Wow, what a great piece! You accurately describe the state of affairs we are in. The part in the beginning about the young people I can especially relate to. I have a friend who reads radical books, and claims to be critical of capitalism, yet she somehow manages to buy into consumer society and thinks of being rich as the ultimate goal in life. I think that being critical of capitalism to a certain degree is perceived as “cool” among my generation, but it seems to me that among quite a few young people there is no real understanding of what capitalism really is, how it works, and the effect it has on the human psyche. Maybe that ties into what you said about a lack of people with deeper knowledge to teach us youngsters… Anyway, thanks for continuing to write about the interactions of us humans, capitalism, and modern technology.
I wonder how AI will accelerate all of this still further. I can foresee a further atomization of knowledge, a further specialization of knowledge (another sign of infantilization), and an abdication of responsibility. Why go through all the difficult labor of maturing when AI promises to make all your decisions from the personal up to the political for you? Of course this is a false promise, but I'm not sure others will see it that way. And what is to be done? Reemphasis on education as Postman suggests? That seems right directionally, but I'm not sure we have the number and quality of teachers any more for this to be accomplished at scale, especially as the system itself is against any kind of reform in this direction. The only way forward I see is the act of rebellion of individuals. Reading these essays, writing your own, and generally trying to grapple with the problem of existence yourself. What do you think?
Apr 7·edited Apr 7Liked by laughlyn (johan eddebo)
Adrift it’s increasingly difficult to locate myself. An American born in the 60s, alive long enough to remember different ways of thinking, or just, swimming among a population of people who were, thinking, and knew they were. They did it on purpose.
I’ve been in Sweden most of the last 10 years and have felt like the oxygen’s removed from the room, like I’m living on the moon. I’d put that down to some kind of infantilization engine operating here, some kind of infantilzation power plant. PLUS a deeply ingrained cultural INSULARITY. Outsiders literally do not exist… (this, to say this, is nowhere near exaggeration).
However lately new ideas appear. This apparently is broader, This power plant draws its power from everyone everywhere, not just here in Sweden. As you describe here, Johan.
But also, after years of astonishment at the seemingly infantile, I’m not using that word anymore. It’s too weak and it’s disservice to infants. Infants are NOT like this at all. They’re full of potential. We’re seeing infants who grew up and chose to lobotomize themselves, to cut out their spirit, their life. It’s rather anti-infantile, anti-everything.
convenience is the nest in the crook of the limb of the tree of the 'state' of things -in opposition to the wisdom gained through the flight , the journey...
as it stands - a false footing... that leads to fallen fledglings.
«The expulsion of nature, its confinement to a certain number of protected multifunctional parks, not only signifies the end of the whole countryside (in those places where it still exists) and of all knowledge acquired in the rational appropriation of the environment, but also the end of human reason itself, which can only be constituted by encountering a limit in the form of the external and internal nature of the human being, a limit, so to speak, which would resist it: “this outside which man needs in order not to close himself off within himself, that is, so as not to collapse into solipsism, in the delirious logic of omnipotence.” On the other hand, one can already prove by merely looking at those children brought up “without land”(4), but with computers, what comprises the “training” of a being whose only future is the interactively malleable universe of digitalized representations.»
This seems to be describing a very specific subset of a specific population, namely urban western Europe and it's colonial offshoots. Like all urban areas in this later stage of civilisation, sterility and unfettered decadence rule. These two things cannot help but lead to an infantilism, but this is not unique to this time or place.
What is unique to the west is the prison of the mind that many seem to live in, but this is due to the inherent assumptions behind western thinking. Namely the unrivaled bent towards abstraction, the intense universalism and will to power across time and space, and the blind faith in expertise, which started in Gothic Catholicism with the priesthood/laity seperation. Even by arguing against this moment in history as you do so eloquently here, you are affirming it because you care about it. It is this care that many other cultures find quite baffling. Isn't it enough to be ? No, for the westerner one has to will to be. And in this word 'will' all the west grand metaphysical arguments and structure is contained.
If one wants to see the difference compare Marx to Epicurus; the former is developing a system that abstracts (quite ridiculously from other cultural perspectives) across time and space in all directions that is supposed to apply to all humanity for their betterment, to be controlled by an expert committee (Cardinals). The latter is living a way of life to take or leave for each individual. The Chinese way of flowing in the tides of history this way or that is also a nice counterpoint to the western willed resistance.
