# Cultural  infantilism. Escapism as abdication



## Astro Pen (Jul 28, 2021)

Oh it's harmless escapism. Or is it?

My first inkling of this question was way back in the 90s when I was commuting by train into London and noticed a surprising number of _adults_ reading Harry Potter. The Le Carres, Barbara Taylor Bradfords, and John Updikes seemed to me to have disappeared.

The more I looked at movie listings the more comic book characters like Batman and Transformers seemed to dominate. Looking at Japan things were slipping even faster. Their culture seemed to be sliding into Hello Kitty, adult Pokemon fans and young women in their 20s wearing rabbit  I ears. (yes I know LoL)
In reading, fantasy full of spells and dragons seemed to rapidly eclipse sci-fi.

Here is an article on Japanese infantilised culture and how it is becoming pervasive in the west. Interesting I thought.
Where does it lead when a society recedes into eternal childhood rather than bite the bullet and engage in deep thinking ?









						Cute Gets Creepy: Examining the Consequences of Cute Culture - Post Bubble Culture
					

Japan has developed a reputation for cute.  The Sanrio Company has ensured the worldwide presence of the cutest creature around, Hello Kitty.   Sanrio is a company that churns out the cute to the tune of $1 billion a year5. Cute has become a movement, but that comes with multiple implications...



					postbubbleculture.blogs.wm.edu


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## AllanR (Jul 28, 2021)

In the '40s hard sci fi was considered infantile.


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## hitmouse (Jul 28, 2021)

I dont think Harry Potter is a good example of cultural infantilism. It is fairly sophisticated stuff which happens to be accessible to children, much as is Phillip Pullman, Tolkein, AA Milne, Kenneth Graham, or Saint Exupery. Certainly more to it than your average Barbara Taylor Bradford or Robert Ludlum.


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## Danny McG (Jul 29, 2021)

IMO what used to take place was people at home reading 'kids literature' and during the daily commute they were reading serious adult books to look the part.

Nowadays people couldn't care less what others think and publicly read whatever they fancy.

It's not infantilism, it's being more open in society


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## Foxbat (Jul 29, 2021)

Could it be that we are so surrounded by devices and platforms that we are becoming more hedonistic in our nature and less inclined towards deeper thinking, and perhaps the cultural infantilism is simply a symptom  of this rather than the malaise itself?

Quite frankly, I’m surprised you can’t get Arsewipe And Go on smartphone.


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## JunkMonkey (Jul 29, 2021)

There's nothing wrong with escapist lit and I'm as guilty as hell of reading far too many comics (and even Harry Potter)* but I think there is a general societal change to towards infantilism.  My own personal hate in this respect is having inanimate objects address me albeit only in writing but I've read enough Philip K Dick to know what comes next.  Product wrappers are always telling me, "Pop me in the fridge! I'll last longer", or "Open me this end!", or "I'm delicious with..."  I'm turning into one of those mad bastards that used to frighten me as a kid angrily muttering to themselves in shops.  "You're not fecking telling me what to do - you're a bag of tomatoes. You don't get a first person pronoun.  You're an IT!  I know you'll last longer in the fridge I'm not a fecking total moron."


*In my defence I will say that most of them _are_ in French as I'm trying to teach myself the language. (The fact that I only want to learn French so I can read their comic books is a wee bit of a self-defeating circular argument but I'm getting old; I haven't got time to rationalise such selfishness.)


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## Valtharius (Jul 29, 2021)

Concurring with the above comments, let us not conflate realism with depth or its absence with shallowness.


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## Toby Frost (Jul 29, 2021)

I think that article mixes several things that probably deserve discussion on their own: the Japanese attitude to cuteness and women; anti-feminism in America; and the enjoyment of "childish" things by adults. That's a lot to talk about, some of it probably against the forum rule against politics. Off the top of my head, I don't see why it's more childish to enjoy, say, Star Wars than non-genre trash like Love Island. There's a lot of stuff out there that doesn't do much for me, and I'm really tired of superhero stories, but I'm not going to say that people shouldn't be enjoying it.


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## Ambrose (Jul 29, 2021)

Was it CS Lewis who pointed out that it is jailers who are the most concerned about escapism?


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## Wayne Mack (Jul 29, 2021)

I did not find the article convincing. As for me, I feel no guilt in liking Spongebob and the Muppets.


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## Montero (Jul 29, 2021)

Over the last couple of years I've been re-finding books I liked from my teens - if I can remember them for that long they are definitely worth a re-visit. Particular stars have been Ronald Welch's Carey books - historical novels following members of a family from Knight Crusader to World War 1. They are excellently written and informative - a little dated in attitudes in a couple of places, but well worth the re-read.
There is a difference between infantilism and a really well written story. I think a lot of the better books aimed for ages below adult work really hard on good story telling. I don't know if it is that YA are less tolerant of anything that is not really engaging. Or maybe they are just not interested in the investigation of themes kind of novels - I'm thinking of the more literary end like Handmaiden's Tale (which I rapidly bounced onto the never again pile).
To me, the best storytelling books are multi-layered with an easy to read story as the most obvious thing, but with more information and social commentary in there for those with the mind to see it. Terry Pratchett as ever being one example.
And regarding Ronald Welch's books they have a variety of main characters and are a far cry from cookie cutter chiselled jaw and high courage, by gad sir. One book - Ensign Carey - has as billiard's sharp as the main character. The English Civil War main character is gentle and bookish and really doesn't want to go to war.
So you can do some reasonably deep thinking, and challenge people's expectations, while also entertaining them.
I have never been a fan of books that are deep/challenging/innovative for the sake of being deep/challenging/innovative.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Jul 29, 2021)

Ambrose said:


> Was it CS Lewis who pointed out that it is jailers who are the most concerned about escapism?


Before I read your post I was trying to remember whether it was Tolkien or LeGuin who said that.  Anyway, whichever one of the three it was (or somebody else), they made a very good point.


