[novia]

Captain Planet literally told children who cared about environmentalism to "keep families small" to save our planet.

https://youtu.be/tZCg9HsDntY

It's not difficult to take that to the next logical conclusion, no children means less resources used.

[coldtea]

That's why people shouldn't take life advice from cartoons and celebrities

[xethos]

Sure, that's why Smokey the Bear is such a bad idea. Ignore the fact that pushing propaganda starts young, (the population in general, but especially) children are impressionable, and (echoing sibling) that we should probably consider the impacts of media on children.

Lots of cartoons are wholesome, and it can be a powerful tool for setting social norms. More to the point, it's going to happen anyways - so let's do what we can to make sure it's a message we agree with

[Henchman21]

…and knowing is half the battle.

GI Joe theme plays in the background

[jambalaya8]

Well, at least they aren't re-re-making that... yet.

[novia]

I mean, I probably saw this when I was 4 or so, and I don't have any children now. I can't really blame my four year old self for being impressionable. I'd say this is probably more of an example of why people should be cautious of the kind of content they put in front of their kids.

[pfannkuchen]

Okay but if other groups aren’t doing it, the planet is still doomed and now your group is worse off. Congratulations, you have accomplished nothing!

[Ysx]

The environment is doomed either way without action. Is the issue that some demographics will become more dominant?

[pfannkuchen]

Is it not an issue if your group becomes less powerful than other groups? You are then putting yourself at their mercy, and we cannot assume that everyone has the same values (they don't).

[Gualdrapo]

We can't also assume that your offspring will have the same values as you.

[pfannkuchen]

Sure of course, I was too vague. I’m not referring to our descendants having different values from us or myself. We do have some control over that, but not complete control, and exerting whatever control is available in the modern day risks future blowback. We are in agreement here.

I’m referring to the value of not persecuting based on ethnic or cultural background.

Not everyone in the world holds this value, and relocating to different land is not what makes a person hold one value or another.

So if groups who don’t hold this value grow numerically to the point where the lack of this value becomes dominant, we are putting our own group at risk of being subjected to it in the future, which seems rather unwise.

[coldtea]

You shouldn't be OK with them having any random values, either.

If you have a civilization, you have a vision about life, and what's good and what's bad, and you want to see it to continue.

That some of them will inevitable change over time is not the same as you preactively having no preference and guidance for your offspring whatsoever, and thinking "no problem, anything goes".

[vkou]

> If you have a civilization, you have a vision about life,

Do you?

Your 'civilization' doesn't run on some kind of command economy five-year-cultural plan. Its values and views of what's good and bad are just some (often dystopian) local maximum it's stuck in.

Not to mention the obvious - what if you strongly disagree with your civilization's values?

[coliveira]

A group having more power has little to do with numbers. If that was the case the rich would be more numerous than the poor, and India would be the most powerful country in the world.

[throw-the-towel]

The "power" of a country, however you define it, lags the population growth. China was the biggest country for decades, its power only really started exploding some 10 or 15 years ago.

[giardini]

And now its power is declining rapidly.

Peter Zeihan "Don't be Surprised by China's Collapse":

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...

[M95D]

To hell with the group. I won't feel sorry for my children and the state of the world they'll need to live in.

[xyzelement]

Likewise in the 90s the idea of fearing unintentional pregnancy was intentionally infused into teen oriented TV shows and PSA. It created the idea that pregnancy is something to avoid unless you are super ready which is understood to have moved the needle.

There's something beyond idiotic about a society that frames it's own reproduction as a negative.

[vkou]

There's something beyond idiotic about a society that goes out of its way to make having children an absolutely batshit insane decision for anyone before their mid-thirties.

Doubly so when it blames children's television for its ills, instead of the obvious suspects of nuclear families (who have no free adult time for child care), dying rural areas (which push young adults to move away from their parents), a fucked up and unaffordable healthcare system, an ever-growing chasm between haves and have-nots, and the expectation that children should not be left unsupervised for even a moment (by either their parents, who presumably have to work for a living, or by a paid babysitter, who the have-not parents are somehow supposed to afford) until their teens. Oh, and in more recent years, the redder regions of it have also been waging and winning a war against women's reproductive health. Not to mention the war against the 'wrong'[1] kind of immigrant.

No, it's clearly television that's at fault.

---

[1] The definition of 'wrong' changes every fucking week, suddenly and without warning. You'd have to be insane to have a child when you or your partner can lose your/their status, and be arrested and deported at the whim of the tweeter-in-chief. The amount of work the 'family values' party has been putting into tearing families apart is really something.

[skeledrew]

> There's something beyond idiotic about a society that goes out of its way to make having children an absolutely batshit insane decision for anyone before their mid-thirties.

From a biological perspective, the ideal age range for reproduction is late teens to early 30s[0]. Beyond that there's greatly decreased chances, and a sharp increase in potential complications. When it comes to the human condition, biology comes first, and then the rest follows. Otherwise you have population problems.

[0] https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea...