Infantilization is the process of treating someone as if they are a child. This can be done for various reasons, including to make someone feel more powerless or to make them easier to control. Infantilization can have negative consequences, however, as it can foster feelings of dependency and insecurity. It can also lead to a loss of self-respect and diminished self-esteem.
When infantilization is used as a form of control, it can be especially harmful, as it can prevent individuals from thinking for themselves and making their own decisions.
In some cases, infantilization may be used as a way to control someone through manipulation and fear. For example, an abusive partner may infantilize their victim in order to keep them from leaving the relationship.
In other cases, infantilization may be the result of systemic factors, such as sexism or racism.
When women and people of color are infantilized by those in positions of power, it reinforces their status as second-class citizens. https://magnifymind.com/what-is-infantilization/
First of all, don’t worry! This isn’t one of those lunatic QAnon conspiracy theories but some observations & guesses as to how we have devolved to such a childish state. The other night I was looking for something to watch on T.V. & these days it’s hard to find anything worth watching. In fact, call me a snob if you like but our choices as far as something worthwhile to watch are becoming more pathetic by the day in my opinion.
And mind you, I’m well aware that I’m a hypocrite or a walking contradiction because I often enjoy watching “action” films for example & I decided to rewatch one of Keanu Reeves’ movies, John Wick part 3 and as I was watching it, it occurred to me that it was basically like one of the countless video games that kids, young guys, & even middle aged guys enjoy playing for countless hours — though I never got into playing them.
It was basically John Wick going from room to room killing bad guys nonstop like in the video games. I asked myself, Rob, what are you doing? You’re just watching teenage action/violence crap with no redeeming value whatsoever. What also puzzles me is why for all intents and purposes, I have stopped reading?
I was an avid reader for most of my life & have collected an awesome library if I do say so myself. But it seems that nowadays, I will spend & often do spend several hours a day writing. And for the last several years or more, I still buy books, probably at least a half-dozen a year but I don’t read them?
I wonder if I’m becoming more like the culture I criticize in my writing or if it’s honestly because writing takes so much mental energy out of me? And at the risk of sounding like that nauseating braggart, Trump, I know that I’m far ahead of the average American intellectually. I bring these matters or observations up because I am truly alarmed at the state of our culture especially since Trump’s inspiring & unleashing of so much hate, violence, & racism.
Here are some of my observations, you decide for yourself whether they’re accurate or important insights into our collective psyche. Let’s start with television. Perhaps not coincidentally, television & I are about the same age, 70 years old. The 1950s were dubbed the “Golden Age of Television,” it lasted from 1947 to 1960 and was noted for its live, drama programs of serious & intelligent content. Many great authors’ work was presented to the American public & stimulated debate & serious conversation.
But in the 1960s when they began taping programs, the quality of the content began to decline especially as the producers & owners began to see the huge sums of money they could make if they dumbed-down the content to appeal to a wider audience. This is speculation on my part, but it wouldn’t be hard to substantiate it.
Now fast-forward to today’s choices on television as well as in the movies. An endless parade of totally asinine comedies, soap operas, “reality t.v.” etc. It’s clear to all but the willfully ignorant MAGA morons that the series, “The Apprentice” is the key factor that led to Trump being appointed president. And note that the Trump cult has gone so far as to actually believe in “alternate facts & realities.” But back in the real world, those are recognized for what they’ve always been known as, lies!
I remember being struck by the first “reality” television series, “Survivor,” over 20 years ago. I watched one episode with my wife & said to her afterwards, think about what this is teaching children, it’s teaching them that it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, backstab, etc. because “winning” is everything. No wonder Trump did so well in his alternate reality role because he didn’t have to act at all, this was his life in business except that he failed many more times in business than he succeeded even with all the handouts & protection of his slumlord daddy.
I was also flabbergasted at this serious downturn in Americans’ general intelligence because television is an artificial medium to begin with but now, by claiming that they were capturing reality & presenting it to us in an artificial format or medium (see Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message) we were being shown the actual world of people & their behavior, beliefs, etc. This was an absolute descent into Alice in Wonderland.