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## AllanR (Jul 29, 2021)

CS Lewis said it was Tolkien Who Are the People Most Opposed to Escapism? Jailors! – Quote Investigator


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## Teresa Edgerton (Jul 29, 2021)

It turns out that LeGuin used a similar argument (but it does indeed seem to be based on Tolkien's analogy):



> Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.
> _The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction_ (1979), paraphrasing a passage from J. R. R. Tolkien's essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’; see Tolkien


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## JunkMonkey (Jul 29, 2021)

So we're all agreed; escapism in itself is not a bad thing.  We're all individually free to enjoy the pleasures of reading and watching childish/childlike/wish-fulfilling fiction. But when the whole of society does it (and start deriding the growns-ups in the room for telling them truths they don't want to hear) then I think we're heading for trouble - or on Facebook.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Jul 30, 2021)

I don't think we should confuse escapism and infantilism.  Though they may overlap at times, they are not at all the same thing.  For instance, in the case of an authoritarian government (or religion, or any other authoritarian institution) they would no doubt love to infantilize their citizens or followers, to the extent that they look up to their leaders as the wise all-knowing parents who will always tell them the truth, so that they need only to follow what they are told and do no thinking for themselves.  Stories and mythologies might grow up around thosee leaders that have the _flavor_ of escapist literature, but the similarities will only be superficial.  The heroic roles will always belong to the leaders.  Whereas in fantasy and science fiction and adventure stories of all sorts, it is the individual who grows into heroism ... or occasionally doesn't, but even then the story is really about people rather than institutions.  As a rule, I think that authoritarians would not like the vast bulk of "escapist" literature because it teaches the reader to think, "Well, things could be _different_.  They don't have to be the way they are."

Also, most fantasy and science fiction is about the challenges of individual responsibility.  Not just doing what you are told, or letting other people do all the doing, but making up your own mind and then shouldering what needs to be done.  Take *The Lord of the Rings*_, _which, despite what some prominent writers would have us believe, does _not_ let off the "good guys" too easily.  Every one of the Hobbits, for instance, has experienced suffering and fear and sorrow and loss by the end.  Frodo and Sam go through the worst of it, of course, but Merry and Pippin are far from unscathed.  With Merry, Pippin, and Sam, the things they go through force them to grow up and grow into responsibility.  Frodo who carries the greatest burdens is so deeply wounded he can no longer live in Middle Earth, and has to give up everything he fought for, while others enjoy the benefits.  Even a character like Aragorn, who is already a (very) responsible adult of (very) mature years, faces agonizing choices between competing responsibilities that face him.  (*The Silmarillion *if full of tragic tales of individuals who, when faced with such choices, chose wrong, and Aragorn, as we learn, was brought up on those tales.  He knows what a wrong choice can mean, yet he also knows that it is necessary to _make _a choice and see it through.)


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## The Big Peat (Jul 30, 2021)

Infantilism might be the wrong word for describing a generation that cleaves to media frequently aimed at younger people anyway. Not all about youth is infantile and childish, or reluctant to engage in deep thinking. Youth is also questioning and rebellion and optimism and idealism, all activities with connections to deep thinking. People can dismiss Harry Potter as a book for those not wanting to grow up or think, but it is a book with a great many questions, many of them about what sort of world we want to grow up to be part of.

As for the idea this generation is somehow different and lesser for watching superhero movies, and not just following in the footsteps of generations that watched James Bond or 80s action films, well, that seems a rather odd idea to me.

As genre fic fans, we know the world are full of people who judge the quality of thinking based on its trappings rather than the thoughts themselves. We've been on the receiving end of it. To turn around and apply the same to the next generation of genre fans because they are not conforming with expectations strikes me as a sad state of affairs; I would suggest that if the younger generations were truly infantile, they would continue to ensure they met standard and wouldn't dare to define for themselves what adulthood should look like.


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## JunkMonkey (Jul 30, 2021)

The Big Peat said:


> Not all about youth is infantile and childish, or reluctant to engage in deep thinking. Youth is also questioning and rebellion and optimism and idealism, all activities with connections to deep thinking.



Youthful rebellion isn't always about deep thinking.  A lot of it (and I speak as the parent of three teenage kids) is about "f*ck you, old farts" and following the herd, tearing down whatever is deemed in need of tearing down (or standing up for whatever it is fashionable to stand up for) this week.  Recently my kids, and a lot of their cohort, have been tearing down the things I agree need tearing down and standing up for the things that need standing up for so I'm not complaining. (Proud to see one of my kids on the TV at the particularly wonderful Kenmure Street stand off.)

What I find worrying is that things like 'flagship' science programmes like Horizon seem to be aimed at nine year olds with short attention spans and everything, but everything now has to be turned into a competition with ADHD cutting.  The days when AP  Taylor could talk for half an hour, direct to camera, giving a history lecture (without notes) and get massive ratings is way past.   Don't get me wrong - I think Horrible Histories is fun.  I have learned stuff.  But when that's ALL that's on the menu...

Actually there may well be more but a few years ago I go so fed up with being patronised by the Tarquins, Jocastas, and Piers running British television I stopped watching it. 



The Big Peat said:


> As for the idea this generation is somehow different and lesser for watching superhero movies, and not just following in the footsteps of generations that watched James Bond or 80s action films, well, that seems a rather odd idea to me.



Me too.


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## The Big Peat (Jul 30, 2021)

JunkMonkey said:


> Youthful rebellion isn't always about deep thinking.  A lot of it (and I speak as the parent of three teenage kids) is about "f*ck you, old farts" and following the herd, tearing down whatever is deemed in need of tearing down (or standing up for whatever it is fashionable to stand up for) this week.  Recently my kids, and a lot of their cohort, have been tearing down the things I agree need tearing down and standing up for the things that need standing up for so I'm not complaining. (Proud to see one of my kids on the TV at the particularly wonderful Kenmure Street stand off.)



Sure, but what exists that is always about deep thinking? You can sit a bunch of people down to watch a thirty minute lecture of wonderfully thought provoking stuff and half the people there will just daydream their way through. You can read a great satire and come away just giggling at the jokes, see something incredible and just shrug it all away. Etc.etc.

My point here would be that it's not always not about deep thinking, rather than it always is.


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## Montero (Jul 30, 2021)

Regarding documentaries, we tend to watch by presenter - so Simon Schama, Simon Montefiori, Lucy Worsely, Ben Fogle, Adam Henson, Kate Humble, Jim Alkalili and Alice Roberts. Probably a couple more. All analytical and clear and some at times critical of mainstream view.

Regarding escapism sf and fantasy style  - I think it can regenerate your optimism, and replenish your imagination - so you can picture doing something yourself. Also can lead to inventions - some of which still haven't really hit the main stream like flying cars, and some which have, like personal communicators.

When it comes to imagining the future I often think of the Putney Debates at the end of the English Civil War round about 1650 - when a number of Parliamentarian soldiers were imagining the future and included such things as healthcare for all - took the UK 300 years to get to that one.

