I recently heard a pastor preaching to the several hundred members of his congregation and telling them that, according to recent scientific studies, âalmost one hundred percentâ of human beings will die one day. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to ask him what that âalmostâ means.
After all, if this good man has access to a scientific study that shows that human mortality is less than one hundred percent, it would be good for him to share that study with us to see if the âalmostâ means 0,01 percent, or 1 percent, or whatever that (fictitious) number may be.Â
And then, by chance, I heard a conversation of someone talking about a bear that was shot, skinned, dismembered, and its head cut off. And the other person then asked: But sis the bear die? It was not my conversation, so it was not for me to say anything, although I kept thinking how and why someone could even ask that question.
The reason why someone needs explanations to determine if a bear shot, skinned, dismembered and beheaded died is the same reason why someone claims that human mortality is "almost" one hundred percent: infantilism. But this statement needs to be explained.
In his classic and controversial 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom already said that education in the United States had âimpoverished the soul of studentsâ. And then, in 2000, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Christian Smith, and other researchers began talking about emerging adulthood, that is, the long time it takes now for young people to mature.
But according to recent studies, it is no longer a closed mind (as Bloom anticipated) or that adolescence now lasts for almost 20 years (as Arnett explained), but that adults remain and act as children.
In 2014, the Lumen Research Center in Social and Humanistic Sciences (in Romania) published an article by Dr. Jacopo Bernardini, entitled The Infantilization of the Postmodern Adult (that is, to be clear, ourselves). According to Bernardini, the contemporary adult lives in a state of perpetual âconscious immaturityâ that allows him/her to âescape his responsibilities.â
As Bernardini says, the âkidultâ âdresses without formality, has sex without reproducing, works without discipline, plays without spontaneity, buys without a purpose, and lives without responsibility, wisdom or humility.âÂ
That is possible, says Bernardini, because we live in a society in which âchildish attitudes and the model of adolescent life are promoted in the media and tolerated by institutions.â In other words, being young âhas nothing to do with age, but is a lifestyle attitudeâ, meaning âyouth is no longer a transitory stage.â
In brief, infantilization is âa collective regressionâ of postmodern society that gives priority to âspeed and possibilitiesâ and to the âeffective model of youthâ, with the consequent âpsychological rejection of adult conditionâ.
Thus, our future is now in the hands of closed, childish, and narcissistic minds. I would like to write much more on this subject, but it is time for me to watch my favorite cartoons.
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