Kevin's Watch

Many laffs to you all.

Cail wrote:It's a matter of shifting priorities. Sure the prom queen looked good and was a tiger in the back of the 'ol Chevy, but she was a ditz with no ambition and lousy coping skills.

EZ now! I ended up with the prom queen!

Av, you've defined shame. I think it's a good motivator to an extent.

To an extent. That's the issue. (And, like with greed, I think "shame" has too much of a negative connotation.)

It's too easy to slip over the edge into "worthlessness" when you're talking about shame, I think.

--A

Very funny Nathan! Keep poking fun at the foreigner.

Will do! *pokes Prebe with a stake knife*

shame led to many girls going to an 'uncle's farm' for the summer. either having an abortion or farming out the kid.

But lack of shame has also given us young girls having multiple abortions without parental consent, multiple partners, the explosion of oral sex as acceptable, and the skimpy clothing on jailbait.

That's actually a lack of pride and parenting. Shame - and it's big brother, Fear - have no place in child-rearing.

parental abdication is the problem. too many want the schools and the courts to do the parenting for them. and too many parents will rush to both institutions and protect their babies no matter what the circumstance.

Ohhh Pliss, we really disagree there. Children need to be taught that certain things are not acceptable, whether they're caught doing it or not.

What is it with you guys and turning every thread into an abortion thread?

sgtnull wrote:shame led to many girls going to an 'uncle's farm' for the summer. either having an abortion or farming out the kid.

Yeah, but whose shame? The parents' shame. Not the child's. If anything, that reactions teaches the kid to rely on mommy and daddy to fix everything, and not change behavior, I would think.

Cail wrote:Children need to be taught that certain things are not acceptable, whether they're caught doing it or not.

I agree completely--even though I was under the impression that you were against telling a parent what/what not to teach their child....

Prebe wrote:What is it with you guys and turning every thread into an abortion thread?

This one hasn't gotten there quite yet, Prebe.

But I do need to read back a few pages to see what is really being discussed.
It appears that the topic is focusing on shame as a determinant in people's choices. If so, it is very on topic...as some forms of entertainment require shameless participants. But is shame something that can be taught? Or is it something that you either feel or don't feel, regardless of the type of parenting one has?

it's the Zeitgeist, not us.

ur-bane, parents shouldn't be told what to teach their kids, but they should take responsibility for teaching their kids morals and values. That's not happening, and they're blaming schools, TV, video games, music, movies, and the government for not teaching their values.

ur-Bane: we as a culture have lost the concept of boundries. Oprah talks about stripping at 4 in the afternoon, soaps show more and more. what was meant for adults is lapped up by kids.

Exactly, Cail. (And FWIW, I knew exactly what your position is, based on your responses in other threads. )

It seems that everywhere I look people are making excuses/ placing blame for their problems everywhere but on themselves. (Huge generalization, I know, but I am basing the statement on my own observations.)

sgt...I recall having a discussion a few years back with a friend of mine. The topic was sex on tv, and how in the US, it was viewed as more of a taboo than in a lot of European countries. His mindset at the time was that we should be less restrictive about it. Now that we are becoming less restrictive about it, his mindset seems to once again be shifting toward more conservative programming.

Why is this so? Are we destined to never find any middle ground? Are we truly a society that can't be happy unless we have something with which to disagree or complain about?

I don't mind the sex on TV so much, would mind a lot less if it wasn't so... sensationalized. I have a bigger problem with the violence. I was watching TV one weekend morning (flipping through channels while watching cartoons with the boy) and a commercial for CSI came on. During the commercial, a woman is standing in a window and jumps. Cut to the investigators looking down at the body on the concrete, blood around it and everthing. I mean, c'mon. I'd rather have my kid watching women in bikinis than people fairly graphically committing suicide.

It's like the people that got all upset when they found out there was a mod for GTA: San Andreas that opened sexually oriented material in the game. Running over pedestrians, killing cops, carjacking, and so forth are fine, , but naked people! That's just wrong. Pffff. (and considering you had to go on the internet to even get the mod...).

Or to put it like this: would you rather your kid be a porn star or a convicted murderer?

Syl wrote:I don't mind the sex on TV so much, would mind a lot less if it wasn't so... sensationalized. I have a bigger problem with the violence. I was watching TV one weekend morning (flipping through channels while watching cartoons with the boy) and a commercial for CSI came on. During the commercial, a woman is standing in a window and jumps. Cut to the investigators looking down at the body on the concrete, blood around it and everthing. I mean, c'mon. I'd rather have my kid watching women in bikinis than people fairly graphically committing suicide.

It's like the people that got all upset when they found out there was a mod for GTA: San Andreas that opened sexually oriented material in the game. Running over pedestrians, killing cops, carjacking, and so forth are fine, , but naked people! That's just wrong. Pffff. (and considering you had to go on the internet to even get the mod...).

Or to put it like this: would you rather your kid be a porn star or a convicted murderer?

The violence bothers me both personally and as a parent a lot more than a lot of the sexual content on television. I'm talking commercial television here -- where yeah, you might see someone in a skimpy swimsuit or where sex is implied -- but they show graphic violence and regularly show quite nasty things (people on fire running down the road, dead bodies, etc etc) on the local news every night.

Good post Syl. I wholeheartedly agree.