The show is dignified and wholesome. It is always about respect, diligence, and humility.
It isn't there for stupid antics and wacky laughs. It doesn't blast color explosions and ADHD-fueled off-the-charts mind-numbing exuburance to capture kids attention. And it's been doing that for decades (pretty much eternity, as far as kids TV goes).
Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV show.
> Fat Controller
Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
> Henry must be punished—for life
Even in the old non-US version (modern one makes it explicit), it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time.
Blue Mountain Mystery [1] A little green engine hides in the blue hills. Thomas learns that long ago, the engine accidentally caused another engine to roll overboard into the sea. He has been hiding ever since, in guilt and fear and shame. Thomas convinces him to return, and the story shows how silly the little engine's worries were. It's a moral of forgiveness and redemption. (Also, there's a great surprise about who that overboard engine actually is.)
This crap makes me mad. I have to stop reading stuff on the internet. Go back to watching Sponge Bob or Family Guy or whatever crap you watch with your kids.
The comparison with Mr. Rogers is instructive. Both shows seem rooted in a minister's desire to encapsulate ideals derived from the Bible. But while Mr. Rogers is New Testament, the Thomas books are Old Testament.
Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up.
To see the difference between the shows, just try to imagine Mr. Rogers presenting a puppet show about bricking a character up in his room as punishment for not wanting to get his new suit wet in the rain. And imagine him, in that Mr Rogers voice, saying "I think he deserved that punishment, don't you?"
I think the New Testament disagrees with your characterization of the Old Testament. Pretty much the entire New Testament goes on about how the Old Testament is a series of stories about how cycles of rule making and rule breaking do not lead to real justice, peace, or life. In particular, both Romans and Hebrews (though not exclusively those books) cite Old Testament stories to make the case that the Old Testament (a.k.a. the law and the prophets) is largely misunderstood to be about a world full of crime and punishment.
For example, Romans 1 talks about how people (not a vengeful God) set up the worst consequences for themselves. God's "wrath" is unfiltered humanity. Romans 2 goes on about how there's plenty of blame to pass around (so there's no room for "good people" to blame "bad" ones). And Romans 4 holds up Abraham, an Old Testament character, as an example of how life should be lived, in faithfulness to a forgiving God. All through this passage, and in the rest of the book, a case is built from the Old Testament itself.
Anyway, I don't have strong feelings about Shining Time Station, but I think the Old Testament is more humane, sensible, and subtle than people seem to appreciate. At least the apostle Paul seemed to think so.
This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament. I will name some examples of God personally meting out the death sentence en masse as punishment for sin in various books of the Old Testament.
1. The Great Flood (Genesis),
2. Sodom (Genesis),
3. The Plagues of Egypt (Exodus),
4. The Exile of the Israelites from the Promised Land (Exodus).
Redemption, mercy, and forgiveness are primary themes in the Gospels, and further continue as major themes in the rest of the New Testament. Aside from the Lake of Fire (Hell), which is worse than being killed for being a first-born Egyptian child, references to punishment are secondary.
As for Paul's opinion of the Old Testament, that is fine, he wrote that opinion. There is no shortage of contradictory and conflicting opinions and facts in the Bible since it is a work compiled, edited, and written by humans.
That said, the mainstream Christian opinion that the Old Testament is vengeful and the New Testament is merciful is prevalent for a reason. Paul cannot retcon, try as he might, the events of the Old Testament.
> This analysis, while novel and interesting to me, is not supported by the bulk of events in the early Old Testament.
Fair enough. But my point was that the analysis was the analysis of the New Testament authors. People are free to provide their own critical analysis, but they're disagreeing with Peter, Paul, and the Jesus of the Gospels even. I think people that hold this viewpoint and care to be rigorous about it would do well to review their arguments.
Regarding your first three examples, in each case the story is about God saving an imperfect group who trusts God:
1. Noah and his family
2. Lot and his family
3. Moses and the Israelites
...to back up to Romans 1, the reward for people who want to run their own show is often... their own show to run. They'll just be doing it on their own. Earth before the flood, Sodom, and recalcitrant Egyptians are all examples of this pattern. But in each of these cases, God decides not to end the story in just desserts but give people another shot to redeem themselves.
I'm refraining from commenting on example 4 mostly because I don't know exactly which even you're referring to (Israel ends up in the Promised Land). But the narrative of the Old Testament is generally Israel deciding to do its own thing over and over, asking for another chance, and getting one.
So one thing people usually have a problem with is the idea that God judges people at all. This usually stems from a belief that loving people don't judge people. This is clearly contradictory to certain tenets of the Bible, including the text of the New Testament. But I think most people, if they stop and think about it, disagree with this sentiment as well. Consider:
- A grown man kicks a toddler. The father of the toddler acts like nothing happened. Dad is a loving guy and wants peace more than judgement. No, a loving father is angry when his family is abused. He expects justice, even.
- A teacher doesn't particularly like a student so he ignores the student. The mother thinks this is messed up but understands the teacher is his own person and makes his own decisions. No, a loving mother gets angry when her kids aren't nurtured and taught properly. She expects corrective action.
In the interest of not writing a novella in an HN comment, I'll wrap it up here, so thanks for reading if you got this far. I appreciate the civil discussion.
Wow. I've just got to say thank you for some of the most rational responses I've seen on hn in regards to the Bible. It's almost always misrepresented here by people with little knowledge of it or just bad personal experiences. You can almost feel their anger and bitterness. Which I get because I used to be the same way.
Man, I really wish hn had a follow button so I could read more of your level headed and insightful responses :)
And he acts against the man who kicked his child. We call this normal; permitted, even recommended, by our common ideas of morality. But if he went on to commit a genocide against the man's family and every member of his tribe, young, old, and unborn, we call that "biblical". And that's why the old testament god is a genocidal maniac.
Implicit in your objection is that people are basically innocent and don't have any kind of consequences coming. That's an understandable opinion. It's just not what is stated in the Bible, either testament.
The above passage is, to apply it to my "upset parents" analogy, "Hey, you all are treating my family (humanity) like garbage. Enough is enough."
What about babies and "good people" that don't have it coming? Well, that's a theological rabbit hole I'll pass on for the moment, but the fundamental characterization of the God of the Bible is that he doesn't make mistakes, so there won't be a fair complaint when everything is said and done. His punishments fit the crimes and He doesn't punish people that don't deserve it.
Maybe you don't buy that. That's fair. But it's the ultimate question of the Bible: Do you trust God? Lots of people answer, "No." or even "Hell, no."
It's fair to say it misses many subtleties of mainstream Christian view, but it is still more true than untrue. The theology of sanctifying grace[1] and the mercy of salvation[2] are both New Testament ideals which are the core of mainstream Christian theology.
It's called Marcionism and it's universally condemned by mainstream Christianity.
Marcionism is a whole other thing, involving two gods: Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament.
The idea of there being two, separate gods is what made it heretical.
"The theology of sanctifying grace[1] and the mercy of salvation[2] are both New Testament ideals which are the core of mainstream Christian theology."
No, "the theology of sanctifying grace and the mercy of salvation" are as old as the hills, and core to both the Old Testament and New Testament. You see hints of God's grace and mercy as early as Genesis 3, often referred to as the Protevangelium, i.e. the first glimpse of the Gospel in the Bible.
The themes of God's perfect justice, powerful salvation, abundant grace and mercy run right the way through the Bible.
