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[00:00:00] The Why Curve, With Phil Dobbie and Roger Herring.
[00:00:30] This behaviour is all that damaging society and shielding us from being confident, decision-making
[00:00:36] individuals who see the world as it really is.
[00:00:39] So infantilised, does that mean killing small children?
[00:00:46] No, no, no.
[00:00:47] After birth abortions, the Donald Trump has been part of that.
[00:00:51] But no, completely different things.
[00:00:53] We're talking about people who are all of us in some ways being reduced to being less
[00:00:58] than the adults that we should be.
[00:01:00] And do you think those, the cakes?
[00:01:01] And to be as worse now, they ever once?
[00:01:04] Well, this is the risk isn't you end up sounding like a bunch of old people say.
[00:01:07] Yes, not in the olden days.
[00:01:08] You're fatarable.
[00:01:09] Yeah.
[00:01:10] But no, I do think there is an element.
[00:01:11] I mean, a protection of gossiping of, of protecting people from hurting themselves or even
[00:01:18] perhaps thinking outside their normal area of thought.
[00:01:21] So when I was about 14, I used to get there was a chain ticket by in the Northwest of England
[00:01:27] called the Northwest River or something.
[00:01:29] And if you go anywhere on the train was a pub, that was about.
[00:01:32] And that would be a bit, we went in a 16 obviously.
[00:01:35] I wouldn't show the pubs.
[00:01:36] And there's the thing is that we used to drink in the pub so much.
[00:01:39] Yeah.
[00:01:39] And these days, because we're protected for ourselves.
[00:01:42] But you know, you used to go off for a week on the trains with my brothers,
[00:01:46] only two years older than me.
[00:01:47] So I'd be 14, he'd be 16.
[00:01:49] And our parents thought nothing.
[00:01:50] Oh, we had nowhere of getting in touch with them.
[00:01:53] No, no, no, no.
[00:01:53] Now that would be seen as being irresponsible.
[00:01:56] Oh, we're taking child abuse.
[00:01:56] Yeah, almost.
[00:01:58] Yeah.
[00:01:58] And there is a strong element of that.
[00:02:00] We are as a society more, much more risk of the rest.
[00:02:04] That's really what it comes down to.
[00:02:05] But then the consequences that is things are simplified.
[00:02:08] And I think a lot of the politics isn't incredibly simplified.
[00:02:12] It's, it's in cartoon terms.
[00:02:14] And there's no nuance on this sort of thing.
[00:02:16] And I think that's maybe because we all strive for that sound bike.
[00:02:21] Don't we?
[00:02:22] You know, it's like what can something that can be said to somebody else?
[00:02:25] Oh, did you see what?
[00:02:27] Such and such.
[00:02:28] Did you see what we really soon actually?
[00:02:29] Today for example, three words and then we're done.
[00:02:32] That's it.
[00:02:33] Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:34] No, I think that we are damaging ourselves on that basis.
[00:02:37] But there's also people who are very, very worried about, defending, very worried
[00:02:41] about giving anything anything, my disturbing situation.
[00:02:45] And yet, disturbance and conflict and challenge are part of adult life.
[00:02:49] Life is a good way to be a population on anything.
[00:02:52] You can't tread softly around the outside of things.
[00:02:55] You have to get in there, find out what the real problem is and discuss it.
[00:02:58] And discuss it.
[00:02:59] And what we do on this podcast.
[00:03:00] Exactly.
[00:03:01] And what we're going to do now?
[00:03:02] We're going to offend people because yes, we're not going to offend.
[00:03:04] But we're going to talk to Keith Hayward who is the professor of criminology at
[00:03:08] Copen University.
[00:03:09] We're going to talk to Keith Hayward who's professor of criminology at Copen Haygan University.
[00:03:13] But he's also author of the book, infantilized how our culture killed adulthood.
[00:03:18] And he joins us now.
[00:03:19] So Keith, let me first of all, let me be brutally honest with you.
[00:03:23] I haven't read the book.
[00:03:24] But I want to read the book.
[00:03:26] And but I've read the press release.
[00:03:28] That's as far as I've got.
[00:03:29] But I am fascinated by this idea.
[00:03:34] So to start with, just set the scene for us to explain what the books are about.
[00:03:38] Yeah, I mean, essentially what is infantilization? What do you mean by it?
[00:03:41] Because it does sound like killing small children to me.
[00:03:44] It sounds like a kid.
[00:03:45] You can decide, hold on.
[00:03:46] I know.
[00:03:47] That's a completely different book.
[00:03:48] This clear that up straight away, I think, is probably a good thing.
[00:03:50] Yeah, what we found in, you know, the infantil in infantile individual is essentially a regressive one.