I dislike books which outline and detail the problems, without a thought of a solution - as in we are all ground down and that is your lot kind of books. Maybe they are trying to inspire other people to act, without suggesting a course of action, but that doesn't work for me.


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## Toby Frost (Jul 30, 2021)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I don't think we should confuse escapism and infantilism. Though they may overlap at times, they are not at all the same thing. For instance, in the case of an authoritarian government (or religion, or any other authoritarian institution) they would no doubt love to infantilize their citizens or followers, to the extent that they look up to their leaders as the wise all-knowing parents who will always tell them the truth, so that they need only to follow what they are told and do no thinking for themselves. Stories and mythologies might grow up around thosee leaders that have the _flavor_ of escapist literature, but the similarities will only be superficial. The heroic roles will always belong to the leaders. Whereas in fantasy and science fiction and adventure stories of all sorts, it is the individual who grows into heroism ... or occasionally doesn't, but even then the story is really about people rather than institutions. As a rule, I think that authoritarians would not like the vast bulk of "escapist" literature because it teaches the reader to think, "Well, things could be _different_. They don't have to be the way they are."



I agree. If I remember rightly, Orwell says somewhere that a dictatorship cannot have good comedians, because good comedians make people think rebellious thoughts.

One of the reasons that dictators and aspiring dictators (naming no names) are so dangerous is that they feed people a simple, infantilised lie: we are the good guys, they are the bad guys (I always think that soldiers and police sound like idiots when they talk about the "bad guys") and you just have to put me in charge and I'll get rid of them for you... It's a lot easier to understand than the truth, and works like a dream on desperate and stupid people.

I'm British, and I'm shocked by the number of older people who were brought up on a constant diet of _Where Eagles Dare*_ and _Commando_ comics, and who actually seem to wish that they'd got to have a go at the Jerries just like we did in the good old days. Compare that to kids enjoying modern SFF and tell me that SFF infantilises people.

*In fairness, I enjoyed this film, but I don't think it's an accurate portrayal of WW2.


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## The Big Peat (Jul 30, 2021)

Toby Frost said:


> One of the reasons that dictators and aspiring dictators (naming no names) are so dangerous is that they feed people a simple, infantilised lie: we are the good guys, they are the bad guys (I always think that soldiers and police sound like idiots when they talk about the "bad guys") and you just have to put me in charge and I'll get rid of them for you... It's a lot easier to understand than the truth, and works like a dream on desperate and stupid people.



I would submit that it's less lie, and more sugarcoating of a different form of morality, where good and bad are less fixed things of altruism and selfishness and more simply a case of who helps us/the tribe is good and that which opposes is bad, something that reaches its apogee in the soldier's case where nobody pointing a weapon at them for the duration of the encounter can be anything other than bad.

And that, what's more, many of the people who buy it know full well that's what they're buying and do so because it's their world view too.


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## Toby Frost (Jul 30, 2021)

True, the starting point is that "Napoleon is always right". Good old Fuhrerprinzip, still very popular. Ultimately, it requires the abandonment of critical thought and a kind of childish devotion, and I can't think of much more infantilising than that.


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## Montero (Jul 30, 2021)

The same kind of thinking behind brand loyalty and some advertising - whacko teeth whitener will transform your social life it is the one magic bullet that you need.

At least in fantasy, everyone knows that magic wands are fiction (well, I hope they know that....unless of course there is the odd real one out there... )


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## paranoid marvin (Jul 30, 2021)

I think a lot of it has to do with peer pressure and expectation, and quite often that is driven by consumerism and advertising. Adults may read kid's books, but then who's going to buy all the adult books? But I think that there's a realisation (or perhaps to some extent) desperation to get anyone to buy any kind of book, considering how much competition there is from other forms of media. And I wonder how many adults bought a Harry Potter or similar easy-to-read book, who otherwise would not have bought a book at all?


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## JunkMonkey (Jul 30, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> And I wonder how many adults bought a Harry Potter or similar easy-to-read book, who otherwise would not have bought a book at all?



My wife's on that list.  Avidly bought all the HP books as they came out... and has hardly bought any since.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Jul 30, 2021)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> I don't think we should confuse escapism and infantilism.  Though they may overlap at times, they are not at all the same thing.



Agree.



> For instance, in the case of an authoritarian government (or religion, or any other authoritarian institution) they would no doubt love to infantilize their citizens or followers, to the extent that they look up to their leaders as the wise all-knowing parents who will always tell them the truth, so that they need only to follow what they are told and do no thinking for themselves.



Interestingly, the opposite turns out to be the case in most Authoritarian regimes - mainly because they tend to see everything through a totalising lens, so every aspect of society is in service of the regime. They don't want divergent thought, but they also don't want infants.

In China, for example, manga and anime - perceived to be infantile in China - are very much frowned on by the CPC, so much so that they are in the basket of goods that can penalise your social credit score if you buy them, or share them on social media.

China is going out of its way to fund and promote hypermasculinity through state funded movies which is, in part, a reaction to the idea that Chinese men have become effeminate, and partly as preparation for war. There was a spate of videos going round of an MMA fighter challenging tai-chi masters to fights and exposing them as fakes. The guy was "silenced" by the CPC who regarded this as a national embarrassment.

Chinese media, save literature, tends to be much less sophisticated than, say, Korea or the USA. Chinese audiences are also much less sophisticated in their tastes.

I think Nazi Germany was very much of the mind to promote outdoor activities and discourage escapist activities which were thought to be decadent.

Soviet literature was heavily scrutinized by state censors, so I think they were hot on the socially transformative potential of literature, and so required authors to adhere to party lines which were to direct the development of their minds. This wasn't towards an infantile state, but towards unquestioning obedience.

Soviet policies on the role of literature as raising revolutionary consciousness were highly influential on China's league of left wing writers:

League of Left-Wing Writers - Wikipedia

Mao in his talks at Yan'an builds on Lenin's concept of the unity of art and politics by setting out how he saw the role of art and literature:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm

Overall, I think Huxley's prediction of a future obsessed with sensation, spectacle and triviality is more accurate of the worst aspects of liberal societies. I think Chomsky elaborated on that in *Manufacturing Consent*.



> Also, most fantasy and science fiction is about the challenges of individual responsibility.  Not just doing what you are told, or letting other people do all the doing, but making up your own mind and then shouldering what needs to be done.