Moreover, the producers of “The Apprentice” have freely admitted that it was all a staged farce, but the gullible public lapped it up like hotcakes they couldn’t get enough of. What’s this say about America, the supposed greatest nation on earth? I won’t pussyfoot around the issue & believe all “reality television” is a sham! Yep, step right up suckers.
To be clear, with the overwhelmingly vast majority of television & movies like these few examples, our culture is keeping us childlike because our minds can’t mature on a diet of such fast-food crap. We need stimulating & challenging material for our mental as well as our moral growth as individuals & collectively as a society & nation. In short, the more we are handicapped intellectually, the easier it is for the unscrupulous elite like Trump & the real 1%, to manipulate & control us.
If you are concerned about the very real harms caused by these phenomena to your own families, I suggest that you read Neil Postman’s classic on the subject, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Okay, now I’m about to probably piss-off the majority of men in America because I’m about to cross the threshold of one of the most sacrosanct pastimes which is Sports.
Yeah, I know that by criticizing sports, I am violating an unspoken but sacred taboo in America & most of the world but so be it! My greatest hero & mentor is Noam Chomsky & years ago he confessed that when he was in high school, it dawned on him, “Why should I attend all my school’s football games & etc. and cheer them on, I don’t know any of them & they don’t mean anything to me?”
Pretty honest & succinct wouldn’t you say? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the competition in a clean & fair game, but I’ve never understood the depth & breadth or the absolutely insane worship of football, basketball, baseball, etc. To illustrate, why is it that across America in some of our poorest, most dilapidated, crime-ridden inner cities, the city planners will use billions of the taxpayers’ money to build Roman Coliseum-type sports arenas & give them free to the mega-rich sports teams owners? The taxpayers who paid for those arenas don’t receive a portion of the earnings from the ticket sales & have to pay exorbitant prices to attend the “games.” But when those same, poor inner-city residents ask for better schools, health care, or social welfare programs, they’re told, “Sorry, we just don’t have the money.”
I’d say this illustrates clearly how upside-down our priorities are & how absurdly out of proportion our love of sports has become. When I was in my 20s & living in L.A., my friends used to crack-up at me because we’d all be partying & watching some game for hours, but I wouldn’t know what teams were playing. And it’s not like I was some armchair-sissy or something, we played very aggressive volleyball almost every Sunday for nearly 11 years & I was notorious for playing rough i.e. I was never as coordinated as my friends & would jam my fingers in the net, raise my knee up when I was going against the guy on the other side of the net, etc. But we did eventually clean our act up & it was no longer a contact sport. Ha! Ha!
I always had a backpack of books with me & never stopped trying to get my friends to read a few sentences or a paragraph of something I felt was worthwhile when they’d give me their attention for a few moments. And it saddens me to the marrow of my bones that for over 50 years whenever I try to persuade a friend to read something that may take 15 minutes & affects their lives i.e. their healthcare, their pension, whether their job will be shipped overseas, etc., their response is always the same, “Sorry, it’s been a long day at work, I just don’t have the time, etc.”
They can spend four to eight hours after getting off work to watch sports, play childish video games, watch “reality t.v.,” etc. but no, they can’t or won’t spend a few minutes to empower themselves. The older I get, the more compassion & empathy I feel for those poor souls fleeing the dictators of their home countries — many whom the U.S. put in power — and the less sympathy I feel for my fellow citizens who have it so much better off than those migrants desperately trying to provide a better life for their families.
If you get nothing else out of this essay my imaginary reader, I hope you’ll come to understand that one of the key tactics that fascist leaders, tyrants, & dictators throughout history have always used is to focus their citizens’ anger on immigrants & migrants. This is called scapegoating & is a very clever tactic for dividing the public & getting them to blame the poor souls innocently trying to survive, for their economic troubles.