That's at least how Moses himself understood the God of the Old Testament, see Exodus 33-34:
"Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. “Lord,” he said, “if I have found favor in your eyes, then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”"
For David's same understanding of the God of the Old Testament, see Psalm 23:
"The Lord is my shepherd... surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life"
And for Ezekiel, see Ezekiel 33:
"‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so. Yet you Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to your own ways.”
Jesus of course is no different in his understanding of the Old Testament with reference to himself and his saving purpose, see Luke 24 and then read Isaiah 53 by way of comparison.
And Jesus' authorized representatives (the apostles) are no different, see 2 Timothy 3:15 where in context Paul is specifically referring to the Old Testament and the ability of the Old Testament to make people "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus":
"...how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."
Regarding your statement that "Marcionism is a whole other thing":
No, Marcion "rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament."
Contrary to Marcion, Jesus' (the Christ's) own view is that the Bible, from the OT to the NT, has one unified message, which is centered in himself and God's saving purpose for men and women hostile to him, which was accomplished through his sacrifice for sin (his death and resurrection), in their place, all of which was promised for centuries beforehand through the Old Testament (see Isaiah 53 again for an accessible example).
The difference between New Covenant and Old Covenant is a matter of a change in place, not a matter of a change in God's character (which stays the same).
The Old Covenant was the law written on tablets of stone, see Exodus 33-34.
The New Covenant is the law written on tablets of human hearts, see Ezekiel 36.
The place changes from "tablets of stone" to "tablets of human hearts".
It's also critical to understand that both covenants were given to those who were ALREADY God's people, saved on the basis of grace, through faith. The Old Covenant was given to those who had already been saved out of Egypt by God's powerful grace. The New Covenant is written on the hearts of those who are saved through faith in Christ's suffering, death and resurrection on their behalf. The Exodus then, rightly understood, is a foreshadowing of the need to be saved from slavery to sin (Jesus' own commentary in John 8).
Salvation in both OT and NT has always been on the basis of faith, see Abraham ("and his faith was counted to him as righteousness" - and this long before the Law was given). Salvation has never been on the basis of Law-keeping since the Law was given to fallen man after the events of Genesis 3 (Romans 5). We are not sinners because we break the Law. We break the Law because we are sinners. The Law makes people conscious of sin, and drives them to the grace of God. Once there, the Law shows people how to be godly, because the Law reflects God's own character.
So the difference is where the Law is written, not the contents of the Law itself. As Jesus said, the Law is to "love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself".
But knowing that, or trying to keep the Law externally will only lead to a knowledge of sin. It's faith in Christ alone which saves. We are not saved BY works, but FOR works and then again only once we are saved (Ephesians 2), and that by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, according to God's words alone, for God's glory alone.
You'll notice how those examples are from two (and the first two) books and you're replying to a comment about how the Old Testament is about cycles. This is not a coincidence.
> Paul cannot retcon, try as he might, the events of the Old Testament
IDK if he needed to. Jesus declared he brought not peace, but a sword. Ananias and Sapphira were killed outright for lying about their finances. Revelations details enormous amounts of suffering for a fallen world, perhaps more than every other book combined. The New Testament is replete with examples of God's justice.
Agreed. That characterization of Old Testament vs. New Testament is one of my pet peeves.
There's some horrific brutality and violence in the Old Testament. But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them. The same theme carries through into the New Testament.
If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.
If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.
A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You can’t infer anything about the text this way.
Yes, that is what folklore means. And apart from people who really believe that the world is 6,000 years old or that bronze-age jews lived hundreds of years, nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?
"nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?"
Sure, as someone interested in history, I certainly take the Torah as accurate history. And I think that not a few ancient historians and archaeologists would do the same, irrespective of their views on Genesis 1.
For example, and I am referring to the entire Tanakh, I understand that Hezekiah was a real king in history who built a real tunnel which people really walk through today. I have no problem with that. I wouldn't consider that "folklore".
As someone interested in the historical method, I understand that the fact of an event, whether it happened or not, does not depend on the perceived likelihood I myself or others impute to it. I don't have any Naturalistic presuppositions. I don't subscribe to Naturalism as a philosophy, nor would I mistake it for science. So I won't immediately grab at revising the date for say Isaiah if he happens to mention Cyrus ahead of his birth.
Coming back to Genesis 1, you're forcing many literary and scientific issues if you want to tie Genesis 1 down (and dismiss it) as claiming a 6,000 (or 7,000) year old earth.
From a purely scientific perspective, the "age of the world" discussion needs to be wary of Hume's is-ought distinction. It would be a mistake to assume that the laws of physics have always been (and always will be) as they currently are. That would be to derive an "ought" (they must always have worked this way) from an "is" (the way things work today as we observe them).
In fact, from a literary point of view, if we read as far as Genesis 3, we see that Genesis itself suggests a seismic shift in the way things work, when death enters the world.
The point of Genesis 1-3 is that the world as we know it, is markedly different to the way God created it. I don't think we should overlook that.
So I see no contradiction between science and the Bible. In fact, I think they encourage and support each other.
But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them
Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case.
But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians
I'm pretty sure any religious group can find something in their teachings to justify any possible position from complete non-violence to outright aggression.
>Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case.
It's not a mere bet, it's a story about life -- one of the more profound in literature, religious or not.
It has been widely and often extravagantly praised for its
literary qualities, with Alfred, Lord Tennyson calling it
"the greatest poem of ancient and modern times" [1]
It's not meant as they biography of some family who died and things that happened to an actual person, but as a moral tale.
The Bible elsewhere comments on Job as a historical person, see James 5:
"Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy."
The book of Job itself suggests a historical context from the very outset, see Job 1:
"In the land of Uz there lived a man..."
It would be a mistake to reduce the book's message to a mere "moral tale" (although it is at least that - and much more).
this is a classic example of moving the goal posts. according to modern sensibilities Job's tale is one of a sociopathic, malevolent God, therefore it must be simple a "tale" not an actual historical account, otherwise our loving father Jehovah would be worse than Charles fucking Manson.
> If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.
Judaism has also developed a lot since antiquity. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, it developed into Rabbinic Judaism with a number of rabbis creating authoritative interpretations of the Halacha, or Jewish law. One such famous rabbi was Maimonides who lived in the 12th century.
I may be an idiot, but personally, I would find it hard to believe in a God who never sanctioned judgement, who never advocated justice at all. That would be truly evil.
As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? Was that the first plague or the last plague? How many years had the Egyptians oppressed another people? How many Israelite children did the Egyptians not kill? Did the punishment not fit the crime? Is God not just?
‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
“Therefore, son of man, say to your people, ‘If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person’s former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.’ If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done. And if I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right— if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil—that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live.
“Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so. Yet you Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to your own ways.”
What would be your comments then on this same God foreordaining his one and only Son to be crucified, to suffer, to die, to bear your sin, in your place, and his Son doing this willingly in obedience to the Father he loves?
Jesus, in John 10:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
The Jews who heard these words were again divided. Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?”
But others said, “These are not the sayings of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”
I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished"
Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there.
Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.
"In the late stages of the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh was trapped in Europe in the company of Randolph Churchill, the boorish son of the wartime prime minister. "In the hope of keeping him quiet," he wrote to Nancy Mitford, "Freddie and I bet him £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud... or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a shit!'."
We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.
I'm sure it does. You're a product of the Enlightenment and when you read you read the Bible you interpret it as a product of the Enlightenment.