I think this is true of western sci-fi and fantasy - I'm not sure this is true of Eastern. Things like the wu xia novels of Jin Rong are fantasy novels set in Chinese antiquity so tend to focus on social responsibility, fighting greedy barbarians and so on. I think the Chinese model of a hero achieves his skills not from being feted or godlike but from their humility, a great teacher and perseverance (Monkey King, aside).



> What I find worrying is that things like 'flagship' science programmes like Horizon seem to be aimed at nine year olds with short attention spans and everything, but everything now has to be turned into a competition with ADHD cutting. The days when AP Taylor could talk for half an hour, direct to camera, giving a history lecture (without notes) and get massive ratings is way past. Don't get me wrong - I think Horrible Histories is fun. I have learned stuff. But when that's ALL that's on the menu...



Really agree with this. The quality of educational programming has really floundered. I really love the 70'a John Berger's BBC series "*Ways of Seeing*" which uses Walter Benjamin's "*Art in the age of Mechanical reproduction*" as a basis.

Overall though, I think there is a strange contradiction. Media is becoming more childish - from the way people behave on social media, to how people discuss issues. The kinds of topics and the presentation has also become more childish. The affectation of people more narcissistic. The overall tone of culture is infantile and the average of people invested in franchises created to sell toys, and leaving home and engaging in adult stuff is older.

It's fascinating to watch interviews from the 60's and 70's and see how the quality of discourse has plummeted. Whatever you think of William F Buckley's politics, his interviews with Noam Chomsky or Groucho Marx - the way people comport themselves, the standards of questions asked is far more revealing than the kinds of interviews we get today.

You could call sci-fi of the 50's and 60's escapist, sure, but I don't think it's on the whole, infantile.

But then, we have media today that is far more technically sophisticated than media from the same time period. The sopranos, The Wire, Better call Saul, etc - even superhero shows like Legion have a level of sophistication in writing, characterisation, filming and acting we never saw decades earlier except in, maybe, the best cinema.


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## Teresa Edgerton (Jul 30, 2021)

But wouldn't you agree that unquestioning obedience is childish and hyper-masculinity (as opposed to what comes naturally to the individual) is at best sort of adolescent?  In neither case do these encourage maturity.

Fantasy and science fiction include so many, many coming-of-age tales, the speculative fiction genre as a whole does seem to give a lot of attention to what maturity is and how we might go about achieving it.  (I don't say that it's not sometimes treated in a rote and superficial way, because sometimes it is, but the trend of SFF is to value the emerging adult who thinks about their role in the world and takes on increasing responsibility.)


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## JunkMonkey (Jul 30, 2021)

Montero said:


> At least in fantasy, everyone knows that magic wands are fiction (well, I hope they know that....unless of course there is the odd real one out there... )



I've discovered (from reading _Harry Potter et l'order du Phenix_),  that, in French, magic wands are 'bagettes magiques'.  Which does make them even sillier.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Jul 31, 2021)

Teresa Edgerton said:


> But wouldn't you agree that unquestioning obedience is childish and hyper-masculinity (as opposed to what comes naturally to the individual) is at best sort of adolescent?  In neither case do these encourage maturity.



I'm not sure obedience is childish. There's plenty of pragmatic situations where being able to take command without question can be life or death. In the military, rescue missions, surgery etc..  If anything, children tend to be questioning and disobedient whereas deferring gratification, self sacrifice and discipline are hallmarks of maturity.

Authoritarians don't discourage self reliance - they want their soldiers to be the strongest warriors, but they want their self reliance to be in service to the state, as opposed to the individual. I don't think Authoritarian states are the same as Nanny states, though. The latter seem overly concerned with your welfare whereas the former only really care about the health of the state, and individual losses are irrelevant. 

I don't personally think unquestioning obedience is a good thing, though!

Re: Hypermasculinity. It can be adolescent, for sure -Bro culture, for example. But in the CPC's case the attributes they want to emphasise are reproductive virility, due to the demographic crisis in China; physical strength and martial skill, because they want to project military might; loyalty to the motherland, bravery and self-sacrifice; which are all adult qualities. 

Their hypermasculine avatars are of the wolf warrior type (named after Wu Jing's Rambo-esque films of the same name) - brave, physically strong and adept military characters engaging in violence against brutal outsiders to protect innocents.


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## Toby Frost (Jul 31, 2021)

Military efficiency is surely different to the kind of complete and mindless devotion required by a dictator. After all, soldiers have disobeyed illegal orders in the past, and democracies have produced very skilled soldiers without brainwashing them.

I think the obedience of a minion in a tyranny is childish, because a grown-up (as in an adult with a free and functional mind, not a two-dimensional macho man) has free thought and can question the world around him, while a dictator's minion just does what the parent/leader tells him. In return for his submissive obedience, he gets a world-view that is comfortingly simplistic: leader/daddy/Big Brother good, outsiders bad. One of the historians I studied for A-level said that Hitler wanted "heroic robots". "You no love Leader? You bad! Me love leader! Me good! Me smash!"


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## Montero (Jul 31, 2021)

On the subject of self-reliance and good warriors, the Elizabethan state was facing the same problem. What they noticed was their best bowmen were yeomen - so had I think it was about 8 acres of land, were nearly self-sufficient and were generally well fed and fit - and used to being self-reliant. (This comes from the Working Lives of Women by Alice Clark). So what the state did was pass laws to prevent rural houses being built with smaller patches of land, which wouldn't fully support the families living there. (There was a history of poor people building little shelters and tiny cottages on scraps of land and then struggling.) The laws didn't work. There was also another side effect of the nearly self-sufficient yeomen - they would work for larger farmers at ploughing and harvest time when the wages were higher, but not the rest of the year - and there were ongoing complaints from larger landowners about not being able to get the staff......

Demographic crisis - the whole economies must always grow, ditto populations to help them grow, will eventually hit a wall of "no room left". I like the Japanese model where they are developing care robots to help the elderly, rather than wanting to have more kids so they have a workforce to look after the elderly - because the latter version means you've always got lots of elderly needing a new generation of youngster to care for them.


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## Toby Frost (Jul 31, 2021)

It's off-topic, but I think there's a whole thread waiting to happen about why being a vicious, fanatical Sardaukar-type isn't a guarantee of victory in itself, especially against a crafty and determined opponent.


