today?" and "Why haven't you had kids yet?" If we can talk about those things, then surely we can talk about how mankind's natural curiosity regarding the natural world is being supressed by a corporate-funded pop cultural stupefying machine.
did op's post upset you? if so, then please explain why. Your immature comment doesn't help anyone.
Nolan Ortiz
bump for extreme relevancy. I thought I was brought up normal too. When I look back, i spent at least 50% of my free time as a child watching TV or playing vidya. At least my parents took me too church and to walks in the forest.
Aaron Jackson
If kids spend all their time playing video games and watching TV, corporations and advertisers make lots of money. No one makes any money from kids exploring nature and spending time outside.
Samuel Bell
kids need guidance, your father did a good job but most of people just leave their kids be. I was such a child myself, basically left to figure out the world on my own with no connection to the wisdom of past generations. I am sad and crushed man in my early 30 now, having bad parents is no short from having a severe physical handicap.
Charles Sullivan
I really don't see how we can "fix" parenting now, or even fix what is considered to be good parenting. The vast majority of people are doing unhealthy things that lead to dysfunctional children, partly because modernity makes anything else very difficult and partly because people are fallen. There's not all that much you can do about that, God is dead, the church is dead, the kings are dead, and fatherhood is dead. If you want to have children you have to luck out and find a very traditional wife who comes from a miraculously healthy family who is willing to homeschool your kids while you somehow manage to make enough money to support all that while simultaneously playing an appropriately large role in your children's upbringing. It's very difficult, especially if you grew up as many do in a degenerate or dysfunctional mode yourself and only start pulling yourself back together in your 20's or 30's, when to some extent it's already too late to do things properly.
Kayden Lewis
Back in the day, everyone believed in something bigger than themselves, and that was Christianity. The church was your community. Christianity might be dead in the West for good, but we need some kind of overarching idea that can unite people beyond just hedonism.
Michael Gutierrez
Overall, I made this thread to address a burning question.
Children seem to be bored by formal educational content. Is this truly natural or is this socially engineered?
I ask this because I was raised on formal educational content. I enjoyed it. It never felt boring or alien to me.
Therefore, it's entirely possible that some people (or perhaps even most people) don't obsess over nature simply because they don't think that they are "supposed to".
Jayden Edwards
A+
Conservatives often complain about how childhood has been ruined by modernity. They are correct, but they fail to realize that big business (which conservatives constantly defend) has played a key role in the destruction of modern childhood.
The end result is a generation of kids who hate the whole universe because they assume that human civilization is the entire universe.
Colton Murphy
>I was such a child myself, basically left to figure out the world on my own with no connection to the wisdom of past generations.
If kids are left to "figure out the world on their own" they will often get sucked into the world of pop culture and advertising.
The world in which we live has many different voices, but the voice of crude commercialism is the voice that shouts loudest.
This is unfortunate, given that commercialism offers no intellectual development and demands constant cash flow.
Owen Campbell
A lot of teachers just aren't very good and don't know their subjects that well. Kids pick up on it and lose interest because they subconsciously can tell that they won't get anything useful out of paying attention. That's part of it at least. I think teachers should be paid far higher than they are now, so that there are better qualified teachers. That said, I think there is a social engineering component. The elite don't stand to benefit from a population that's too educated and can independently identify propaganda and other social engineering attacks.
Matthew Turner
Op is NOT fake n gay today. Parenting has become an epic failure . The forced fed instant gratification generation is doomed UNLESS this next generation of PARENTS leave the grid. Social Media is killing society and the school systems are putting the final nails in everyones coffin. NOTE TO SELF..... Whats the single most important thing you'll EVER do ?? If your answer is NOT successfully raising a human child into a productive member of society then YOU are the problem... There is NOTHING more important. Try to prove me wrong but you cant.
Logan Green
Also parents need more time to spend with their children, but they're pressured to spend long hours working by the high costs of housing, healthcare, good food, etc. A major flaw in the traditional conservative mindset, in my opinion, is that they think the free market produces the best possible outcome.
Dominic Hughes
Socially engineered for sure. I was always reading and learning and exploring the woods when I was a young kid. It was school that sucked all the interest out of me.
Leo Bennett
>There's not all that much you can do about that, God is dead, the church is dead, the kings are dead, and fatherhood is dead.
Nature isn't dead though. Nature is the one adversary that big business can't kill, despite its best efforts.
Big business is consuming every aspect of civilization, but nature isn't part of civilization and doesn't follow the same rules.
The strongmen of the past have been dismissed as examples of "toxic masculinity", but predatory beasts still exist. Predatory animals will provide us with inspiration for all time.
Jonathan Fisher
>A lot of teachers just aren't very good and don't know their subjects that well.
Agreed.
When I was in grade 11, my geology teacher told the class that oil was made of dead dinosaurs.
In reality, oil was formed before the dinosaurs in marine environments.
>The elite don't stand to benefit from a population that's too educated and can independently identify propaganda and other social engineering attacks.
Very true. A democracy is doomed to fail if people stupidly vote for the destruction of democracy. Socrates predicted this.
Dylan Nguyen
>Whats the single most important thing you'll EVER do ?? If your answer is NOT successfully raising a human child into a productive member of society then YOU are the problem... There is NOTHING more important.
Well … there are a ton of barriers to me having a successful child.
I'd have to find a woman who loves paleontology and zoology as much as I do. I'd also have to make enough money, which would be hard in this shit economy.
Even if I succeeded at all that, there is a good chance that I wouldn't be able to spend much time with a child, especially if I had to work long hours.
If I had a kid, that kid would likely be sucked into the pop culture machine and become a normie.
To be honest, I don't have much faith in humanity in general. I do, however, have faith in my ability to distance myself from humanity, both emotionally and psychologically.
Oliver Watson
When I say God is dead, church is dead etc partly what I'm saying is that any authority you needed in order to change the way society thinks about childhood is lost. The state decides that now, through the education and mass media that you talked about. As a father maybe you can individually raise your kid to appreciate nature, you can even do like Varg if you are able to receive welfare and you find a woman that is willing, but the reality is for the majority of people living in cities they don't have any other option for their kids besides the modern standard. They cannot afford it, they have too little time, they have too little money, and they don't even understand the issue. Man's options are very limited now, we only have so much say in how our children are raised, we've lost our authority and our position as head of family. If we don't conform sufficiently the state intervenes and takes everything we have.
I'm not really sure what the point of your thread is, there are organisations that try to instill an appreciation of nature in kids. The Boy Scouts or orienteering groups, even if they are becoming pozzed and there are issues with pedos, people have been doing this forever, it's just that those people are forever losing to the lure of modernity and urbanisation.
Aiden Scott
>Also parents need more time to spend with their children, but they're pressured to spend long hours working by the high costs of housing, healthcare, good food, etc.
Thanks for blowing anarcho-capitalism out of the water. It's never been a good option.
>A major flaw in the traditional conservative mindset, in my opinion, is that they think the free market produces the best possible outcome.
Yes.
Humans have been trading things since prehistory. That's natural.
However, modern big business has become a monster that assimilates anything it can and destroys what it cannot assimilate.
Wyatt Walker
I agree.
School tends to take the fun out of learning by making it too structured. Most people love to learn, but learning becomes a pain when you are constantly told what to learn.
Dylan Hall
I never liked the Boy Scouts as a kid. It was too structured for my tastes.
I liked to read about animals and their life cycles. I could never understand why other kids were so into celebrity shit instead.
