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I Can't Believe We Made It

Posted by NealS 8 years, 9 months ago to Culture
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I Can't Believe We Made It
SOURCE URL: https://vimeo.com/52231459


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  • Posted by $ rockymountainpirate 8 years, 9 months ago
    It was great to be a kid back then. Leave the house right after breakfast, maybe come home for lunch, then not back again until Mickey Mouse Club came on (don't forget your mouse ears). Drinking our glass of milk playing Red Light Green Light with Engineer Bill on the radio.

    We were free to be.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
    It's mostly true, although I'm pretty sure Pb paint was gone by the time was born in 75. It was probably 100% true for people born in the 60s. The stuff about running out and playing all day was true. When we got rowdy our parents would send us outside to find kids in the neighborhood to play with.

    Now that I have kids, it's gone way overboard in the area of worrying about kids. People say you can't do those things anymore, despite the fact that crime is lower and many things have been made safer. Kids should be able to have more freedom.

    I suspect one contributor is now that women's right equal treatment is more respected, some people feel like they must do the same things as men unless they have an excuse. People shouldn't need an excuse to live their lives as they please, but some people feel that way. The excuse today is that parenting is incredibly complicated and dangerous and requires all kinds of safety procedures.

    I enthusiastically encourage any kind of family arrangement, with the man staying home, with same-sex parents, polyamory, or whatever people want to try. I completely reject the idea that we must protect kids from every little peril. Let kids run around and be kids.
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    • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
      I agree with most of what you say. I disagree about the women's rights movement - but only in part. I think that it is not 'girls feeling that they have to do the same thing as the boys unless they have an excuse' but I DO think that the feminist movement put in increased power a group of people (women) who were more risk adverse (culturally? genetically?) and that a lot of these new social directions are the result of that.

      If that is the case, and we can keep these risk adverse tendencies from being enshrined in stone, then the situation may resolve itself as more women take and survive more risks.

      Jan
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      • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
        I have no objective evidence to quote but I think that risk aversion of women makes them a target for the propaganda of fear that is permeating current society. I do not think that the 'war on terror' would have been effective on people in the first half of the 20th century, and I think that women have been a primary target.
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        • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
          I noticed the same thing. So many ads today sell products on the basis of fear.

          But have you noticed that a second group started selling love? And a third group began advertising solitary control?

          Jan, does not hear many ads, but studies the one she comes in contact with
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          • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
            Don't watch tv unless its stripped of ads, don't buy magazines or newspapers, don't listen to radio, block ads in my browser. Blissfully unaware of most advertising, but very aware of slanted presentation of most media content.
            Selling love? Sounds like a good idea if rationally based. Who is doing that?
            DOn't know what you mean by advertising solitary control.
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            • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years, 9 months ago
              Have you ever noticed that Apple doesn't sell computers? It sells the idea that if you buy their products you will be one of the cool kids.

              If you see an ad showing you what you can do with the computer it's a Microsoft/PC ad, not an Apple one.
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              • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
                I have noticed. They are using the model that tobacco and auto makers have used for decades. I never smoked and I buy used cars. Instead of doing my part to boost the economy (that is, boost the tax collections of governments, and the unearned interest of banks) I am resisting the consumer virus and following part of Galt's example. I won't be "bought off and silenced by gizmos and toys."
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            • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
              When I am sitting in a waiting room, sometimes the TV is on - and I see ads. And I watch the billboards.

              Since about the mid-1990's, car ads have presented the theme of, 'buy this car means buying love' (family, spouse, strangers). Dealers advertise that if you buy a car from them you will purchase their friendship. These are not overtly sexy ads, but seem to say that you can be loved, but their car is the entry fee.

              More recently, what I have been seeing/hearing is car ads that say 'this car is yours and while you are in it you are comfortable and in control'. The ads suggest that when your boss is mean or your significant other is bad moody you get in your car and there life is perfect and YOU are in charge.

              Not rationally based - these ads pander to insecurity, low self esteem, and the willingness of the listener to buy into the illusion that the car is they key to a better life for them.

              Jan
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              • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
                Last time I was interested in a new car was '89. Guess I haven't really listened to car ads in 25+ years. Thanks for catching me up, Jan.
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                • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
                  You are welcome. I think that people who watch a lot of TV have learned to tune them out instead of studying them.