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## W Collier (Aug 1, 2021)

A thread which becomes a discussion of definitions is a sure sign that the original article did not define its terms.  And if the original article did not define its terms, then it could not, by definition, have actually said anything.  And so it did not.  Implied, maybe, danced around, but never actually formulated and communicated any new information.

The real question is, who wants to tackle a definitive definition (is that redundant?) of _adulthood_?  Because that's what ultimately matters, here.  The true definition of adulthood is the answer to all of this.


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## JunkMonkey (Aug 1, 2021)

Adulthood (for me at least) means taking responsibility for your own actions and putting the good of others before yourself.  It means giving more than you get - and enjoying it. It means realising the entire world does not revolve around you and, in the general scheme of things, you don't really matter but you might as well enjoy it while you're here. (And help as many others as you can enjoy their time here too.)  It's realising that in less that 200 years no one will remember you at all - or anyone you ever meet - or even know you existed.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 1, 2021)

Toby Frost said:


> Military efficiency is surely different to the kind of complete and mindless devotion required by a dictator. After all, soldiers have disobeyed illegal orders in the past, and democracies have produced very skilled soldiers without brainwashing them.
> 
> I think the obedience of a minion in a tyranny is childish, because a grown-up (as in an adult with a free and functional mind, not a two-dimensional macho man) has free thought and can question the world around him, while a dictator's minion just does what the parent/leader tells him. In return for his submissive obedience, he gets a world-view that is comfortingly simplistic: leader/daddy/Big Brother good, outsiders bad. One of the historians I studied for A-level said that Hitler wanted "heroic robots". "You no love Leader? You bad! Me love leader! Me good! Me smash!"



Maybe mindless obedience isn't quite correct, then. Maybe unwavering loyalty is. I think they would probably want soldiers that questioned command if they thought command was disloyal to China / Xi Jinping etc. Unwavering loyalty might mean that even though you are unsure about your orders, you have sufficient trust in command to carry them out nevertheless, unless they violate that loyalty - like a coup attempt or something?

Li Wenliang, who was the guy who first broke Coronavirus, was hushed up by the local bureau who tried to suppress his posts, then died and was recently declared a martyr by the CPC.

I don't think any dictator be it Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot want soldiers that are dumb or generals that are strategically stupid. They want soldiers that will sacrifice themselves for the cause, strong warriors who can fight smart, but won't ever dream of turning on the "dear leader".

It is true, though, that dictators don't like intellectuals who challenge their power - hence pretty much every dictator's rise followed by a massacre of non-sciencey intellectuals who are not engrossed into the party network.



Montero said:


> Demographic crisis - the whole economies must always grow, ditto populations to help them grow, will eventually hit a wall of "no room left". I like the Japanese model where they are developing care robots to help the elderly, rather than wanting to have more kids so they have a workforce to look after the elderly - because the latter version means you've always got lots of elderly needing a new generation of youngster to care for them.



The problem with that is the upfront expenditure to build, maintain and develop robots. Care, particularly of the elderly, is a non productive industry. It doesn't "create value", from the brutal, monstrous perspective of an economist, but is a drain.

One thing that never gets talked about in British politics is the sheer size of the welfare bill for state pensions which vastly dwarfs other kinds of welfare. 50 x unemployment benefits.  All the fuss made over unemployment benefits when it occupies the tiniest portion.

Being as state pensions are actually paid out of the current tax take and not from a pool of invested fund like a personal pension, you need active tax payers to shoulder that burden (along with bonds and borrowing). With an aging population, you would need to reduce the state pension or increase tax revenue to even maintain it at the current paltry level.

Then you have issues around who is going to defend the land, maintain housing for the elderly, grow food, maintain sanitation, produce materials, feed them etc. etc.  You would potentially need a huge deployment of technology to build the infrastructure to support elderly care - at which point we probably have to worry more about the robocalypse.  



W Collier said:


> A thread which becomes a discussion of definitions is a sure sign that the original article did not define its terms.  And if the original article did not define its terms, then it could not, by definition, have actually said anything.  And so it did not.  Implied, maybe, danced around, but never actually formulated and communicated any new information.
> 
> The real question is, who wants to tackle a definitive definition (is that redundant?) of _adulthood_?  Because that's what ultimately matters, here.  The true definition of adulthood is the answer to all of this.



Adulthood is kind of synthetic in that, I don't know about you, but, even in my mid 40's, I don't feel "grown up".

Having said that, I think adulthood entails qualities that children and adolescents don't naturally possess -  the ability to defer gratification, make mature decisions, control your emotions, co-operate with others for a mutual cause, sustain themselves, put others before themselves, shoulder responsibility, a modicum of wisdom, a sense of perspective and an appreciation of a kind of complexity in human relations (i.e. not being a mean girl / jock bully / seeing how someone's negative aspects may be as a result of upbringing and not an essential part of their character etc.).  I don't think all adults possess these qualities, though!


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## Ursa major (Aug 1, 2021)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> welfare bill for state pensions which vastly dwarfs other kinds of welfare


Speaking as someone who is not _yet_ receiving a state pension., and without wanting to descend into the sort of discussion we don't like here...

In the UK, state pensions are _not_ welfare. While state pensions are, like just about any government expenditure, financed out of current taxation and borrowing (to be paid out of future taxation), the state pension is a (theoretically) pre-funded payment: one only** gets it if one has contributed (via National Insurance), and one's payment is based on how long*** one has contributed to National Insurance. That these paid-in sums were spent on previous generations' pensions is neither here nor there: pensioners have already paid in and are (again, in theory) getting their money back (as with a private pension).

Of course, if one has a very low, or no, income when one is of pensionable age, but hasn't paid enough NI (or any), then one does get money through what we now call "welfare".


** - Spouses of deceased pensions get (or they used to) a "widow's pension", a percentage of what the deceased had received. (I have no idea if this could also be paid to widowers.)

*** - One's NI contributions are based (to some extent, and probably more so than when I first started paying them) on one's income. There is also an element of the state pension that is directly based on what one might have contributed (which used to be called SERPS, a couple of decades ago).


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 1, 2021)

Ursa major said:


> Speaking as someone who is not _yet_ receiving a state pension., and without wanting to descend into the sort of discussion we don't like here...
> 
> In the UK, state pensions are _not_ welfare. While state pensions are, like just about any government expenditure, financed out of current taxation and borrowing (to be paid out of future taxation), the state pension is a (theoretically) pre-funded payment: one only** gets it if one has contributed (via National Insurance), and one's payment is based on how long*** one has contributed to National Insurance. That these paid-in sums were spent on previous generations' pensions is neither here nor there: pensioners have already paid in and are (again, in theory) getting their money back (as with a private pension).
> 
> Of course, if one has a very low, or no, income when one is of pensionable age, but hasn't paid enough NI (or any), then one does get money through what we now call "welfare".