If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate you need to remember who the Bible was written by and who it was written for. A Bronze-age Middle-Easterners is going to get a very different message from the Bible than you are.
What argument is that? I am also a product of the Enlightenment who has read the Bible and I can tell you that the message is markedly different in the Old vs the New Testament. You just have to read about all the rules outlined in Leviticus to understand that. In the OT, someone who breaks the rules mostly end up facing divine retribution. In the NT, they are supposed to be forgiven and brought back to the herd.
Whoever lives his life according to the "What would Jesus do?" doctrine is likely a nice fellow, although a little extremest perhaps. Whoever lives his life according to the "What would YHWH do?" doctrine is a raging psychopath you'd be advised to stay away from.
Are you suggesting Jesus never saw himself as YHWH?
According to Jesus, "What would Jesus do?" and "What would YHWH do?" are one and the same, see John 14:
"Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”"
"Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?"
No. I am suggesting that the stories of Jesus (written by the evangelists) exposes a different and more humane moral philosophy than those written in the OT. Turn the other cheek is incompatible with an eye for an eye.
"Turn the other cheek is incompatible with an eye for an eye."
Only if you remove or add to the context in which both were given.
The principle of eye for an eye was to __restrict__ compensation to the value of the loss, where the wickedness of man would otherwise tend to overreach. One has only to see Lamech for an early example of judicial overreach: "If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold."
And if you study the Sermon on the Mount in context, you will see that Jesus was not in fact referring to the OT when he said, "you have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" but I say to you..." but rather to the Pharisees' weakening, distortion and misuse of the OT.
The historical Jesus (according to all the earliest accounts, for which there is superfluously excellent textual reliability according to textual criticism) had a very high view of the OT, and deepened the OT, see the context of the Sermon on the Mount:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the __Pharisees__ and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."
If I were predisposed to look for puerile contradictions in the Bible, I am sure I would find as many as I would give time, but Jesus himself saw none. I would encourage you to take Jesus more seriously.
> The principle of eye for an eye was to __restrict__ compensation to the value of the loss
No. The principle was to restrict the scope of revenge. Yes, in the OT gouging someone's eye out to "compensate" for one of your family members having their eye gouged out was "fair compensation." But the NT turns completely against that idea. That's what "turn the other cheek" means.
While the Bible is so full of contradictions that you certainly can find support in some verse for whatever theory you want to prove, the concept of mercy and forgiveness is just not emphasized as much in the OT as it is in the NT.
"The principle was to restrict the scope of revenge."
I think rather the principle is one of justice. Lamech is an example of revenge (not justice). Revenge is never given to men by God ("It is mine to avenge; I will repay").
"But the NT turns completely against that idea."
No, not at all, or when last did you read the Bible carefully?
Jesus taught plainly that to turn against the words of Moses at all even in the slightest is to turn against Jesus himself.
Jesus taught plainly that if you won't accept the words of Moses, you won't accept Jesus' own resurrection from the dead.
"the concept of mercy and forgiveness is just not emphasized as much in the OT as it is in the NT."
That is a gross misrepresentation of the OT. You've fallen for Marcion's error and worse.
With the merciful you show yourself merciful;
with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;
with the purified you show yourself pure;
and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.
For you save a humble people,
but the haughty eyes you bring down.
>If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate
Why try to whitewash the bible? The old testament Jehovah was a vile sociopath. Jesus is a cool guy with a dad that has some screws loose. I grew up in a fundie family, the hoops fundies jump through to justify old testament idiot God are ridiculous and I have no time for that.
Understanding (and understanding in context) is not whitewashing. There's excellent scholarship in the bible, from religious and non-religious authors.
Knee-jerk reactions about "vile psychopaths" are not that.
For one, the "old testament Jehovah" was the person who gave life, the universe and everything to the people who died (e.g. in Sodom) anyway. So it was his to take. Psychopathy applies to people, not gods.
fuck off, that's gross. as humans if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework, and yet all knowing Jehovah couldn't fucking do some due diligence? Jesus fucking Christ, how pathetic of him.
Sure, it is now. But it (probably) wasn't gross back when the bible was written.
The bible is a piece of art/propaganda written to support the sense of tribal unity and to ensure political power stays with the right people. The God, therefore, is just a character - a literary device - from a book written 3k years ago for a very specific target audience. We are not that target audience and we lack the cultural context to decipher the intended meaning - the meaning that the authors had in mind when writing. It's entirely possible that to the authors and their readers the biblical stories were about mercy (or whatever).
And it's not "whitewashing". Nobody denies that OT God is a mass killer. They just claim that - for a fictional character - being a mass killer (or a god for that matter) was very differently perceived 3000 years ago in a middle of a desert.
>And it's not "whitewashing". Nobody denies that OT God is a mass killer. They just claim that - for a fictional character - being a mass killer (or a god for that matter) was very differently perceived 3000 years ago in a middle of a desert.
sigh
you've clearly never dealt with fundies. I was raised by people who taught me that literally every word was divine and that the entire bible is a historical document (there are millions of these idiots across the globe). These people will bend over backwards to explain to you how the wholesale murder of babies was totally justified. They'll even do it with a straight face.
You and I both agree that the Bible is no different than Harry Potter, and God happens to be a bad guy in the first half.
There are millions of people who live their lives believing that the entire bible is a 100% historical document. Having unshackled myself from these morons, this topic can be a bit of a sore point for me ;)
Yeah, I was thinking about HN in general and coldtea specifically when writing that "nobody denies" part. I don't see fundamentalists here often and I thought that we can talk about the bible on the literary and historical levels.
Then I read a comment saying that there is no morality without god and saw my previous comment above downvoted... I initially tought that you overreacted (not that I don't understand your reasons for it 100%!), but now I'm not so sure... :)
"You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are." - Fred Rogers
Rogers might have been a seminarian, but he taught the dharma.
>Henry, for example, gets punished for the sin of VANITY -- he doesn't stop in the tunnel in order to shirk work, but rather to avoid getting his nice new paint messed up.
Vanity is a sin in the New Testament too.
And, religion or not, is a silly sentiment that ticks other people off, leads to bad decisions, makes people unhappy, and life itself punishes in several ways anyway.
I think a better reading would be that the stories encapsulate attitudes in 1940-50's Britain. The social cohesion that was necessary during the war effort, the threat of the cold war etc.
> Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
Seemingly only in the US ("the Fat Controller is always referred to by his real name, "Sir Topham Hatt" in the US"[0]). I was born in 1990 (UK), and as I recall he was almost always refered to as "The Fat Controller".
Can confirm, "fat controlla" is alive and well in UK. I personally hate the character and agree with Ms. Tolentino, the whole setup is very regressive. What angers me most is that it exploits British pride in their early railway industry (which is basically dead now, ok, but is still venerated, especially outside of London) to peddle a worldview completely based around hierarchies and the duty of subordinates.
Indeed - reopening closed lines seems to be very popular here in Scotland - the Borders Line from Edinburgh being the most obvious example although there are others.
I enjoy my commute by train into Edinburgh from Fife - not least because it means I get to go over the Forth Bridge.
Dead in the manufacturing sense, sorry it wasn't clear. There is basically one manufacturer left in the country, Bombardier, which is actually Canadian.