[00:03:57] And there's quite a tradition really in clinical studies, the psychiatric research about the sort of infantile individual being somebody that's trapped if you like and doesn't mature through the live course.
[00:04:10] And then the verb to infantilize is essentially to treat someone in a way that denies their level of maturity or experience or their age.
[00:04:20] Now, my particular take on this moves away from those kind of psychiatric or clinical ideas to talk really about infantilism as a cultural phenomenon.
[00:04:32] So I'm talking about a cultural infantilism or what I term culturally induced infantilization, which is the idea that there's something large in our society across all spheres of it,
[00:04:43] and they're acting to keep us as regressive individuals that don't cross over the threshold into mature adulthood.
[00:04:51] So dumbing down almost like the dumbing down of society.
[00:04:54] Well, there's certainly an enormous of it that are dumbing down.
[00:04:56] I think one of the things that you see in commentary and across social media is that people are very concerned about things like dumbing down, other related things.
[00:05:07] But what I would say is that many of these concerns are actually can actually be understood through the lens of infantilism.
[00:05:15] And I think that's really what my book was about, it's try to sort of go over knives, a lot of the concerns that people had about things like politics or cultural developments or whatever it might be.
[00:05:26] And to say, well, actually look, there's something that you can use here that might display not if not all some of those developments they're taking.
[00:05:33] Well, give us some concrete examples here.
[00:05:36] I mean, you've talked about, for example, in the culture and perhaps politics. What are you actually talking about?
[00:05:42] Well, I mean, I would say that it's pretty pervasive.
[00:05:47] I think I say in the book there's something that's got sort of everywhere and nowhere.
[00:05:51] So you might notice, if you see, so unnecessary health and safety signage telling you how to use a handrail, walk up a fly of stairs.
[00:05:59] You might see it if you go to a museum and see a company in literature by images or statues saying, this might you might find this upsetting or disturbing.
[00:06:10] I mean, I don't know if it into a museum where felt that on our gallery, I felt that particularly.
[00:06:16] I first noticed it actually, which triggered my interest in the subject in advertising.
[00:06:21] If you look at television advertising now, compared to something say 25 years ago, start contrast.
[00:06:28] I mean, you've now got the spectacle of banks and pension companies using huge sea advertising, jingles and cartoon characters to speak to you.
[00:06:50] I think that's a lot of the time using a lot of cartoons and things like this tapping into nostalgic childhood memories.
[00:06:56] So that's what they're, I think, probably first, but I work in a university, it have done for several decades and couldn't fail to be struck by.
[00:07:06] And so we're happening simultaneously, I suppose. One was students, I was encountering that were shall we say less adult than I was used to.
[00:07:17] More in need of of of care, I suppose, and slightly more anxious in many ways than previous generations.
[00:07:26] And also in the university sector itself, which sort of I suppose if you like has got involved in socialization in reverse, which is the idea that instead of being a confident adult generation, educating the next generation.
[00:07:42] They have sort of listened to and reverse the educational dynamics. So it says they give students what they want.
[00:07:50] So that's something I noticed in my university, my place of work.
[00:07:54] Are you sure you just not gain old teeth and what is that?
[00:07:57] Or even get in the world.
[00:07:58] But it's, you know, these young people are just, they're just not shown the respect that I, you know, that I did a professor would require yes, there is.
[00:08:05] Yeah, well, I mean, there's certainly, that's undeniable.
[00:08:10] But let's take a look at something that we could sort of use as a baseline for some of these points that I'm making.
[00:08:17] And let's take a look at, you may think you mentioned earlier examples in politics. Well, there's a chapter in the book about what I call cancemine politics.
[00:08:26] And I don't know if you saw yesterday the spectacle of Ed Davy, the liberal Democrats.
[00:08:31] Yeah, from me enough, we were mentioning that just before we came on it.
[00:08:34] People are so recording.
[00:08:35] Well, I'm surprised.
[00:08:36] Yeah, I mean, he's gone through the right, isn't he?
[00:08:38] I know.
[00:08:38] Yeah, and his singing was awful.
[00:08:40] But yeah, well, you know, I mean, we can't blame somebody for that.
[00:08:43] But I'm more concerned about it will be sort of general antics.
[00:08:46] It's a sort of David Brentization of politics.
[00:08:49] I mean, but it's strangely it's working for him in that, you know, he got more and more seats than they ever have done.
[00:08:54] So is this what that said? That they're in wisely.
[00:08:57] Yeah, because I was going to say a dilemma.
[00:08:58] I mean, what you're talking about, for example, with a commercial with companies the way they talk to people, this kind of thing.
[00:09:03] Is it meeting a demand that's there anyway or is it creating?
[00:09:07] And advertising jingles have been around for a long time.