And again, Trump is a prime example of a tin-pot, wanna be dictator because he is very skilled at whipping-up the emotions & anger of his followers at his rallies by blaming the Mexican migrants, the Muslims, gay people, liberals, democrats, college students, etc. all to distract his zombie fans from the fact that it is precisely people like Trump & the other corporate cockroaches who are to blame for losing their jobs, health insurance, pensions, etc. Trump has fucked-over & ripped-off thousands of people who’ve worked for him over the decades, yet he’s convinced his Duck Dynasty Klansmen that he’s their champion.
Yep! Again & again, we witness how the elite treat us like children & infantilize us with claims like, don’t worry my children, Daddy Trump is here to protect you & look out for you. And all the while, he’s pocketing millions from his gullible children too busy to educate & empower themselves because they’re playing video games, watching sports, or watching mind-numbing T.V. programs or movies.
Next on my list of things that are keeping us childlike & vulnerable to the powers that be are so-called “Smart phones.” I’ve been saying for several years now that whoever dubbed them smart phones had a perverse sense of humor because they’re actually making their users dumber the more they use them.
I won’t belabor this subject too much for the sake of brevity in terms of the length of this essay but if you’ll take the time to watch a few, short You Tube videos by Tristan Harris who used to design Smart Phones when he worked for Google, I believe you’ll see my point? Again, these phones help to condition us to be passive consumers distracted by our phones all day, every day. A good analogy would be those hanging mobiles over baby’s cribs to visually stimulate & occupy their attention.
As Tristan Harris points out, our smart phones purposely distract & occupy our attention with all their bells, lights, & whistles and are very much like slot machines designed to addict us to them. And excuse my bragging again but I’m proud to say that I don’t own one & I’ve never learned to “text.” These phones not only help to shorten our attention spans but also are undermining our ability to focus mentally, to write, & even to speak i.e., fewer & fewer people nowadays will even leave a voicemail.
People proudly proclaim, “look at all the things I can do with my smart phone,” ignoring the sad facts that I just listed regarding our overall mental capabilities. Of course, it’s become a humorous cliché these days to point out the funny & sometimes serious consequences of people walking down the street with their eyes glued to the tiny screen on their phones but in terms of our progress as a culture or a society, we are paying a very dear price indeed.
Lastly, I want to touch on the subject of the so-called “social media.” Again, this is another perverse twist on the facts of social media. In brief, they are actually anti-social platforms that have sown far more division in our society than unity. Where would Trump have been were it not for his Twitter account for the first several years of his presidency. Furthermore, I still don’t understand why a lot more attention hasn’t focused on Trump’s use of Cambridge Analytica’s deliberate propaganda campaign supplied by Facebook’s greedy & unconcerned, Mark Zuckerberg.
If this is of concern to you, I heartily recommend another fantastic video available on You Tube called “The Great Hack.” And because this is an area of such vast & national interest, I encourage you to watch another video that reveals the real meat & potatoes so-to-speak, about “social media,” called, “Toxic by Design.” Yes, my imaginary friend, the knowledge is available as to how, why, & etc. the power elite have kept us as children so they could become richer & richer.
We know that no matter how many mansions, yachts, private jets, etc. they own, it’s never enough for them. And no my friends, we’re not going to be saved by one of Hollywood’s comic book heroes. If we are to survive & prosper, we must do the heavy lifting ourselves like mature men & women. If you refuse to put away your playthings, you will live out your sad life like a child trapped in their crib stunted mentally, morally, & emotionally for life.
It’s a moral imperative that we become men & women of integrity. A rare quality in these days of a fast buck at whatever the cost.
“People with integrity tell the truth and act in a sincere way. They treat people equally and take responsibility for their own feelings and actions. Integrity is more than just being honest; it’s acting ethically, consistently, and in a trustworthy manner.
Integrity is sometimes summed up as “doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.” It’s an apt motto for kids in the digital age, when everything from cheating with cell phones to plagiarizing to cyberbullying anonymously can be done with no witnesses. Integrity secures the whole foundation of our interconnected relationships — both online and off.