The network is alright, although still shamefully behind most of Europe (very little electrification, still no high speed, etc etc).
yep I can remember reading the book sin th e60's in the UK and its always the fat controller - who incidentally was always portrayed as a blimpish establishment figure
>it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time.
"We shall take away your rails," he said. "And leave you here for always and always and always."
They definitely wanted the viewer to believe it was permanent for purposes of that episode.
And if you watch the scene (linked to elsewhere in the thread), the dominant emotional themes are stubbornness, arguing, physical confrontation, the giving & revoking of permissions and punishment. That's haunting, not wholesome.
The fantasy / fallacy that all things are forgivable in life and nothing has permanent consequences is also damaging.
Just had a good friend’s nephew drown in a pool. He had snuck in a backyard pool, skirting past or under the fence. As a parent the whole thing was a nightmare for me to imagine, but I did think about how or if to communicate to my kids that there are things they can do that will have permanent consequences or effects. I do my absolute best to shield and protect them, but I also hope and pray they make the right choice if (when) I fail in that.
I’m not saying that the punishment in that episode was appropriate, but simply that the concept of permanent consequences is a life lesson we all must learn at some point. And it’s incredibly difficult to teach kids.
I'm sorry to hear that, and I share your hope that I can avoid any such nightmare by being sure to talk about those dangers to kids (in my case that would be my teenage siblings just starting to drive cars).
But at the same time, I like to think there's a reasonable amount of breathing space between noting the show's excessively haunting atmosphere and indulging in a fantasy of a world completely free from consequences, and that with sufficient good faith I can do the former without having to disavow the latter.
But I definitely share your observation about the show's tone, and it's interesting to note that different people can see value in the show for opposite reasons. Some see it as wholesome, others as delivering needed lessons on the severity of life.
I should have been more clear. The very next episode ("Henry To The Rescue"), Henry agrees to help, and leaves the tunnel (which conveniently, The New Yorker writer forgot to mention).
The whole article seems very poorly-researched: the primary material wasn't consulted, and it's extremely easily available[0]. The moralising is extremely obvious when you're reading 2-3 stories at a time.
An episode is a self-contained narrative unit and it chose permanent incarceration as it's point of closure. I don't think a child audience, left with that impression until next weeks episode, puts two and two together in such a way as to dissipate the previously established creepy atmosphere.
I'm reminded of Roger Ebert's brilliant review of Fight Club, where he pointed out that, given the visual medium, the images and themes you choose to put in front of a viewer (again, a child audience!) speak for themselves, and whatever the writer "thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get."
I have fond memories of Mr Rogers, but really find it pretty unwatchable (and so did my kids when they were of age). They loved Thomas for a while and fortunately they didn't absorb the ideological disaster embedded in virtually every storyline (Topham Hat is a stand in for God and explicitly judges everyone at the end of most episodes based on being "useful" -- to him -- and obedient). There are no significant female characters (my children are girls so that was particular;y annoying; although Dora is more annoying despite having a female main character) and the merchandising is horrible (multiple redundant and incompatible sets of trains and tracks that are all horribly over-priced)
Spongebob is a far better show in all respects (I hated it until I had kids). Aside from being hilarious on several levels, it is remarkably socially conscious without being preachy. Oh and it even has some recurring non-pathetic female characters.
really? I always found it to be quite creepy. The constant obsession with being a "really useful" engine. The shaming of engines who don't toe the line. Victimisation of engines who misbehave. The show makes me strangely uncomfortable for some reason.
It doesn't make as much sense for our imminent future state, when robots do all our jobs and we sit around all day, but I like the distinctive "really useful engine" complement.
Obedience, diligence, and selflessness are admirable qualities. All kids and adults should strive to be really useful, in the best sense of the phrase. There's far too much narcissism in the world.
Diligence and selflessness are admirable. Obedience is, at best, sometimes necessary, and at worst a source of atrocities. (You might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military)#Common_inten.... The desire to establish—and function under—common intent, whether through consensus or authoritative credence, is an admirable quality in a person. But that is not the same thing as obedience.)
That's a very interesting way of slicing things. You think that the importance of the rule of law (obedience) isn't something which should be instilled at a young age? It's totally possible to simultaneously teach that following and questioning the rules is possible/appropriate/good.
Consider that the US military simultaneously teaches the importance of following orders and every soldier/sailor/airman/marines obligation to refuse illegal orders.
Obedience shall depend on what the law is. Sometimes laws are immoral and then it is ok to break them. Which is not the same as breaking the law for profit.
And even there, people who run away from soviet union broke the law. It was ok to do so in my opinion. People who were dissenters, owned printers and spread ... ehm ... evil capitalist propaganda broke the law too. It was heroic from them to do so. Likewise with breaking nazi laws.
Likewise with marrying/dating between blacks and whites where it was illegal or helping slaves escape. I am ok with Snowden too.
> You think that the importance of the rule of law (obedience) isn't something which should be instilled at a young age?
If you think that the rule of law is about obedience, I think you are completely missing the point. The whole point of the rule of law is to avoid arbitrariness in how the state treats people. You could maybe say that it is about obedience of sorts on the part of those people who work for the government, to only use their special powers in line with what the law says. But even then you have the option to resign from the job rather than to obey if you object to what the law says.
While sometimes following rules while at the same time disagreeing with them is appropriate (and that also should be taught to kids), civil disobedience is also a very important factor in fighting injustice, in particular the kind of injustice that the state produces when it rules by unjust law.
Given how much injustice in the world has happened essentially because of obedience to laws, I find it hard to believe anyone would consider obedience a virtue. Laws in general should be followed, but not because it's a virtue to follow laws, but because enlightened self-interest should inform you that a society that has clear rules that everyone is bound by has tons of benefits, because by respecting the rules in favour of others, you gain that others respect the rules in your favour. But whenever that balance is clearly violated, it should be everyone's first priority to disobey.
Look into the concept of "common intent" that I linked. It gives you all the same things obedience does, but for much more sensible, egalitarian reasons.
(And the military itself knows this; scroll further down on the same page to read about "Command intent"—which is sort of, 1. the planned incentivization that commanders and law-makers do, giving orders that will be misinterpreted and misapplied by people with conflicting preferences to give results they ultimately want, rather than giving orders that are "right" at first but which go wrong after a fifteen-layer game of hierarchical telephone; and 2. the knowledge that the orders you've been given are of this "robust under misinterpretation" type, and so knowing to not read too much about the original "Commander's intent" into them.)
Teaching a child that following orders is good, but that disobeying "bad" orders is also good, is virtue ethics, and has all the same problems as virtue ethics: there's no clear test for which virtue wins when two virtues come into conflict.
Common intent sets a much clearer standard: just understand the intent of the person giving the order—the "spirit of the law"—and then obey that, disobeying the letter of the law if-and-only-if it conflicts with the spirit of the law. This shakes out to obedience to good orders (or orders given by trusted commanders) but disobedience to bad orders (or orders given by untrusted commanders) ...except where a good law/trusted commander applies a meta-order to the effect of "please do me the favor of following the bad orders; it advances the spirit of the law in a hard-to-follow consequentialist way that you'll be able to see in retrospect."
Which is pretty much what humans who we consider to have "character" already do intuitively, so it's (hopefully) a good thing to systematize.
> Obedience, diligence, and selflessness are admirable qualities
But to what? These qualities mean nothing in themselves. They are traits, not virtues. A virtue is surely a trait aligned to some kind of positive value.
You can obediently, diligently and selflessly slaughter people all day.