[00:09:11] I mean, you know, because I was thinking just how infantile,
[00:09:14] admittedly, you know, they were ads aimed at children, but like the honey months to, for example, for, for children.
[00:09:19] But what's the trend for children?
[00:09:20] Yeah, that's true.
[00:09:22] But, you know, we've always had advertising jingles.
[00:09:23] I think you're right.
[00:09:24] I mean, certainly, you know, it's not as wrong to look at advertising a sort of high art.
[00:09:29] But I would say that actually in the realm of advertising marketing strategies, there has been a sort of deliberate attempt here to
[00:09:39] infantilize us in the sense that it's quite good for the companies to have an extended marketplace with demographic for products.
[00:09:47] So being advertising circles, you know, they are there.
[00:09:50] They have a archetype, essentially, they're very different to what they might have been say 30, 30 years ago.
[00:09:55] So there's advertising archetypes like the MOOC and the Midriff, which are, you know, explicitly designed to extend adolescent centenagidum into the Doltid.
[00:10:06] Now, you may remember if you're old enough that the Budweiser campaign, the Wasat, wasat campaign after getting exactly what it was.
[00:10:15] And you sort of see it in the same way.
[00:10:16] Yeah, that's a nice amount.
[00:10:18] Manboys, basically, shouting out, was up in the Souscretion through the phone and so forth.
[00:10:24] And that was a sort of early marker really where, which has never come quite consistent themes.
[00:10:30] Have you looked at advertising on television?
[00:10:33] And elsewhere, you will see many adult archetypes.
[00:10:35] If you do, there'll be the figure of fun, the Budweiser joke.
[00:10:39] You'll have young kids touching at them because of their lack of knowledge or insight.
[00:10:43] So I think that has been a deliberate attempt here by advertisers and marketers to sort of undermine and chip away at adult status.
[00:10:52] It replaced it with something that's much more youthful. Why? Well, then you're commentary on this.
[00:10:57] In fact, Benjamin Barber was written a very significant book about what he calls the infantilized ethos, as opposed to the Protestant ethos in advertising.
[00:11:09] Where he talks about it's being a very deliberate and structured campaign.
[00:11:13] So I think you can look at this two ways, which is sort of okay.
[00:11:16] It's all the bit of fun. Why should we worry about it? And maybe you're right.
[00:11:19] I mean, that's, but I guess what you're saying.
[00:11:22] But you could take a more critical view of what's going on and say, you know,
[00:11:28] an infantilized society is extremely good for business because you can sell stuff to people.
[00:11:34] That perhaps you wouldn't have been selling, you wouldn't have sold to adults in previous generations.
[00:11:37] So you ask, and selling politics is maybe the same thing.
[00:11:42] It seems to me, we've talked about populism on this program before in politics.
[00:11:46] Is that in the same vein that, you know, if you have a really simple, easy childlike message,
[00:11:52] you'll actually be more effective, perhaps, in getting votes than something,
[00:11:55] say, well, actually the Holy Shoes are much more nuanced because in advertising it is all of an
[00:12:00] I worked in the add-ins to for a while. It is all about just one message.
[00:12:03] Don't confuse people by having sub-messages or a secondary message.
[00:12:09] It's one message and just rammed home to politics on the same way.
[00:12:13] Well, I mean, I think that in itself is a problem, right?
[00:12:16] I mean, if you're certain, yeah, if it is a lipstick or whatever it is,
[00:12:21] you do want to round home a very uncomplicated message and gain brand association.
[00:12:26] But I would think that political spheres are slightly complicated for no one under that.
[00:12:32] I would want my politicians to actually treat me and other voters with that basic premise
[00:12:37] that what we're dealing with here is suddenly very sophisticated.
[00:12:41] Something that's not going to be fixed overnight, that the sound by itself is a problem
[00:12:46] because it does suggest to voters that, oh, yeah, if you just vote along these kind of
[00:12:52] advertising like straplines, we'll get things done. Well, of course, the evidence is it, isn't it?
[00:12:57] We're not getting things done. Politics in the terribly debased state.
[00:13:02] The political class that we have, I mean, you might say, well, people might say, well, they're just
[00:13:09] using the medium of the day, tick-tock or social media to get across these
[00:13:15] but now soundbites. Well, I would say, I do you might say it's just again because I'm an old
[00:13:19] critical thinker is that what you get when you have this sort of reduced discourse
[00:13:25] is something very coarse, crafts. And something that might be my play I've been on tick-tock
[00:13:31] but it's not going to solve the social, the complex social problems that we have.
[00:13:35] Well, I think for those things, we do need politicians to sort of be a bit more adult.
