You’re a big baby. We all are.
Our society has made us that way, and we’ve conformed.
Keith Hayward’s book, INFANTILISED, is about how it happened, how we let it happen, and why we’re stuck.
This won’t do INFANTILISED justice, but adults have been infantilised and children have been adultified by technology and advertising.
The 1960’s sold us what looked like painless hedonism as a lifestyle when kids who didn’t want their brains blown out by LBJ in Vietnam “dropped out” of the Protestant work ethic and the media and advertising commodified “rebellion” and youth.
Suddenly it paid to “treat yourself” because “you deserve it” became the Anglo-Saxon thing.
I made a quick list from the book of the things that infantilise us and the things that keep us vaguely unsatisfied with life:
Hydration reminders, take your umbrella reminders, get your flu shot reminders, superhero movies,
cutesy cartoon animals, protests, living with parents/grandparents, Happy Meals for adults, Disney anything, adult coloring books,
nostalgia, Barbie, sports, sports broadcasters, muzak, miniature golf, Harry Potter,
New Age anything (yoga, aromatherapy, etc. etc.), safetyism/health/diet/exercise, ukuleles, vapid aspiration memes, Hallmark anything, folk dancing, cosplay, Halloween for adults,
universities that are more like theme parks and extended gyms, reality TV, emoticons, performative political and virtue signalling, self-driving cars and digital dashboards, tourism, group tours.
We’ve all been brainwashed into thinking that the point of life is pleasure, not thinking and doing.
We’ve been brainwashed into believing that going to Iceland with a group of drinking buddies is mandatory, exciting, and fun. Crayons for adults? Shove them up your nose, buy the BIG box, you deserve it. And by all means, show us on Facebook. Look at us! We had fun! You can tell by the wine glasses in our hands!
Hayward shows us the way out. It’s great. In fact, it’s stuff that’s so great, it’s hard to sell. It’s hard stuff to do. That’s why most people take the easy way out and end up . . . on EMPTY at the end of life:
BOOKS. Good books, not Harry Potter. Try Houellebecq. Try Don DeLillo’s WHITE NOISE.
Try Hayward, for a start.
FILMS. Not Harry Potter. Not a superhero in tights. Not Barbie. Try the Criterion Collection stuff.
MUSIC. Yes, get into classical. Or, conversely, serious jazz. Try Satie, Respighi, Chet Baker. And flow, like those artists and composers did.
MUSEUMS. Not baseball. Go to Ottawa. Go see Frederic Remington. Go see people who busted a gut to make life meaningful, then do it yourself.
BLOCK ADS. A practical thing. Block as many online ads as possible. Mute the TV.
RESIST TECH. Tech is the funnel for making you a better consumer and a bigger baby.
That archaic tech known quaintly as “cable TV” is, after all, what brought you The Weather Channel’s motherly admonishments to button up, drink fourteen gallons of water a day, and put your snows on your Subaru.