Children, developmentally challenged ones excluded, inherently trust parents who have given them adequate nurturing. Emotional outbursts, challenges to authority, and disrespectful behavior will happen as they become able to move around. The parent should be patient with, but not reward, uncontrollable emotional outbursts.
Challenges to authority or dangerous activities (e.g., running into traffic) should be met with firm, kind correction (move the child away from danger, say "no" to hitting and hold the hands, etc.). To influence children to perform an action, leverage and bargaining is effective.
It is through this slow, persistent grinding of wills that teach children how to behave. Meanwhile, allowing as much autonomy from the child as is possible / practical allows the child to blossom, while reading and sharing in activities inspires the child and builds trust and affection.
I firmly believe that obedience is earned in some way or another: through fear of retribution, or through the trust and desire to please / aversion to disappoint.
It is apparent later in life which children were raised in the latter manner: they, in general, have good relationships with their parents; authoritarian parents have a harder time developing relationships and getting much-needed support from their adult children.
I didn't mention neglectful parenting, which will often produce worse outcomes than authoritarian parenting: crime, emotional instability, etc.
A lot of parental obedience is earned just by virtue of being the parent. Beyond that, expecting your child to obey just because they're supposed to be obedient is not a particularly productive attitude.
Yes. My kids may love me and trust me more than other people do, but getting them to do a thing takes work. You can also do it through coercion, threats, or violence, but that... tends to fuck kids up.
Parents don't really have to do anything special to earn the trust of their children most of the time. And the point of raising a child should be to raise a person, not a child. Yes, when a kid runs into the street you just grab it by the arm and then explain why it shouldn't run into the street, but all that is more like the the set of exceptions that confirm the rule.
21st century society considers me extremely useful, because I happen to be very good at solving certain kinds of puzzle. Medieval society would consider me practically useless, because I'm frail, clumsy and almost blind. My usefulness now and my uselessness then is almost entirely a fluke of genetics.
Valuing people for their utility is incredibly dangerous, because it logically invites us to devalue people for their lack of utility. My community is full of broad-shouldered, hard-working men who became economically useless when the coal mine closed. They're not worse than me, they were just born a few decades too late. They deserve every comfort that society affords me, but the fallacy of meritocracy has provided society with a plausible excuse to neglect them.
I find the whole Thomas package distasteful. The subtext always seems to be that Thomas would be fine if he just did what he was told to do by his betters. In that context, Thomas' servile desire to be useful carries sinister undertones.
Some people's definition of "really useful" explicitly excludes everyone who can read or write, wears glasses, etc. Documentaries about those people consistently contain shots of roomfuls of human skulls.
Machines are defined by their utility, and their value comes from their ability to do work, but children shouldn't be taught that the same applies to them.
I identified the trains with the real trains that went past the house.
It's not too unusual to hear a young boy talking about Thomas while waiting for or in a train. It's often been the only real conversation I can understand elsewhere in Europe. ("Which one is this?" "It's red mummy, this is James!")
I'd rather let my daughter watch SpongeBob or Octonauts or Ghibli movies rather than shows that tell her that every aspect of her self worth should be defined by how useful she is to the rich people in town.
And that's the underlying justification for a lot of the episodes: Thomas has an obligation to be grateful for his work and to do as he's told. Even when he doesn't like the job. Even if there are better things for him to do. Even if his friends are sad or in danger.
Spongebob is also pretty dignified and wholesome, so try to make your rant a little less "get off my lawn". You don't need to try to drag something else down to build your preferred show up.
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.
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'.
> 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.
"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.
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 ...
.. 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.
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.
> Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV show.
I'm too young to have watched this show. Just googled it and it really does look like a lovely, wholesome show.
Personally my gold standard is the original Looney Toons (Mel Blanc era). I could watch that irreverent, slapstick all day. I'd rather my kid take a leaf from Bugs Bunny's F-you style than Thomas' meek, obey, do what you're told and stay on the rails message.
Are kids not watching Mr. Rodgers these days ? That's really tragic. I think that was one of the best things on TV growing up, in retrospect. I'm biased however, having grown up with it, in Pittsburgh where its filmed.
It's not really on the air anymore. The modern animated spinoff "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood" is still on, and is quite good. But I'm not sure when you'd find the original still on.
hehe I guess it is (speedy gonzalez, el gringo pussy cat-o, that short dad from the 3 bears that slaps his wife and kid around), but it's so damn charming at the same time. I guess now we have Rick & Morty so we've got a new wave of irreverent cartoon to enjoy
Agreed, and there are a few other TV shows that I really like for my kids for many of the same reasons: Curious George, Tumbleleaf (Amazon original), and maybe Backyardigans.
> The show premiered in Canada on CBC Television, then went to PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), was on Qubo in the US, and at one time had appeared in eighty different countries.
Looks like PBS Kids (the most likely syndication for Americans) ran it to some degree from 1993 to 2002.
I just can't believe that a New Yorker article--some blogger's white-labeled ramblings or not--consists entirely of re-digesting wiki's and comment sections from other corners of the internet. It's really coprophagic.
It annoys me too. The interpretation ignores all the obvious positive lessons in TtTE and only accentuates the post-modern and political interpretations as if they're the major themes.
I remember one episode where the Fat Controller hires new engines to break a strike. There's obvious political overtones there that reflect the times it was written in perhaps. But in the context of the kids watching and learning, it's about not throwing tantrums to get your way, and the new engines being polite and humble in their work.
Conversely, a lot of the modern cartoons around are about breaking rules, getting away with stuff because the protagonist is 'special' and fighting.
> ... hires new engines to break a strike... about not throwing tantrums to get your way ...
Would you really cast that as a positive lesson? I have never watched this series as a kid, but it seems really awful and confirms the argument of the article.
In the moral system I was raised in (EU), people have a legal right to strike and helping break it is highly immoral.
To me it seems abusive, and ignoring historical lessons, to teach this kids the other way around.
> I remember one episode where the Fat Controller hires new engines to break a strike. There's obvious political overtones there that reflect the times it was written in perhaps. But in the context of the kids watching and learning, it's about not throwing tantrums to get your way, and the new engines being polite and humble in their work.
Do you think there is ever a legitimate reason to challenge authority? I mean, what determines whether going on strike is "throwing a tantrum"? Is it the mere act of disobeying authority?
The next episode [1], aired two days later, contains the conclusion of the story, and he gets out of the tunnel. I do agree that 2 days is rather long to leave kids with the conclusion of that first episode though.
The final lines are: "Henry doesn't mind the rain now. He knows that the best way to keep his paint nice is not to run into tunnels, but to ask his driver to rub him down when the day's work is over."
It might be a bit authoritarian, but it can also just be interpreted as "don't run away from your problems, instead, ask for help and you will be helped", which is not such a bad lesson and much better than the usual version, which is just "don't run away from your problems".
The book concludes the same way, with the train, rusty and dirty, finally being allowed out of the tunnel. The tenor is very much that punishment has rendered him meek and docile -- nothing to do with confronting your problems.
Similarly, there's a story where one of the trains gets off the tracks in order to smell flowers, or play, or something of that sort. The cure is to hide people in the field, who jump out and scare him back onto the track.
Overall, the message of the books is that if you work hard and never question authority, you can avoid punishment. The odd thing about them is that the authority figure (the Fat Controller) is presented as mildly risible.