Just to clarify I'm not knocking welfare, or making any statement about it's merits or lack of etc.  wasn't trying to open up that can of worms!

When I say welfare, I mean state pensions come under the welfare budget (see link attached from ONS).  The way UK state pensions work in practice, NI Conts are a tax that makes you eligible for a state pension paid for out of current tax revenue. Additionally, you have no rights to any kind of fund equivalent to the conts paid and no entitlement to transfer any money out of the UK to a personal pension provider or as a commuted lump sum or anything like that. 

The broader point was that, in order for state pensions to be paid at all, you need a high level of tax income. With an aging population, the burden on tax payers would be increased in nations that have state pension provision, unless they have a sovereign wealth fund like Norway.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 1, 2021)

Can I add "talking about pensions" to adulting, please?


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## Montero (Aug 1, 2021)

Regarding delayed gratification, children can display that. There is a book I read on Emotional Intelligence (EQ rather than IQ) and they found that the children who were capable of delaying gratification tended to have a better life path - and that how well your life went was more dependent on EQ than IQ. Very interesting on all the experiments.
I think it was the one by Daniel Goleman, but I'm not quite sure. It was all about the behavioural experiments carried out.


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## Ursa major (Aug 1, 2021)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> Just to clarify I'm not knocking welfare


I'm not saying you are knocking welfare (I'm not sure where you got that idea); I'm saying that you are identifying something as welfare for which individuals have already paid when it is not... and that governments may -- or may not (as the mood takes them) -- call pre-paid pensions "welfare", to falsely make themselves look munificent**, is neither here not there.

When I have paid for something, particularly long in advance, I am not getting it out of kindness, or a sense of obligation, but because I have already bought it.



** - It's bad enough when they do this in relation to other expenditure -- they're not giving out their _own_ money -- but when they are giving people their own money back, they really should be ashamed of themselves.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 1, 2021)

Ursa major said:


> I'm not saying you are knocking welfare (I'm not sure where you got that idea); I'm saying that you are identifying something as welfare for which individuals have already paid when it is not... and that governments may -- or may not (as the mood takes them) -- call pre-paid pensions "welfare", to falsely make themselves look munificent**, is neither here not there.



Apologies - I thought maybe you thought I was trying to bring up the contentious topic of welfare itself. Misunderstood you.

I don't think it's really about the government looking munificent, so much as state pensions operate exactly like welfare so much as to be welfare, albeit welfare that you pay for access to.



> When I have paid for something, particularly long in advance, I am not getting it out of kindness, or a sense of obligation, but because I have already bought it.



At any time the government can (and has) changed the terms of state pension, regardless of what terms you were paying for access in all the years prior to the change - this however cannot be done with a personal or employer's pension without first weighing up whether there are likely to be any material losses to members (such as the tax free lump sum change to 25% of fund post 01/04.2006, or equalisation in the nineties).

On the positive side (for pensioners), being as pensioners are more likely to vote, this can lead to generous rates of increase far above the usual max of 5% for private pensions. I think the figure of 8% was mooted for next increase.



> ** - It's bad enough when they do this in relation to other expenditure -- they're not giving out their _own_ money -- but when they are giving people their own money back, they really should be ashamed of themselves.



Agreed.


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## Astro Pen (Aug 1, 2021)

Just to mention that shortly after my OP I did write to the mods, realising that there was a _potential_ for the topic to subvert into the political arena and to lock or remove it as appropriate with my full approval should that happen


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## W Collier (Aug 1, 2021)

In service to the original topic:  Whether or not physically mature specimens demonstrate the qualities of adulthood, and whether or not some precious juveniles display such characteristics ahead of schedule, adulthood is what it is.  Understanding adulthood, grasping its definition, answers the whole OP question.  Escapism is infantilizing and does represent an abdication of responsibility to the extent that for the consumer it encourages or is a means of turning away from those critical adult qualities of being.  That's all.

It may be that the real problem is how few adults demonstrate adulthood to begin with, before and irrespective of the influence of media.  With so few adults in the room already, maybe it is incumbent upon artists not just to be wary of infantilizing the audience but to actively encourage and foster adulthood whenever possible, lest we end up with no adults at all.  But then, the qualities of adulthood are least prevalent among artists, so that's a vain hope.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 1, 2021)

W Collier said:


> Escapism is infantilizing and does represent an abdication of responsibility to the extent that for the consumer it encourages or is a means of turning away from those critical adult qualities of being.  That's all.



I don't agree escapism is always infantilizing. Any diversion can be escapism. There's nothing wrong with escaping, so long as you adequately fulfil your responsibilities.


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## Toby Frost (Aug 5, 2021)

I agree. I also wonder what "escapism" is: is an Agatha Christie story, which is purportedly set in the real world, less escapist than Alien, which clearly isn't? And does it matter? 1984 is set in the future, about imaginary people and full of made-up words, and is hardly a wild flight of fancy.



W Collier said:


> the qualities of adulthood are least prevalent among artists



Sorry, I've completely lost you here.


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## HareBrain (Aug 5, 2021)

W Collier said:


> Whether or not physically mature specimens demonstrate the qualities of adulthood, and whether or not some precious juveniles display such characteristics ahead of schedule, adulthood is what it is.


Beyond physical or legal maturity, there is no watertight definition of adulthood. As a society and culture, we might generally agree that someone who blows an inheritance on action figures and then complains when he can't afford to eat is not displaying adult behaviour, but as we get away from ludicrous extremes, things become much more contestable. If your definition of adult behaviour includes "does not indulge in escapism" then lo and behold, people who indulge in escapism cannot be defined as adults.


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## AllanR (Aug 5, 2021)

Funny how blowing money on on thing and not another would mark one as infantile. If it was stocks, or cocaine or.... a different social judgment would occur.


HareBrain said:


> blows an inheritance on action figures and then complains when he can't afford to eat is not displaying adult behaviour,


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## Danny McG (Aug 5, 2021)

Toby Frost said:


> I'm British, and I'm shocked by the number of older people who were brought up on a constant diet of _Where Eagles Dare*_ and _Commando_ comics, and who actually seem to wish that they'd got to have a go at the Jerries just like we did in the good old days


Yeah, now you're talking, let's all get stuck into Fritz!


