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> It is always about respect, diligence, and humility My 2yo nephew recently started watching Thomas. It was my first real exposure to it. After watching a fe

> It is always about respect, diligence, and humility My 2yo nephew recently started watching Thomas. It was my first real exposure to it. After watching a few episodes I remarked that the central messages of Thomas are: - Authority always knows best. - Never think for yourself. - You have no value until you are 'useful'.

dingaling 9y ago
> Never think for yourself Independent thinking is lauded ( Toad suggesting how to save the whale ), but unilateral action is not. > You have no value until you are 'useful'. In the wider context of society that's entirely accurate. Community doesn't exist unless people contribute to the group.
- Retra 9y ago
  There is a risk of setting up a situation where "useful" is determined by presumed authority rather than any objective sense of utility. There's also the problem of how to deal with things that are not useful now, but presumably will be (in an emergency, for example.) There's also the problem of usefulness that is not communicated effectively; maybe we don't know how to express the usefulness of some activity. This does not mean it is not useful. So it's a mistaken ideology from the start. Usefulness is valuable -- that's practically the definition of the term. But life requires finding a way to be valuable in predictable ways just as readily as it does finding a way to be valuable in unpredictable, circumstantial, and unforeseen ways. So it's not entirely accurate. It's partially accurate; it is as much a lie by omission.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    I see what you mean. But what else can we do other than prepare children to be assessed in terms of now-usefulness? When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. It's always great to have a space or a time in which you can slob-out and be not-useful but Western society considers that exceptional and calls it 'vacation'.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? The question is: Prepare them to be graded, or prepare them to grade? Both of those are a result of their education. > Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. Do you think those "Really Useful" people got where they are now by following what was "now-usefulness" at the time? I would argue they got there precisely because they challenged the status quo, and made a bet on what would be valued down the line, a risky bet at that (you just don't hear about those who made bets that didn't work out). Those quiet cogs are actually precisely the ones who are "useful" in the authoritarian sense: They contribute to what the powers that be want to use them for.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    "There is a risk" isn't really a fair standard. What moral, digestible in a children's show (or any form to any audience, really) doesn't have a risk of being applied in a way that isn't beneficial? I haven't watched the show, but it strikes me from the descriptions here that prudence is very much a value it would appreciate.
  - lazyman75 9y ago
    The only way you can objectively judge utility of a human is by ignoring the part that makes us .. us (whatever it is) and look only at the physical part - how much calories you could gain from eating a body, how much energy from burning it, how well it would serve as a emergency flood barrier ...
    - Retra 9y ago
      .. or how well, if placed in a certain places and subjected to certain patterns of radiation and sound energy, there would result a cascade of events such that a human body ends up on the moon. Objectively, we went to the moon. That's measurable, and that's us. We are entirely physical beings.
  - defgeneric 9y ago
    The value of being useful is classic bourgeois ideology. It was the basis of bourgeois criticism of the aristocracy, church, etc. Everything was called on to justify itself in real-world terms. This was a good thing. And it certainly provided a better basis for authority than what preceded it.

dingaling 9y ago

> Never think for yourself Independent thinking is lauded ( Toad suggesting how to save the whale ), but unilateral action is not. > You have no value until you are 'useful'. In the wider context of society that's entirely accurate. Community doesn't exist unless people contribute to the group.

Retra 9y ago
There is a risk of setting up a situation where "useful" is determined by presumed authority rather than any objective sense of utility. There's also the problem of how to deal with things that are not useful now, but presumably will be (in an emergency, for example.) There's also the problem of usefulness that is not communicated effectively; maybe we don't know how to express the usefulness of some activity. This does not mean it is not useful. So it's a mistaken ideology from the start. Usefulness is valuable -- that's practically the definition of the term. But life requires finding a way to be valuable in predictable ways just as readily as it does finding a way to be valuable in unpredictable, circumstantial, and unforeseen ways. So it's not entirely accurate. It's partially accurate; it is as much a lie by omission.
- dingaling 9y ago
  I see what you mean. But what else can we do other than prepare children to be assessed in terms of now-usefulness? When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. It's always great to have a space or a time in which you can slob-out and be not-useful but Western society considers that exceptional and calls it 'vacation'.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > When they come into contact with team activities ( sports etc ), the world of work or even just small social groups they will be graded implicitly and explicitly by the value they contribute. Should we not prepare them for that? The question is: Prepare them to be graded, or prepare them to grade? Both of those are a result of their education. > Even here on HN those who are lauded as heroic engineers are those seen as Really Useful ( started a space company, have a lot of github contributions, maintain an OS kernel etc ), not the quiet cogs who churn-out CRUD apps in Fortune 100s. Do you think those "Really Useful" people got where they are now by following what was "now-usefulness" at the time? I would argue they got there precisely because they challenged the status quo, and made a bet on what would be valued down the line, a risky bet at that (you just don't hear about those who made bets that didn't work out). Those quiet cogs are actually precisely the ones who are "useful" in the authoritarian sense: They contribute to what the powers that be want to use them for.
- mseebach 9y ago
  "There is a risk" isn't really a fair standard. What moral, digestible in a children's show (or any form to any audience, really) doesn't have a risk of being applied in a way that isn't beneficial? I haven't watched the show, but it strikes me from the descriptions here that prudence is very much a value it would appreciate.
- lazyman75 9y ago
  The only way you can objectively judge utility of a human is by ignoring the part that makes us .. us (whatever it is) and look only at the physical part - how much calories you could gain from eating a body, how much energy from burning it, how well it would serve as a emergency flood barrier ...
  - Retra 9y ago
    .. or how well, if placed in a certain places and subjected to certain patterns of radiation and sound energy, there would result a cascade of events such that a human body ends up on the moon. Objectively, we went to the moon. That's measurable, and that's us. We are entirely physical beings.
- defgeneric 9y ago
  The value of being useful is classic bourgeois ideology. It was the basis of bourgeois criticism of the aristocracy, church, etc. Everything was called on to justify itself in real-world terms. This was a good thing. And it certainly provided a better basis for authority than what preceded it.