My brother and I used to laugh / shudder at how much our nephews loved these books. I myself never read them until uncle-hood, when I was well past the age when the mere fact that they were written about trains had any appeal.
> Similarly, there's a story where one of the trains gets off the tracks in order to smell flowers, or play, or something of that sort. The cure is to hide people in the field, who jump out and scare him back onto the track.
There is, but it's nothing to do with The Railway Series (Thomas the Tank Engine doesn't appear in the first book) and is by a different author - you're thinking of Tootle.
Regardless of the story, I find it weird when kids shows split the story across episodes. As an adult I watch series in the right order. As a kid, I didn't know there was any timeline behind the shows. I watched every episode as a separate story, would miss a few, would watch the repeats of what I already saw on different channels, etc. Maybe that doesn't apply to everyone, but I wouldn't expect young kids to connect episodes unless explicitly prompted about it. Was my experience unusual?
It matches my vague recollections. But with today’s kids increasingly using streaming services, both YouTube and the paid kind (e.g. Sesame Street on HBO), it’s probably becoming more common for them to watch a series in order, just like it is for adults.
I watched highly episodic TV shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle, and remember being excited for the next episode. My fiancees nephews watch anime and are super into the story (sometimes annoyingly so :) )
I think it just depends on what you watched.
As much as I love the New Yorker, my fondest hope is that one day the N.Y.C. media will free themselves from whatever repressive authoritarian soul compels them to put those dots in every single acronym and initialism, when the rest of the country abandoned the dots long ago.
They even put them in names that once were initialisms but now are genuine names on their own: they insist on I.B.M. even though the official company name is simply IBM. And F.B.I. even though the FBI's own website calls it the FBI.
As an old ham radio operator, the one that really got me was when they wrote about S.O.S. - when in fact SOS never was an initialism at all! No experienced radio operator would ever have sent "S O S" as three separate letters in Morse code:
dit dit dit (pause) dah dah dah (pause) dit dit dit
("S" is dit dit dit in Morse, and "O" is "dah dah dah".)
SOS has always been a "prosign", that is, a single Morse code unit with no pauses in the middle:
dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit
In fact, SOS is properly written with an overscore above the letters to indicate that it is sent as a single unit. Of course that is not always possible given the limitations of modern typography, but it is never transmitted as if it were the three separate letters "S O S".
Why does the N.Y.C. media follow such an authoritarian rule even when it is factually wrong? It is a mystery to me.
The New Yorker also insists on typographical affectations such as coöperate and reëlect. Most publications have a "house style." The New Yorker's is particularly eccentric, and I think they like it that way.
I used to think this was annoying and snobby, but after seeing the New Yorker deëvolve into a less funny BuzzFeed over the past couple of years, I long for the over-the-top snobbiness of the old New Yorker. At least it was a distinct identity.
IIRC the NYTimes at least used to have a policy where it if you pronounce the acronym out loud as a word it doesn't get periods, but does have periods if it would be said out loud as individual letters. E.g., "Joint NASA - E.S.A. space mission launch", "F.B.I. agents meet at FEMA office". As far as that rule would be concerned SOS is pronounced as letters and not as a word perhaps like "sauce".
But I've just seen some clear violations of that rule by them (they don't spell "SAT" test with periods) so maybe I'm misremembering or maybe they've changed it. Similarly to SOS, the letters SAT don't stand for anything, at least not officially anymore.
That's the difference between an acronym & an initialism. An acronym is pronounced as a word, but an initialism is just the letters (usually because it cannot be pronounced).
This is only news to someone who has never watched Thomas. It took me until the second or third Thomas book and I was pretty surprised how authoritarian it all was - and that was circa 2000. But the books are from the 40's and like a lot of things people keep buying them not knowing exactly what they're getting.
It's not just authoritarian. It's classiest. Sir Topham Hatt inherited the job. In episode 610, Hatt is unavailable and one of the engines, Hiro, tries to run the railroad in his absence. This is considered grossly improper.
Modern "journalism" is mostly copy pasting content from Reddit. BuzzFeed turns AskReddits into listicles, higher quality publications turn Reddit posts into long form content.
Hmm, not obviously, IMO. At least the "OMG You will NEVER believe what random insignificant strangers said on Twitter about some shitstorm that we're doing all we can to whip up that an editor would never have allowed anywhere near a vaguely respectable publication except as a "quote" " has correct attribution and doesn't masquerade as actual journalism.
"Thomas the Tank Engine" was written by Reverend Wilbert Awdry, a minister in the Anglican church.
As is the Christian tradition, he understood the ultimate authority of God, the creator, and as is taught in the Bible, the necessity of teaching obedience to children.
Since most of the early stories were written to his son, Christopher, it makes sense to me that they were about some of the key themes of his faith and his views for raising children.
Beside specific stories, there are two things in the general set up of Thomas that makes it IMO a toxic show.
- The trains, who have children's minds, are unquestionably servile. They obey a pompous and capricious elite (humans) and the narrator goes along for the ride. Obeying is very important for Thomas (who's physically constrained to spend his life on rails). He'll do whatever is needed to stay in his master's good graces. It is the perfect show to condition child slaves into compliance.
- The trains are racist, and it is normal and acceptable. Steam and Diesel engines loath one another. The show is presented from the steam team point of view, without an ounce of distance. The Diesels have inherent character flaws because of their engines. I just found a recent episode [1] where they kind of address that, but it is AFAICT a recent development.
> The trains, who have children's minds, are unquestionably servile
The trains, who have children's minds, are constantly breaking rules, forming petty cliques, tormenting each other, and ultimately getting some comeuppance.
How could they be used to teach obedience if they never showed the folly of not following instructions??
I didn't watch it as a kid, and only sampled a few episodes. From what I've seen, while they may break rules, they do so in order to comply with an order coming from the humans (or to fall into their good graces).
That's not the case at all, Thomas is always doing things he shouldn't for fun, like disturbing sleeping trains (Gordon), winding up trains with remarks (also Gordon), passing warning boards in mines, and falling into subsiding mines[0].
Then there's not being nice to trucks, refusing to pull trucks, panicking from a near-collision and running away, ignoring advice from more-experiences engines and losing a head of steam, deliberately causing passengers to get wet, …
The ones where they do as they're asked to are the minority…
I don't recall any instances when an engine was directed to ignore a rule by a driver or the Fat Controller.
> The ones where they do as they're asked to are the minority.
As I told you I only sampled a few episodes (4-5), and servility and/or racism (Diesel) were present in most of them, without any distance or criticism. I'm glad there are other themes, but I don't want to watch every episode before I show them to my kids, so I avoid the series altogether.
Edit: BTW, By Diesel, I meant Trucks, that's how they are called in the French translation.
I don't think it's racist, more classist. The "new" diesels are threatening to obsolete the older, dirtier, less efficient "steamies", the the steam engines understandably resent them for it. It reminds me more of the dynamic in The Office between the warehouse and office workers than anything to do with race.
You say that steam engines not liking diesel engines is an example of racism? I guess that goes to show you can find racism everywhere if you look hard enough.
For a more modern yet still dystopian talking-train kids program, check out Chuggington. It's also British, but instead of the Fat Controller, there's "Vee", a disembodied GlaDOS-like female voice who orders the trains around via loudspeaker and chastises them when they're naughty.
I’m glad that I’m not the only one alarmed by Vee.