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## Ursa major (Aug 5, 2021)

Danny McG said:


> Let's all get stuck into Fritz


Starting with _Metropolis_!


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## tinkerdan (Aug 6, 2021)

I'm all for escapism in reading; read my share. Enjoy those quotes @Ambrose @AllanR @Teresa Edgerton; however I would caution that as with many other things there is an element in some escapism that borders on objectification of individuals.  Like any other type of propaganda when you tell an untruth or half truth long enough it can become adopted as the truth by many and some of that objectification can fall in that area and the reader needs to be aware of the possibility that they might accidentally begin to propagate the same by innocent active participation. 

There is quite a gap between reading the subject matter and actually acting it out in public. I think that's where the creepy part can set in.


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## wearywanderer64 (Aug 6, 2021)

The night shift where I worked read all the Harry Potter books. They loved them. And they were smart people - practically every one had a degree. I once found Gulliver's Travels in the children's section of the library. It has more depth than you can imagine, assuming you know the history of the time it was written. And by the way. A lot of what's termed literature is considered really boring. Are you reading for the story or the floral language? Is so-and-so humorous or does the humour only succeed because other (rich/middle class) people can identify with the situation? (I find stcoms the same.) 

Good literature, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.


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## JunkMonkey (Aug 6, 2021)

wearywanderer64 said:


> I once found Gulliver's Travels in the children's section of the library.



The original as written by Dean Swift, or a bowdlerised retelling?


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## wearywanderer64 (Aug 6, 2021)

JunkMonkey said:


> The original as written by Dean Swift, or a bowdlerised retelling?


I think it was original( ish) as in it was not written in olde English.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 6, 2021)

wearywanderer64 said:


> The night shift where I worked read all the Harry Potter books. They loved them. And they were smart people - practically every one had a degree. I once found Gulliver's Travels in the children's section of the library. It has more depth than you can imagine, assuming you know the history of the time it was written. And by the way. A lot of what's termed literature is considered really boring. Are you reading for the story or the floral language? Is so-and-so humorous or does the humour only succeed because other (rich/middle class) people can identify with the situation? (I find stcoms the same.)
> 
> Good literature, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.



I don't read literature just because I can identify with the situation. Quite the reverse, I read a lot of horror or sci-fi or fantasy or whatever because it gives me new perspectives or ideas or just because it takes me, safely, into a new realm of experience.

There seems to be a trend amongst the under 30's, to want to see yourself in the media you consume - and that if you're not there on the screen or the page it's minimising your existence, in some way. I don't fully understand that.


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## Robert Zwilling (Aug 6, 2021)

Reading can be done by anyone at any age and any state of development. I'm sure there eventually will be youtube videos of babies who can't walk or talk, reading books. There is a non existent line between daydreaming and realizing how to solve a problem. It is what you do that determines if you are an adult or not. Probably the most important hallmark of being an adult is aiding and abetting the proliferation of life and acting in a manner that allows the continued development of future generations of life in a healthy and constructive manner. Life is more than just people raising people.


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## AnyaKimlin (Aug 6, 2021)

Aren't all good stories escapism?  I'm not sure they have an age on them,

There's a massive difference between being blown away with a story intended for another age group and encouraging misogyny and paedophilia which seems to be where the article is heading.


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## Ray Zdybrow (Aug 6, 2021)

Astro Pen said:


> Oh it's harmless escapism. Or is it?
> 
> My first inkling of this question was way back in the 90s when I was commuting by train into London and noticed a surprising number of _adults_ reading Harry Potter. The Le Carres, Barbara Taylor Bradfords, and John Updikes seemed to me to have disappeared.
> 
> ...


Good article. A number of years ago I saw a four-ish year old girl holding her daddy's (?) hand and wearing a t-shirt with the legend "Future Porn Star". What could I do? Report it to the police, or Social Services? Why can you buy such a t-shirt in a child's size?


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## Ray Zdybrow (Aug 7, 2021)

JunkMonkey said:


> There's nothing wrong with escapist lit and I'm as guilty as hell of reading far too many comics (and even Harry Potter)* but I think there is a general societal change to towards infantilism.  My own personal hate in this respect is having inanimate objects address me albeit only in writing but I've read enough Philip K Dick to know what comes next.  Product wrappers are always telling me, "Pop me in the fridge! I'll last longer", or "Open me this end!", or "I'm delicious with..."  I'm turning into one of those mad bastards that used to frighten me as a kid angrily muttering to themselves in shops.  "You're not fecking telling me what to do - you're a bag of tomatoes. You don't get a first person pronoun.  You're an IT!  I know you'll last longer in the fridge I'm not a fecking total moron."
> 
> 
> *In my defence I will say that most of them _are_ in French as I'm trying to teach myself the language. (The fact that I only want to learn French so I can read their comic books is a wee bit of a self-defeating circular argument but I'm getting old; I haven't got time to rationalise such selfishness.)


Bags from shops that say "I'm not a plastic bag!" Or the absolute f ing pits, Holland and Barrett bags that "I might just jump for joy, I just bought some old crap from Holland and Barrett!"
"Don't throw me away! Recycle me!" Etc etc


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## Ray Zdybrow (Aug 7, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> I think a lot of it has to do with peer pressure and expectation, and quite often that is driven by consumerism and advertising. Adults may read kid's books, but then who's going to buy all the adult books? But I think that there's a realisation (or perhaps to some extent) desperation to get anyone to buy any kind of book, considering how much competition there is from other forms of media. And I wonder how many adults bought a Harry Potter or similar easy-to-read book, who otherwise would not have bought a book at all?


I "read" the Potter saga (mostly as audiobooks at work, as I do a very simple manual job) a couple of years ago. My reason for doing that was the massive influence I could see that it has on people younger than me, including the next generations in my family. Really, although it does have escapist elements of course, it's a tale about morality, and of how right and wrong aren't simple issues, and real people can be both "good" and "evil". It's a much better and more sophisticated series than, for instance, CS Lewis's Narnia books, which patronisingly insisted on drumming conservative Christian values into the heads of readers. 
Ps all the quidditch stuff was boring, and the very end was incomprehensible, but hey... don't knock Potter


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## Ray Zdybrow (Aug 7, 2021)

Mon0Zer0 said:


> I don't read literature just because I can identify with the situation. Quite the reverse, I read a lot of horror or sci-fi or fantasy or whatever because it gives me new perspectives or ideas or just because it takes me, safely, into a new realm of experience.
> 
> There seems to be a trend amongst the under 30's, to want to see yourself in the media you consume - and that if you're not there on the screen or the page it's minimising your existence, in some way. I don't fully understand that.


