Is Fred Flintstone Better Equipped To Survive This Pandemic Than George Jetson?
A yabba-dabba-doo digital debate of hustle-vs-routine in 2020.
Cartoons, Ethics, and Operant Conditioning
The year was 1996. I was a kindergarten kid in Central India, with just three consumable vices — fast food, comic books, and Cartoon Network. Mrs Rowling’s debut novel hadn’t hit the stands yet, and I was still a good twelve months away from my eventual addiction to paperback misery. And (I realize this now), I had begun idolizing the “father figures” from my two favorite cartoon shows that used to air as reruns back then — Fred Flintstone, and George Jetson. To some extent, their on-screen behavior was as important as the moral footprint of my biological parents — in shaping me up as a child. My memories of Bedrock, Orbit City, and Jellystone Park (from Yogi Bear), although understandably less vivid when compared to more recent discoveries on Netflix, are still very important by themselves, as formative psychological constructs.
In other words, since my exposure to this (Cartoon) content happened before I had turned seven, their lasting impact over my general “approach” to life is much stronger than other events and content, which — although debatably severe or moderate in nature, I’ve…