                  Jan
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                  • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
                    The cable box's one hour rewind actually makes it possible for me to watch some TV. I get to skip over all the commercials. I'm getting to a point now that once in while I just let the commercials run just to see what's new out there. At least I never have to watch Geico or Progressive Insurance commercials anymore.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
        I agree that on the average females tend to be more risk averse. Females have increased participation in work outside the home, but men have a least slightly increased participation in caring for children. So I would expect to see more male influence in the home and more female influence on work outside the home. This makes me think that gender equality is not directly responsible for increased caution in the home.
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        • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
          "If it bleeds, it leads." If a man doesn't say anything cautionary, but a woman says, "that dog will bite your face" then a receptive child may be more influenced by the latter than by silence.

          This is all just theoretical.

          Jan
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          • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
            I agree, but I would expect men's influence in the home to increase, as some women shift some attention to work outside the home.
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            • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
              I think you are correct there. I know several 'house husbands'; these guys would not have been socially acceptable when I was young. But my Reply to your post was not to indicate that you are wrong, but to suggest that, even as a father would teach his son baseball (though his mother took care of the child every day), the mother would still have influence on the child, even though the child was raised primarily by the dad.

              Jan
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              • Posted by CircuitGuy 8 years, 9 months ago
                Yes. I'm just trying to figure out why the trend is toward more safety even as fathers are more involved than in the past. If this safety obsession were going to happen, I would expect it to have been more likely when children were seen as women's domain.
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                • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 9 months ago
                  I do not like to think of mine own gender in this manner, but consider it a 'lowest common denominator' situation: If one of the parents is silent and the other one says , "There are monsters under your bed." then you imagine monsters.

                  So, in spite of the fact that more dads are involved in raising their children, the advent of women into politics and work has tilted our society in the direction of risk adverse - the 'monster'. A parental team would have to work together to counterbalance this, or a dad would have to be strongly charismatic and risk tolerant to counter it by himself.

                  Jan
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  • Posted by gaiagal 8 years, 9 months ago
    I am so glad I lived! Really lived! Hey - I noticed there was only a flash pic of a boy holding a rifle. We all had guns and play...wait for it...Cowboys and Indians! Cap guns, pop guns, water guns, totally fake guns...how about the Daisy rifle? Amazing...and there were no highly publicized school shootings.

    I have to shake my head today...I was in the waiting room at a doc's office listening to the conversation of two young boys - around 8 or 9. They were responding to a newscast (yeah, remember when there were no TVs in a waiting room?) about a shooting.

    "Guns are really bad" said one of the boys to the other. The other agreed wholeheartedly.

    I looked at the 1st person shooter game he was playing on his iPad and tried to understand the logic and where the logic came from - parents, schools, peers?
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  • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
    An interesting thing here on this over protection is that practically everyone I know and everyone I talk to claims to have given their kids almost total freedom to be kids. Then where is all the over protectionism coming from? Are the incidents we see and hear the only incidents that are taking place, or is this really an epidemic? I wonder what is happening in and around our small cities in the Midwest. Is there a silent majority lurking in the background?
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 9 months ago
    Yep. I remember my mom giving me a lecture about consequences (which I have given to my son). She also taught me to open a door for a lady.

    Now, I'm a damned caveman.

    Some of the downhill bike riding we did really was insane, though. Just one screwup from death...
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    • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
      Your bike downhill reminded me of my youngest son. He at about age 14 and friend sat on a skateboard together and rode it down Bennett Hill, about a 30° slope perhaps a quarter mile long. Near the bottom he tried to use his heels out front to slow them down. The immediate friction cause his legs and feet to go behind them and they both went over the front of the board face down. Fortunately the worst was skinless knees and elbows. They were lucky to still have their noses on their faces. Can anyone think of a law that might have prevented this experience? Experience is the best teacher, I know, I've experienced a good share myself. When I was about 9 I poured gasoline on a small fire. Many months later I was okay after my skin grafts healed. When I think about it I always remember my Dad, he caught me and put me out. I never wondered why he had gray hair.
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      • Posted by jpellone 8 years, 9 months ago
        I never had a skateboard growing up. Don't think they were around then. My two brothers and I grew up in NE Ohio, had a creek behind the house with a 200-300 foot bank to get to the river. It had about a 65 to 70 degree slope. In the winter we would ride our toboggans down the bank even though it was infested with trees. Dangerous, maybe, FUN,,, HELL YES!!!
        I don't ever remember being told not to do it???
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  • Posted by johnpe1 8 years, 9 months ago
    and we drove our go-carts In The Road, with our
    tennis shoes the only brakes! . and we went camping
    and ate the beef which fell Into The Fire -- the potato,
    too! . and we rode city busses By Ourselves to get
    to Junior High School, both ways! . we made it!!! -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 8 years, 9 months ago
    All those well-meaning pseudo-parents, wanting to protect kids from negligent parents.