All these late urban phenomenon are self extinguishing, a younger and more virile culture seems to always simply replace them.
the comments here regards AI are interesting. The thing is, AI was inevitable, in this form. People had been, already, writing like chatbox. The behaviors of the West anticipated AI in a sense. And that infantilization (good a word as any...its got multiple facets) is also a form of depression, I think. The learned helplessness is partly the result of being helpless. Feeling helpless and not being given the tools to counter that. The dumbing down phenomenon has resulted in increased feelings of helplessness. And, feelings of frustration at not being able to grasp what is going on, in any historic context because these people have 6th grade vocabularies. I mean i know a lot of smart people but most are outside the system to some degree. I think the more one is living inside the beast, the worst it all is.
It is indeed a strange situation we find ourselves in, but it would seem as though it has always been this way, in that we have never actually found out where we are, where this experience of life is actually taking place.
In aviation there are two modes of flight, "visual" rules for when the path forward can be clearly seen, and "instrument" rules for when we must rely on other means, outside of ourselves, to provide enough information for navigation through the "fog".
Back on the ground again, it is as though we are born into an "instrument" rules reality where most people accept the information or narrative provided to them, and the rest do their best to see through the fog but never quite get there early enough to reach clear skies in numbers sufficient, to overcome the prevailing constructed narrative.
I work with the public in a poor region and have been calling the behavior you're describing here as "learned helplessness." It's less surprising to me that young people are ready to abdicate all adult responsibilities than it is to watch Generation X and Boomers just shrug off any vestige of maturity. After all, the culture industry has been targeting young people since the late 80s into the 90s with their products designed to arrest mature development. But when I was growing up, very few tv shows and movies were specifically designed for kids. There was an implicit message that culture was awaiting us as we became adults.
I've also been fascinated by what you call experience commodity for some time vis a vis my previous employment with the National Park Service. They train those park rangers who give interpretive talks to use emotional strategies in their talks in order to get visitors to "care" about the resource. This NPS experience of Nature is distinctly different from one much less mediated by mediocre bureaucrats such as watching birds migrating through one's own neighborhood, but people are convinced they need to travel 1000s of miles to experience Glacier or Yellowstone or Olympic. But these experiences neither change how people experience the natural world every day nor alter the mundane quality of their daily existence. They just go home with their photos and memorabilia.
Your piece has helped to firm up some of my own personal observations. Thank you.
This is a very timely piece. Thank you for putting together your thoughts on maturity and human development, or the absence of such. The mental straightjackets that seem to have captured so many have complex origins but the idea of immaturity goes a long way in illuminating our condition. It is rare that I can have conversations based on real events and experiences, with most talk dominated by entertainment (TV, sports) or consisting of repetition of the most superficial political orthodoxies. Do your own research/learning? What does that mean?
I had a recent discussion with friends about Aaron Bushnell's suicide and the profound impact of his actions, which continue to haunt me. But these friends were mostly perplexed -- why did he do this?what could motivate him to destroy himself over an apparently remote issue affecting people he did not know? Why do I care? The inability to grasp the depth of Aaron's empathy, even his feelings of responsibility toward other human beings, seems like the norm. I feel like an alien.
As noted by another commenter, this is not infantile as infants do not behave this way. It is clearly learned behavior to no longer care about other people and to subsume our honest emotions into acceptable pathways of responses to life events.
This is crass, but this fetish to infantilize is like those people who dress up like babies and then want to be treated like babies in order to achieve some perverse sexual gratification. It makes my skin crawl.
To me it is no wonder why pedophilia is rampant and on the rise. If you have the mindset and emotional maturity of a child, you will be attracted to real children in the most unnatural ways. My skin crawls further.
Then we have adult women trying to imitate high school girls and spend vast personal resources to "look young". No woman wants to look her age any longer. This is the entire reason the beauty and fashion industries use barely pubescent models to sell their wares. They know this is what women covet to look like whether they realize it or not. Sure there is the occasional nod to using "real women" in advertising, but it's only a cynical nod. The big bucks are elsewhere.
I have to admit I fell prey to this for years.
I once had a partner who I came to discover hadn't emotionally matured beyond about the age of twelve. I couldn't be intimate with him and the relationship ended because I felt like I was having relations with a child. I felt sad and queasy.
If and when the US goes down, it's going to be like watching millions of toddlers melting down in Walmart simultaneously. Not everyone but way too many.
1 Corinthians 13:11
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
What Paul wrote isn't just wise, it's normal. Natural. Healthy.
Thank you for this very insightful article. God Bless.