One thing that I think is true of most current children’s TV, but which struck me particularly during Chuggington is how consistently anti-individualistic it all is: teamwork is always the right answer, and doing something on your own is a recipe for trouble. I don’t remember this being quite so emphatic in the past (but it does align with, e.g., the current crop of “how to be a good software engineer” posts.)
The New Yorker turned into Pat Robertson and the 700 Club so quickly I didn't even notice. Robertson divined the nefarious gay-agenda purpose of Teletubbies and now Ms. Tolentino discovers the totalitarianism that is Thomas & Friends. One can only imagine the undisguised communism of Barney & Friends (caring means sharing!) awaiting discovery or the Satanic influences of Lyrick/HIT (owners and distributors of Barney & Friends, Thomas & Friends, Bob the Builder, and a metric shitload of other child-oriented programming) given that the Veggie Tales owners bailed on a distribution agreement with them due to a lack of trust in Lyrick/HIT continuing to support the "Christian values" of that franchise.
Joseph McCarthy could not be reached for comment at this time, although George Orwell was heard to mumble "1984 was supposed to be a warning, not a guide."
In all fairness, Teletubbies had no dialog. With enough creativity, you could read whatever you want into it.
When an insubordinate train car is bricked up "for always and always" and the narrator comments "I think he deserved his punishment, don’t you?", well, um, I think it's OK to say there's some seriously old-school moralizing going on.
Depends how "old" the school of morality you're subscribing to is I guess and the strain of philosophy. Considering major Western Philosophies... New Testament circa 33AD not so much, pre-Enlightenment Catholic Church probably, Enlightenment era to pre-Marx, not so much, Marxist/Leninist and Progressive era of say 1900 and beyond then absolutely.
I've always hated this show, in my PBS show rankings it's barely above Caillou, which was totally banned when my kids were little. Sir Topham Hat is such a fascist. I'd pay-per-view the episode where the trains revolt and Sodor burns down.
We banned it as well. The character is unrelentingly whiny, and my kids (two years old, at the time) started picking up the mannerisms very, very quickly.
For a while, Google's canonical answer to "Why is Caillou bald?" was "Caillou can't grow hair, not because he has cancer or progeria, but because he sucks, and even his own body recognizes that he does not deserve hair or food or love." https://www.sbnation.com/2014/3/26/5549908/arian-foster-cail...
He's go to be the most annoying children's show character ever. That's saying a lot, when you consider just how many kids characters have zero redeeming qualities.
He whines, about just about everything, everywhere. Relentlessly. https://youtu.be/cGo60pp_9IM?t=6m30s
It got really annoying when my wife and I watched it with some of my nieces (and saw how the show influenced their behaviour) that when we had kids of our own we agreed that we'd never allow them to watch Caillou.
I've watched all the bus episode (from the 6:30 mark), and I don't think it was that bad. He just complained for 10 seconds that he wanted to ride the school bus.
"Minor" character flaws that I'd point out were that Caillou had to be told by his mother to say thank you to the bus driver, and that he gifted the bus driver with a drawing of himself riding the bus (what an egomaniac that Caillou).
But yeah, I don't have kids, so is normal that I never thought of supervising what tv cartoons would they watch, and now is something important that I'll pay attention in the future.
This bus episode really isn't that bad, but there are terrible episodes where he is just constantly whining and being mean to his little sister, even pushing her around.
Once upon a time, there was an engine called Henry.
Henry was asked to help but refused.
So Henry was put in time out.
Henry didn't enjoy time out and wanted to be let out.
So was let out, and learned to be responsible and helpful.
The reason you teach a toddler this should be blindingly obvious.
Once upon a time, there was a journalist called Jia Tolentino. Jia was a special kind of stupid. Allegory, you see, was entirely lost on Jia. So, being neither helpful nor responsible, she called Henry's boss a fascist.
> The reason you teach a toddler this should be blindingly obvious.
Not at all. People should help out others out of altruism, because they understand that society is cooperative, or because they value other people. "Be helpful or be punished" isn't a lesson I'd want to teach my kid.
But you have to teach altruism, cooperation and the valuing of other people. And you teach it by (gently and respectfully) disincentivizing the opposing behaviors.
It's not "be helpful or be punished" it's "don't pour your cereal on your brothers head or you will get time out", "don't wake your brother when he's sleeping or you will get time out" "stop biting your bother or you will get time out", "no you cannot wear your new shoes in the mud and if you don't stop asking and complaining you will get time out". These are the bread-and-butter conversations of parenting.
Like it or not, you will be a valid authority in your child's life, and you will need to teach compliance with proper authority, and model how to be one, and that there are consequences to the defiance of proper authority.
There is significant difference between punishing absence of good behaviour ("be helpful or be punished" - Henry example) and punishing bad behaviour ("don't pour your cereal on your brothers head or you will get time out" - your child example).
I dunno about you but my sons firsts words were "Duty! Sublime and mighty name that embraces nothing charming or insinuating but requires submission, and yet does not seek to move the will by threatening anything that would arouse natural aversion or terror in the mind but only holds forth a law that of itself finds entry into the mind and yet gains reluctant reverence..."
Compared to the original Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales which included such kid-friendly topics as child abuse, incest, murder, and cannibalism this doesn't sound too bad.
I definitely found the Henry episode weird when my daughter first saw it. She, being a kid, thought it was fine. They have a very punishment-centric worldview.
My son has a book with a bunch of stories in them, 3 little pigs, Goldilocks etc but I stumbled on one story about "The wolf and seven sheep".
At the end of the story, the mama sheep cuts open the wolf's stomach and fills it with stones and then tosses the wolf into a river. I was stunned.. but that's what stories are, they aren't always nice little things to make your kids live in some fantasy world.
Well, probably still beats growing up with fairy tails where giants eat children or where 2 children eat from a candy house and 1 ends up feeding the other until he is fat enough to be eaten by the witch. Or that nice one I heard at school where a woman turns into a salt pillar because god told her not to look backwards at the collapsing Sodom en Gomorra. And afterwards the two children that did survive get their dad drunk and have sex. Ok, I only heard that last part later.
You know, children hear stories from a wide variety of sources and they have parents to help interpret them and give them a place in their world view. Children ask questions to tweak this view and I don't think we should be to whiny about stories that don't seem to hit the exact educational, politically correct, wholesome, inclusive tone that you had in mind when your kid was born.
Almost all the content we've got is representative of "corporate-totalitarian dystopia", because we live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia. Thomas the Tank Engine isn't some special case.
Yes, we did live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia in the 40s to 70s.
And you are being lazy for assuming things that I did not say. I'm not implying that it's propaganda. I'm saying that media reflects the world we live in, as that is the context that we are familiar with, and we tell stories set in our own world.
> Yes, we did live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia in the 40s to 70s.
I understand people like to interpret things through that lens now but like seeing Tolkien's work as an allegory for industrialization or the atomic bombs, it seems to me to be mostly post-hoc revisionism to do so. Reading the Wikipedia page of the author, I don't see any evidence of a "corporate-totalitarian dystopia" which would inform his stories.
So you're going to have to define "corporate-totalitarian dystopia" in a way that even makes sense in that context.
So just to be clear I'm mostly talking about the US and western countries. Let's break it down:
Corporate: the corporation has been the main organizational unit for most of society at least since the 40s. In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation.