    Wasn't this posted before? Maybe I saw it somewhere else.
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  • Posted by $ TomB666 8 years, 9 months ago
    Let's face it - somehow those of us born in the 40's missed some critical factor in raising our children so that they in turn have done a poor job with our grandchildren.

    I'm not sure what I should have done differently, but I wish I could have instilled the same values in my children that my parents taught me. I thought I was raising them as I was raised.

    Could the difference be that my mother never worked outside the home? With all our modern luxury's it seems to take two earners per household to keep up. Whatever the difference, it is not working out for the better. :-(
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    • Posted by 8 years, 9 months ago
      I was born in the early 40's ('42). Growing up my parents didn't see me all day, I went fishing, swimming, camping, tobogganing, and walked 10 miles in the snow to and from school every day, uphill both ways, etc. You know the story. When I was around the house (behind the store) I stocked shelves at my parents grocery store, or made sausage on my dad's big grinder. He told me not to put my hand in the that big orifice where the meat went in. Yah, things were different. My 3 kids all pretty much had daylight freedom, one perhaps a little too much, but he straightened out. Now my grandkids (already young adults) too grew up with complete daylight freedom. They have always been in touch with nature, had their own guns, and real ammo. The community where they lived growing up everyone played some game where they hunted and shot each other with paintball guns (face shields were mandatory). Some of the bigger "kids" are even volunteer fire fighters and about half of them are 1st responder aid workers working for the county. My eldest son at 47 and all his friends still play these games even now with the kids off to college. There are always some newer kids to indoctrinate. It seems where they live everyone has a great time all the time. Even my wife and I are surprised that no one ever locks their doors, and no one ever knocks. They just show up, just let themselves in, and help themselves to lunch, dinner, or whatever and they all do this anytime. More often they show up with something to share, some wild meat they just killed, or some fresh fish out of the lake, or even a case of beer usually homemade. What makes this community work is that when some "hippy" shows up in the community and murders someone's cow just to get a nice roast for themselves, that intruder for some weird reason usually ends up beating themselves up or possibly even committing suicide. In any case they usually do not come back. It's really a strange phenomenon. Everyone knows the sheriff and he even joins in when he's not on duty.

      I think this change in freedom and fear against growing up free is more recent than we think. Middle America seems less susceptible to the idiocy that is going on nearer the big cities and the coasts. Maybe it's got to do with larger populations, that's where most of the problems seem to start and linger. Everyone wants to tell everyone else how to live.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 9 months ago
      As an adult you would have to have survived an economic depression and seeing Hitler and the Allies destroy much of Europe. The current generation of young parents may have to endure the crucible that you were spared.
      I do think that children need to be able to depend on one parent to be there for them all the time. The creature comforts and conveniences (that many two earner families think are necessities requiring both to work) are not worth the price being paid. The generation before you also wasn't subjected to as many years of public school propaganda (in most cases.) Instead many of them learned skills that helped the family and gave them experience and humility that may of us in later generations have missed.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 9 months ago
    Today's moms would be horrified at the games of Red Rover we played. We had no grassy playing field. The gang stood on one side of the street and tried to make it to the other side without getting caught, which involved "any way you can." There were grabs, tackles, and whatever could stop you. Quite often a face or two would become very familiar with street concrete. We all survived and iodine was the word of the day. Ouch!
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  • Posted by fotoldy 8 years, 9 months ago
    Using my daughter as an example, she is so overprotective I think my grandchildren are ununfortunate. My husband and I wanted to give my 2 grandsons concert tickets to a local theater. They're 12 and 10. My daughter and son in law had a fit over it. These are well behaved good kids and we would be outside the theater when the concert was going on.

    When I was that age I was going to the movies with friends and so was my daughter. She was babysitting and responsible for others. It's not a rock concert I'm sending the boys to.

    What's wrong with this picture?
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 8 years, 9 months ago
    Hello NealS,
    Those were the days. :) I remember them well. I would go back and relive them all over again. Today's youth have missed so much. Yes, they have new gadgets and make believe video games, but they are weaker in so many ways. There are some that have parents that steer their children and raise them better, but today thanks to the necessity for two income families and other societal engineering changes, our youth are not the hardy, resilient offspring of generations past. The nanny state and the PC police have seen to that.
    Regards,
    O.A.
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