#hpefully a little better written than hpmor but the spirit is there

[fipindustries]

another thing i noticed watching all of these kids cartoons and modern children's media in general is that they put so much effort on teaching about emotional inteligence. learning how to manage your feelings (particularly anxiety for some reason, anxiety seems to be a BIG thing children's media wants to teach about now a days). about how emotions affect us, how to recognize them, how we might try to repress them and how they will inevitably manifest.

this stems from the idea that a lot of the evils from past generations, the trauma inflicted by our parents, which was in turn inherited from our parents parents, stem from emotional immaturity, from toxic feelings manifesting and leaving scars in the generations that come after. and if only we get to teach the children of today how to process this in healthier ways then the future will be less bleak than our past.

this is all fine and good and in some levels i do ascrive to this and i endorse it.

but, not to be too rationalist on main, i feel that critical thinking skills is being kind of neglected a bit in these shows. a lot of their stories are emotionally resonant but frankly they depend too much on the power of love, friendship and acceptance and too little in the importance of temperance, of recognizing internal biases and trapped priors (and this goes beyond confronting internalized bigotry, i mean the much more mundane failure modes of confirmation bias et al), of when a conclussion is valid, of when a thing has been demonstrated, of what counts as rigorous evidence that actually works as dispositive for a hypothesis. essentially on the importance of Truth. on the imperative need of being actually Correct. on having a good handle of what is real and what isnt.

this all may sound unbearably nerdy and pedantic but i genuenly feel that a lot of the evils we are dealing with today stem, yes, from the maliciousness and emotional immaturity of close minded selfish people, but also from the stupidity and the open embracement of anti intellectual forms of thinking. the world is getting darker because evil rises but also because stupidity finds itself unable to stop it.

it makes me think of this one quote from ward

“I don’t believe in order, or tallies,” she said, staring out over the edge, into oblivion.  “I like art, creativity, ideas.  Kindness.  I know I’m not rational, but rational gave birth to this.” She extended a hand and unconsciously dissolved it to indicate the edifice they were beside with bands of flesh.  Even dropping her hand to her side, she pointed at the platform, and at sections of building that bulged out from the exterior wall. “Rational gave birth to everything good too.  Irrationality gave birth to every problem we’re dealing with now.”

obviously im 100% on the side of number boy here