Wow, what a great piece! You accurately describe the state of affairs we are in. The part in the beginning about the young people I can especially relate to. I have a friend who reads radical books, and claims to be critical of capitalism, yet she somehow manages to buy into consumer society and thinks of being rich as the ultimate goal in life. I think that being critical of capitalism to a certain degree is perceived as “cool” among my generation, but it seems to me that among quite a few young people there is no real understanding of what capitalism really is, how it works, and the effect it has on the human psyche. Maybe that ties into what you said about a lack of people with deeper knowledge to teach us youngsters… Anyway, thanks for continuing to write about the interactions of us humans, capitalism, and modern technology.
I wonder how AI will accelerate all of this still further. I can foresee a further atomization of knowledge, a further specialization of knowledge (another sign of infantilization), and an abdication of responsibility. Why go through all the difficult labor of maturing when AI promises to make all your decisions from the personal up to the political for you? Of course this is a false promise, but I'm not sure others will see it that way. And what is to be done? Reemphasis on education as Postman suggests? That seems right directionally, but I'm not sure we have the number and quality of teachers any more for this to be accomplished at scale, especially as the system itself is against any kind of reform in this direction. The only way forward I see is the act of rebellion of individuals. Reading these essays, writing your own, and generally trying to grapple with the problem of existence yourself. What do you think?
Adrift it’s increasingly difficult to locate myself. An American born in the 60s, alive long enough to remember different ways of thinking, or just, swimming among a population of people who were, thinking, and knew they were. They did it on purpose.
I’ve been in Sweden most of the last 10 years and have felt like the oxygen’s removed from the room, like I’m living on the moon. I’d put that down to some kind of infantilization engine operating here, some kind of infantilzation power plant. PLUS a deeply ingrained cultural INSULARITY. Outsiders literally do not exist… (this, to say this, is nowhere near exaggeration).
However lately new ideas appear. This apparently is broader, This power plant draws its power from everyone everywhere, not just here in Sweden. As you describe here, Johan.
But also, after years of astonishment at the seemingly infantile, I’m not using that word anymore. It’s too weak and it’s disservice to infants. Infants are NOT like this at all. They’re full of potential. We’re seeing infants who grew up and chose to lobotomize themselves, to cut out their spirit, their life. It’s rather anti-infantile, anti-everything.
convenience is the nest in the crook of the limb of the tree of the 'state' of things -in opposition to the wisdom gained through the flight , the journey...
as it stands - a false footing... that leads to fallen fledglings.
«The expulsion of nature, its confinement to a certain number of protected multifunctional parks, not only signifies the end of the whole countryside (in those places where it still exists) and of all knowledge acquired in the rational appropriation of the environment, but also the end of human reason itself, which can only be constituted by encountering a limit in the form of the external and internal nature of the human being, a limit, so to speak, which would resist it: “this outside which man needs in order not to close himself off within himself, that is, so as not to collapse into solipsism, in the delirious logic of omnipotence.” On the other hand, one can already prove by merely looking at those children brought up “without land”(4), but with computers, what comprises the “training” of a being whose only future is the interactively malleable universe of digitalized representations.»
René Riesel, here:
https://libcom.org/article/name-reason-encyclopedie-des-nuisances
This seems to be describing a very specific subset of a specific population, namely urban western Europe and it's colonial offshoots. Like all urban areas in this later stage of civilisation, sterility and unfettered decadence rule. These two things cannot help but lead to an infantilism, but this is not unique to this time or place.
What is unique to the west is the prison of the mind that many seem to live in, but this is due to the inherent assumptions behind western thinking. Namely the unrivaled bent towards abstraction, the intense universalism and will to power across time and space, and the blind faith in expertise, which started in Gothic Catholicism with the priesthood/laity seperation. Even by arguing against this moment in history as you do so eloquently here, you are affirming it because you care about it. It is this care that many other cultures find quite baffling. Isn't it enough to be ? No, for the westerner one has to will to be. And in this word 'will' all the west grand metaphysical arguments and structure is contained.
If one wants to see the difference compare Marx to Epicurus; the former is developing a system that abstracts (quite ridiculously from other cultural perspectives) across time and space in all directions that is supposed to apply to all humanity for their betterment, to be controlled by an expert committee (Cardinals). The latter is living a way of life to take or leave for each individual. The Chinese way of flowing in the tides of history this way or that is also a nice counterpoint to the western willed resistance.