Totalitarian: The definition of totalitarianism is "a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state." Despite noises to the contrary, the US is certainly not a democracy, and I wouldn't even call it a representative republic. A data-driven study [1] confirms the intuitions of many that the US is really an oligarchy of the wealthy corporate class. US politics is driven by corporate interests and there is little evidence that public sentiment has a large effect on material outcomes, despite external appearances. Furthermore it can be argued that the US is a police state, as described by Pulitzer prize winning journalist Chris Hedges [2]. The US government has had countless programs to control discourse and put down opposition since its inception, and anything that threatens the status quo is stomped out with prejudice.
Dystopia: In many important factors, American citizens are unhappy with their lives, and this unhappiness can be traced back to the corporate-totalitarian nature of the US. Extremely expensive health care, long work hours without much vacation, economic disparity between classes, lack of affordable housing, complete corruption of the financial sector, regulatory capture, endless warfare, corporate control of the media, etc are all direct results of the structure of our society.
Yes. I'm well aware of the definitions of a corporation, and totalitarianism, and dystopia. But a priest who appears to have spent the early 20th century pottering around the English countryside writing stories about trains was not informed by having lived in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia. So your earlier assertion that this is what Thomas the Tank Engine represents seems specious.
It's a modern reinterpretation of a tv show whose cultural dissonance makes it seem dystopian and authoritarian, but I'm sure someone could find a way to make the Neighborhood of Make-Believe from Mister Rogers seem like a dystopia if they tried. Doesn't mean that's what Fred Rogers was going for.
Unless he was a hermit living in a cave, he was well immersed in society. And in fact his stories are about one of the main symbols of modern corporate industrial society: The train.
>And in fact his stories are about one of the main symbols of modern corporate industrial society: The train.
He liked trains. He made up stories about them as a child, imagining them as characters talking to each other, then wrote those stories down for his own son years later. He didn't consider trains to be a symbol of corporate oppression or dystopia.
You keep putting meaning to my words where there was none. I did not say that he considered trains to be a symbol of corporate oppression or dystopia. In fact the entire point of my original comment is that you can be completely unaware of any idea of a corporate dystopia and still write a story that includes symbols of corporate dystopia because you are just using the things you see around you day to day in your stories.
Ok. I must be misinterpreting your comments, then, because I read "Almost all the content we've got is representative of 'corporate-totalitarian dystopia', because we live in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia" as implying that all media (including Thomas the Tank Engine) is an allegory by the authors of the 'corporate-totalitarian dystopia' in which they live.
If your point is that content is interpreted by people who believe they live in a dystopia as being representative of it, then I suppose I would agree. I've seen people read dystopian symbolism into the Teletubbies, too, although that, like many such subversions, seems to be an attempt at contrarian humor. If that interpretation can be so broadly applied, then it's most likely lacking in depth. In this case, since the author had no intention for his stories to represent "corporate-totalitarian dystopia" then what does it signify to say that they do? It seems like a tautological statement.
Priests are the public face of the most totalitarian dystopian corporation ever to menace humanity. I guess if we're talking about an English priest he probably worked for a different such corporation that split off from the original about 500 years ago... They didn't split in order to cut back on the dystopian totalitarianism!
> In fact the vast majority of Americans that have a vocation work under a corporation.
I'm curious about that. The total # of government employees is about 22 million. Add to that over a million in the military. The total # of employees is about 127 million.
The number of people employed by the Fortune 500 is about 27 million, or 17% of the workforce.
Do you seriously think that there is no corporate agenda in the US? It's not even conspiracy theory. A good chunk of the daily news stories are related to the topic.
I've been involved with various corporations. I have yet to be informed of what the national "corporate agenda" is.
When I read the business news, it always seems that corporations are at each other's throats, always suing each other, trying to get the government to run each other out of business, lobbying against each other, etc.
I'm curious if you can provide a link to the national corporate agenda. Maybe it's lowering corporate tax rates? Everybody wants lower tax rates on their own interests.
Here you go - for a link to a national "corporate agenda" that applies to large companies, see the conveniently titled "2017 American Growth Agenda" put out by the US Chamber of Commerce, the major big business lobbying group in the US: https://www.uschamber.com/about-us/the-2017-american-growth-...
The fact that corporations battle with each other doesn't change the fact that groups of them work together to advance their interests, as above.
I go to tech conferences attended by people from scores of tech companies, too. They're a great way to explore business opportunities with other companies.
I remember a hilarious George Carlin rant about how evil corporations controlled all the media. He was on a stage owned by media corporations, was being paid by media corporations, and the show was broadcast by media corporations.
We have always lived in a corporate-totalitarian dystopia, though it has been called different names in the past, such as colonial rule, monarchy, feudalism, samsara and Babylon.
While this might be true of the old series, the CGI series is almost anarchic by contrast. The Fat Controller is uniquely accident prone and regularly humiliated by his mother, his wife and his own mistakes. The Steam > Diesel caste system is less entrenched with very many sympathetic diesel engines (Mavis, Den & Dart, Salty) and the gender problems are also less evident with some good female engines (Caitlin, Emily, Mavis).
I don't think the author has seen much of the CGI series or the recent movies.
My mother didn’t let me watch anything but Thomas and Friends. She said after watching Rugrats or Spongebob i would turn into a disobedient brat, but after watching Thomas I was apparently well mannered and well behaved.
I ended up becoming a soft well mannered programmer. Fuck you Thomas!
I don't show Thomas to my kids for that reason (and because of the show's racism)[1], but I can totally see where your mother came from.
I avoid showing Fireman Sam to my 4yo son because otherwise he channels Nicholas—the self-centered, boastful troublemaker—so much that he's not manageable.
Norman Price? He always gets his comeuppance + a fire safety tip. Maybe have a chat after an episode to talk about what happened to Norman & what about his behaviour got him in trouble.
I used to watch episodes with my son (and comment immediately when Norman behaves like an idiot), but I can't watch every episode with him, and the fact that Norman gets comeuppance doesn't prevent my son from adopting his worse traits.
Also, IIRC even if the situation doesn't turn right for him, the chraracter rarely regrets anything beside getting caught.
> As one commenter writes, “What moral lesson are kids supposed to learn from this? Do as you’re told or you will be entombed forever in the darkness to die?”
Geez, don't let that commentator see a Warner Bros cartoon...
The show is dignified and wholesome. It is always about respect, diligence, and humility.
It isn't there for stupid antics and wacky laughs. It doesn't blast color explosions and ADHD-fueled off-the-charts mind-numbing exuburance to capture kids attention. And it's been doing that for decades (pretty much eternity, as far as kids TV goes).
Not since Mr. Rogers has there been a better kids TV show.
> Fat Controller
Better known as Sir Topham Hatt since the 1950s.
> Henry must be punished—for life
Even in the old non-US version (modern one makes it explicit), it was still evident that he wasn't left in their forever, as he showed up again next time.
Blue Mountain Mystery [1] A little green engine hides in the blue hills. Thomas learns that long ago, the engine accidentally caused another engine to roll overboard into the sea. He has been hiding ever since, in guilt and fear and shame. Thomas convinces him to return, and the story shows how silly the little engine's worries were. It's a moral of forgiveness and redemption. (Also, there's a great surprise about who that overboard engine actually is.)
This crap makes me mad. I have to stop reading stuff on the internet. Go back to watching Sponge Bob or Family Guy or whatever crap you watch with your kids.
[1] http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/Blue_Mountain_Mystery