I agree with you to an extent, but if you NEVER see someone like you in the books that you read, and there's NEVER any representation of your point of view, you just might get a bit fed up... or start writing it yourself!


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 7, 2021)

AllanR said:


> In the '40s hard sci fi was considered infantile.


How could anyone tell what was hard sci fi from the covers of 1940s magazines?


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## JunkMonkey (Aug 7, 2021)

psikeyhackr said:


> How could anyone tell what was hard sci fi from the covers of 1940s magazines?



Was there any other kind of SF in the 40s?


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## psikeyhackr (Aug 7, 2021)

JunkMonkey said:


> Was there any other kind of SF in the 40s?


Of course, some people call Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories science fiction. 
Read some of the stuff in Project Gutenberg from the 1940s.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 8, 2021)

Watching Werner Herzog on Laurence Krauss' podcast and he talks about the dumbing down of culture. Ignore the somewhat clickbaity title:






"The time of great [film] reviewers [is gone]. But this culture has disappeared and has been replaced... by celebrity news. And it has shifted to the internet. And I remember the good old days... the 1970's... on prime time television you had Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer discussing and debating over the shape of the modern American novel. Prime Time!" - Herzog, 29:00 minutes into video.

Coincidentally, I watched this exact programme by chance a few weeks ago, and, well... let's just say the actual debate between Mailer and Vidal is more of a childish slanging match; less about the shape of the modern American novel and more about personal emnities. It's Jerry Springer for New Yorker readers.






Some of the verbal jabs are quite amusing. I would take this over Jerry or Oprah anyday.


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## Mon0Zer0 (Aug 8, 2021)

Ray Zdybrow said:


> I agree with you to an extent, but if you NEVER see someone like you in the books that you read, and there's NEVER any representation of your point of view, you just might get a bit fed up... or start writing it yourself!



Writing it yourself is a good thing! More perspectives in literature is also a good thing. Fully support.

It's good if literature articulates something you feel you can relate to, but relating only to yourself smacks of narcissism. As a reader though, I'd prefer it if it wasn't me in a space suit blasting space vampires because I know what I look like first thing in the morning.

Reading is about vicarious experience, we're holidaying in other people's heads and broadening horizons.


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## Toby Frost (Aug 8, 2021)

I've got quite used to people who look and sound like me in Hollywood films - usually playing idiots, cowards and villains!

It's an odd one, because outside the extremely broad lines of being male and having Western-sounding names, I never saw much of myself in the heroes of novels when I was growing up, and didn't expect so. Characters were usually square-jawed action man types or techy scientists. The characters I did tend to sympathise with were usually eccentric batchelor-types, some of whom were what I've heard people call "coded gay". 

Back on topic, I find it difficult to know how much things like science documentaries have been dumbed-down. Back in the old days, it was considered perfectly acceptable to have one academic effectively give a lecture aimed at other academics, like the AJP Taylor talks. Now, the technology is better, so presentation is more slick, and it's accepted that the audience won't be another expert but just an interested and intelligent layman. I suppose it varies as to how intelligent that person is taken to be.

Actually, anyone wanting to hear intelligent discussion could do worse than to check out Radio 4's "In Our Time" and "A History of the World in 100 Objects", both of which are pretty good.


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## JunkMonkey (Aug 8, 2021)

Toby Frost said:


> Back on topic, I find it difficult to know how much things like science documentaries have been dumbed-down. Back in the old days, it was considered perfectly acceptable to have one academic effectively give a lecture aimed at other academics, like the AJP Taylor talks. Now, the technology is better, so presentation is more slick, and it's accepted that the audience won't be another expert but just an interested and intelligent layman. I suppose it varies as to how intelligent that person is taken to be.



Not sure AJP was giving a lecture to other academics.  I'm sure he knew he was talking to an (interested) lay audience.  Straight to camera, letting his words tell the story, letting his arguments shape the narrative.  It was simple, straightforward and to the point. 

These days our interested and intelligent layman has to be shown 'standing on the actual spot' where XY or Z happened - followed by three of four beauty shots of our interested and intelligent  layman looking at the very spot, maybe touching the very spot reverentially before while his or her voice over tells us that, important as this very spot was, somewhere else something interesting was going on that would have an important impact on XY or Z.  Cut to our interested and intelligent layman standing outside an unimpressive building somewhere else (possibly on the other side of the world) "it was within these walls that..."   And so on.  The audience spends more time looking at the scenery - or looking at the interested and intelligent layman looking at the scenery (there will always be one shot of the IILL doing the Luke Skywalker Star Wars Sunset Shot) than absorbing - or even hearing - anything interesting. 

A while back I watched a BBC thing about Tesla,  during the course of which a whole film crew went to New York to film The Actual Spot where Tesla lived his final days. The uninteresting building he lived in was now a hotel.   The Actual Room that Nicolas Tesla spent his declining years in was a hotel bedroom.  It looked like any other hotel bedroom I've ever seen. We got to see the uninteresting hotel bedroom from several angles. God knows how much licence payers money was spent obtaining this riveting footage. Tesla, we were told, liked to talk to pigeons and vice versa.  So, just in case the audience didn't know what pigeons looked like - or maybe to reassure the audience that New York pigeons looked exactly the same as 'normal' pigeons and they didn't talk - we got  a montage of pigeons. New York pigeons.  Possibly the very pigeons that were descended from the very pigeons that Tesla may have talked to.  Maybe they interviewed one of the pigeons later in the program or got a World Renowned expert on Pigeons (Establish experts expertise by having expert take big book from shelf shot here) tell us that New york pigeons have very little to say about Tesla. I have no idea if they did because I switched the thing off before I kicked the screen in.

Just go trawl the Archives of the Royal Institute Christmas Lectures and compare things like Sagan's tour of the Solar System








						The planets – The history of Mars (1977)
					

Carl Sagan explores how humans have studied the red planet.




					www.rigb.org
				



with the Clown Show, Special Guest gimmick-driven drivel they serve up these days.
Secrets and lies | The Royal Institution: Science Lives Here  My kids don't even watch them any more.


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