All these late urban phenomenon are self extinguishing, a younger and more virile culture seems to always simply replace them.
aka…
https://expressiveegg.substack.com/p/kidulteration
the comments here regards AI are interesting. The thing is, AI was inevitable, in this form. People had been, already, writing like chatbox. The behaviors of the West anticipated AI in a sense. And that infantilization (good a word as any...its got multiple facets) is also a form of depression, I think. The learned helplessness is partly the result of being helpless. Feeling helpless and not being given the tools to counter that. The dumbing down phenomenon has resulted in increased feelings of helplessness. And, feelings of frustration at not being able to grasp what is going on, in any historic context because these people have 6th grade vocabularies. I mean i know a lot of smart people but most are outside the system to some degree. I think the more one is living inside the beast, the worst it all is.
It is indeed a strange situation we find ourselves in, but it would seem as though it has always been this way, in that we have never actually found out where we are, where this experience of life is actually taking place.
In aviation there are two modes of flight, "visual" rules for when the path forward can be clearly seen, and "instrument" rules for when we must rely on other means, outside of ourselves, to provide enough information for navigation through the "fog".
Back on the ground again, it is as though we are born into an "instrument" rules reality where most people accept the information or narrative provided to them, and the rest do their best to see through the fog but never quite get there early enough to reach clear skies in numbers sufficient, to overcome the prevailing constructed narrative.
I work with the public in a poor region and have been calling the behavior you're describing here as "learned helplessness." It's less surprising to me that young people are ready to abdicate all adult responsibilities than it is to watch Generation X and Boomers just shrug off any vestige of maturity. After all, the culture industry has been targeting young people since the late 80s into the 90s with their products designed to arrest mature development. But when I was growing up, very few tv shows and movies were specifically designed for kids. There was an implicit message that culture was awaiting us as we became adults.
I've also been fascinated by what you call experience commodity for some time vis a vis my previous employment with the National Park Service. They train those park rangers who give interpretive talks to use emotional strategies in their talks in order to get visitors to "care" about the resource. This NPS experience of Nature is distinctly different from one much less mediated by mediocre bureaucrats such as watching birds migrating through one's own neighborhood, but people are convinced they need to travel 1000s of miles to experience Glacier or Yellowstone or Olympic. But these experiences neither change how people experience the natural world every day nor alter the mundane quality of their daily existence. They just go home with their photos and memorabilia.
Your piece has helped to firm up some of my own personal observations. Thank you.
This is a very timely piece. Thank you for putting together your thoughts on maturity and human development, or the absence of such. The mental straightjackets that seem to have captured so many have complex origins but the idea of immaturity goes a long way in illuminating our condition. It is rare that I can have conversations based on real events and experiences, with most talk dominated by entertainment (TV, sports) or consisting of repetition of the most superficial political orthodoxies. Do your own research/learning? What does that mean?
I had a recent discussion with friends about Aaron Bushnell's suicide and the profound impact of his actions, which continue to haunt me. But these friends were mostly perplexed -- why did he do this?what could motivate him to destroy himself over an apparently remote issue affecting people he did not know? Why do I care? The inability to grasp the depth of Aaron's empathy, even his feelings of responsibility toward other human beings, seems like the norm. I feel like an alien.
As noted by another commenter, this is not infantile as infants do not behave this way. It is clearly learned behavior to no longer care about other people and to subsume our honest emotions into acceptable pathways of responses to life events.
You do not need to look far to see the monsters from the Id and all their works.
This is crass, but this fetish to infantilize is like those people who dress up like babies and then want to be treated like babies in order to achieve some perverse sexual gratification. It makes my skin crawl.
To me it is no wonder why pedophilia is rampant and on the rise. If you have the mindset and emotional maturity of a child, you will be attracted to real children in the most unnatural ways. My skin crawls further.
Then we have adult women trying to imitate high school girls and spend vast personal resources to "look young". No woman wants to look her age any longer. This is the entire reason the beauty and fashion industries use barely pubescent models to sell their wares. They know this is what women covet to look like whether they realize it or not. Sure there is the occasional nod to using "real women" in advertising, but it's only a cynical nod. The big bucks are elsewhere.
I have to admit I fell prey to this for years.
I once had a partner who I came to discover hadn't emotionally matured beyond about the age of twelve. I couldn't be intimate with him and the relationship ended because I felt like I was having relations with a child. I felt sad and queasy.
If and when the US goes down, it's going to be like watching millions of toddlers melting down in Walmart simultaneously. Not everyone but way too many.
1 Corinthians 13:11
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
What Paul wrote isn't just wise, it's normal. Natural. Healthy.
Thank you for this very insightful article. God Bless.