I don't think the question is necessarily binary.
2 May 2023
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Thanks. Is this a new thing? I don’t recall it from my primary school or from Guru Minor’s who was at a bona fide chorister school in Oxford.
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I remember Easter Bonnet parades when I was in Primary back in the 19[mumbles], so maybe it’s a regional thing or is back in fashion?
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You're operating on a different linguistic level to me clearly.
The 'It' is the kids Easter bonnet thing?
So I am still unsure how a kids competition can be contributing to society's adults being treated like kids?
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I remember Easter bonnet stuff from my own childhood and also when my kids were at primary school. It’s an ancient thing.
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Infant
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Well. All of the little elements of programming contribute to the end objective of conditioning you to stay in your lane, and leave the complicated stuff to the 'grown ups'. So powerful and persuasive is the effect of this that you can have things like the performative nonsense of the tory governments small boats pantomime pass without real scrutiny or meaningful comment. Wider society treated entirely like kids, in a playgroup, being fed fairytales. Turning our heads from complicated things that it's not our place to be involved in.
So what harm easter bonnets*? No harm at all if it was just an innocent occurrence of a chance for pretty little girls to dress up in a nice hat for the new season**. But it's not. It's part of a framework of events that establish the primacy of institutions over individuals and reduces those individuals to thoughtless conformance to it's standards, and reticence to think for themselves, or even to look without prejudice. Leave it to the state/church, who know best. Something for you to be proud of. Thoughtlessly. Infantilisation.
* An event inspired by Corinthians 11:1-13 which is very dangerous when observed through the lens of the patriachal society that we live in, and the inequality shown towards women impacting on their equality, opportunity, and even safety. The point isn't that one easter bonnet parade flicks a switch and causes instant infantilisation, but rather that society, for a millennia, has been structured to provide and reinforce these sort of messages relentlessly. The primacy of state/church over individual, the primacy of man over woman, the relentless removal of individual power and rights, and constant messaging to accept the established order. Unquestioning. Without even realising that you should ask questions. Curiosity and learning programmed out of you, such that you should remain a child.
** Except you can deconstruct that sentence and see that it harbours hazards to society. Every action has consequences, sometimes unappreciated and wildly out of context or scale. The beating of a butterflies wings.... In isolation, and averaging out across a mean, these things are not individually harmful...but when constructed with bias, and reinforced many times over, develop a profound power. That is how propaganda messaging works.
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Tricky will do anything, even quoting fucking Corinthians rather than say “ yeah, I got that wrong”.
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Babelfish says: "Exactly like the established order."
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I'll confess I only skimmed through that post, but I'm still struggling to see how you infantilise an infant.
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This bit though. Whilst I agree curiosity and learning are programmed out (and that is then massively exploited by “the man”); I don’t agree that people therefore remain children. Quite the opposite. Children ask a fuckton of questions and are far more curious than most adults.
Infant maybe, but not a child.
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At the risk of gurusplaining, I think the point is that you infantilise adults by getting them to be more interested in a child’s activity than the major issues of the world.
The counter argument is very depressing. Which is that the reason people obsess about their children’s activities is because they’ve effectively given up on their own lives and are putting all their useful energy into their offspring.
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Or that they're so self obsessed that they consider their children an extension of themselves, and wish to use their children as a demonstration of their superiority and put-togetherness (it's not a word but you know what I mean) by showing how superior and more put together their children are than yours. Which is equally depressing but in a different way.
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Rain in New York meaning the Mets game I was going to watch tonight has been cancelled.
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Thanks that does make more sense!
But for most people in the middle quartiles of normal distribution, isn't it just something fun for their kids to do?
Surely any parent doing infant level things with their infant isn't contributing to the destruction of society through infantilism?
(There's nothing on TV tonight, can you tell?)
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Helped Little Miss Shady with some reading tonight. Seems I'm at fault for capitalism. Who knew.