It’s natural for kids to have setbacks as they build their character strengths. Be patient and forgiving, as integrity is strengthened over time in various challenging situations.” https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/what-is-integrity
As I was growing up, I heard the term “Renaissance man,” used again & again and it aroused my intellectual curiosity. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the term.
Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.
Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.
In today’s ass-backwards value system we are told repeatedly that we must focus our studies on a specific subject or in other words, specialize. This is the antithesis of the Renaissance ideal which was to generalize because as Leonardo da Vinci knew all too well, all knowledge is interconnected!
This is a good point at which to segue to one of today’s major crises, the continued attempts by the Christian extremists to infantilize the entire American population. If this strikes you as an exaggeration, reflect on their success in overturning Roe vs. Wade. You see, these wolves in “Christian clothing” have as their major goal, a desire to turn not just America but the entire world into their ideal of a “Christian paradise” here on earth. And that can only be accomplished by their becoming authoritarians barely discernible from the likes of Hitler or Stalin.
This is why over 74 million of the so-called American Christians not only voted for Trump, but they also sing his praises. And they have no problem with Trump bragging about being able to grab women by their pussies. I wonder how they’d feel if he did this to their wives or daughters?
In these delusional hypocrites’ theology, women are to remain barefoot, pregnant, & silent in the home. The husband/father is the authoritarian in the family & the preacher is the authoritarian i.e., absolute ruler, in their churches. And the more you study these people, the more similarities you will find between them & the Muslim extremists like the Taliban in Afghanistan & the Jewish extremists in Israel trying to exterminate the Palestinians.
I posit that America’s “Christian” extremists & White Supremacists are traitors & should be tried & sent to prison because they seek to tear down the wall of separation between Church & State that our founding fathers established. And yeah, I acknowledge that the framers of our Constitutional form of government were white, wealthy landowners, & many were slave owners. What they gave us was far from perfect, ideal, or humane but it has allowed us far more freedoms than many, if not most other nations.
It always comes back to education & I’m referring to education in the broadest sense as in the ideal of the Renaissance man & Humanism. These “Christians” who have turned their backs on Jesus’ teaching laid out so simple & clear in his Sermon on the Mount, are scared to death of Humanism because it reveals all their ugly hypocrisies & true agenda.
Our founding fathers were students of the Enlightenment, another glorious era of education & that’s why they purposely separated the Church & State in our founding document, the U.S. Constitution. A cursory look back at the history of Western Civilization shows just how powerful & destructive a force it is when the Church & State work together. The individual in such a society is little more than a peasant or a serf who is forced to slave from sun-up to sundown & even then, he often can’t feed his own family because he’s forced to give the majority of his harvest to the Church & the State i.e., kings, lords, barons, etc.
A few years back, I sent Noam Chomsky an email asking him for an example of the harm when the Church & the State work together & oppress the average citizen. I felt pretty dumb when Noam replied with the simple answer which was so obvious i.e., when the Roman Empire declared Christianity to be their state religion. Mull that over for a while if you will.
I’ll leave you with a little bit of not so common knowledge that will probably surprise you & gives me a bit of hope that if enough of us wake-up by informing ourselves & uniting, we may survive the mass insanity we are witnessing around us.
Muslims, Jews, & Christians lived together in Palestine in relatively modest harmony for centuries! https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-once-lived-harmoniously-in-palest
It’s imperative that we don’t forget that Hitler’s Nazis called themselves Christians even as they murdered six million Jews along with a couple of million gypsies, artists, homosexuals, scholars, Poles, etc. And it’s not insignificant that most of the far-right “Christian supremacists” of today & in Trump’s army of the Walking Dead deny the Holocaust even happened.
Remember the old maxim that those who don’t learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat the same “mistakes.” The faux “Christians” are like termites destroying a house from within but the house they’re tearing apart is our home, our country, the United States of America and United we Stand, Divided we Fall! Don’t let the haters like Trump divide & conquer us, show them that we’re not children but men & women of integrity!
— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR January 9, 2023