[00:13:39] I mean, you hear this word down to you, these words, the adult in the room or
[00:13:44] grown up politics and it's funny, I find it for ironic that those kind of, you know,
[00:13:47] there's, there's terms adult politics grown ups in the room.
[00:13:52] I used a lot but actually they're used by people that don't do anything of the sort.
[00:13:57] I mean, these are the dancing falls on I'm a celebrity, get me out here or
[00:14:03] Nick Hank, that was his name, Matt Hank or Con, I'm a celebrity or, you know,
[00:14:08] people lining to let me make a counter to you.
[00:14:11] Yeah, I can counter point to this case because we should have started you very much
[00:14:14] on the attack and we're not really disagreeing with you.
[00:14:16] But let me make the counter point that actually, maybe this is including people,
[00:14:21] and including people's feelings in a way that didn't use to happen.
[00:14:25] That actually where it's a good thing because we can bring more people in people,
[00:14:29] you know, may not see subtlety in things, can be included in the political discourse,
[00:14:36] can be included in culture, can be included in politics.
[00:14:39] And when we're sensitive about feelings and trigger warnings and all this stuff,
[00:14:43] a lot of people argue, maybe in the university context too where you're teaching texts that
[00:14:47] might be alarming.
[00:14:48] But actually taking on board people's sensitivities isn't actually, yeah,
[00:14:52] it may actually be an adult thing to do.
[00:14:54] Yeah, it's interesting point because whenever I say something in the family which is quite black and white,
[00:14:59] and it's my 17 year old son who will say he'd be the one who's saying,
[00:15:03] well, you know, not if you want to sit like that,
[00:15:05] and I'm thinking, well, I couldn't see this more mature than I am.
[00:15:08] And he's 17, you know, so this, it does work both ways, doesn't it?
[00:15:11] Well, you might well be. I'm not trying to suggest that all young people are pretty to these things.
[00:15:17] I mean, I teach students every day and I'm always impressed by their positions,
[00:15:22] critical ideas and so forth. So it's not sort of, they're not trying to be,
[00:15:26] you know, I'm not trying to play a general, generational game here or set of war generations.
[00:15:30] So I think that's one of the consequences.
[00:15:32] I mean, fantillism, but if you allow me to pick up on your counter argument,
[00:15:36] I mean, if you just take a look at the last election, I mean,
[00:15:40] voter turnout was disastrous.
[00:15:43] Starmagar got 20% of the vote or something around that.
[00:15:46] Blast majority of people didn't vote largely, I think,
[00:15:50] I suspect because they didn't have any faith in any of the political parties really,
[00:15:53] because they're, they're pretty proven to be sort of anti-added or infanticrats in many ways.
[00:16:01] And then the other thing is, you know, you've talked about the emotionality of things
[00:16:04] and you suffrages you used inclusion of people's opinions.
[00:16:07] Well, we've got that in spades haven't we because we've got it on social media.
[00:16:11] And if you turn on, which I don't advise anybody to do,
[00:16:14] if you turn on comments, streams at the end of articles or you go on to Twitter,
[00:16:19] political discourse, you'll see plenty of inclusion, but it isn't often very,
[00:16:24] often it can be, but often it's very sort of,
[00:16:27] kind of put this emotion laden.
[00:16:29] And that brings out some, we're pretty hostile stuff.
[00:16:33] And we know we're all familiar with politicians themselves saying that when they go on to Twitter
[00:16:38] and to exa that they get a good kicking from general public.
[00:16:43] So that might be a form of inclusion that you're asking for, but I don't think it's a danger.
[00:16:47] It's a danger then.
[00:16:48] It always the problem that we don't actually have that place for this public forum anymore,
[00:16:52] because we are all just tied to social media and these all just sound bites.
[00:16:57] It's the very short attention span that that demands plus the fact it's being used for people to
[00:17:03] re-eat or re-enforce other people's ideas rather than looking at things critically.
[00:17:08] We just don't have the space, the place.
[00:17:11] I mean, you know, in the olden days, you olden days when we were all young,
[00:17:16] you know, there were TV debat shows and you might get down to a bit of depth on stuff,
[00:17:21] but that just doesn't exist anymore because everyone's going for the sound grant.
[00:17:24] Well, there may be our political class to do more to encourage that rather than leaning into the opposite,
[00:17:32] which is this or truncated, debased for what politics.
[00:17:37] I mean, I mean, I know you're making a contribution, the counter argument here,
[00:17:41] but I mean, look at the situation in America for more evidence of the infantic rats that we have in the political discourse.
[00:17:50] I mean, it's hardly a very edifying choice.
[00:17:53] Is it? So, for massacists, choice really between you, can you blame the politicians there?
[00:17:59] Because they're just doing what's worth.
[00:18:00] I think so. I think I would bet, but I think I would blame the politicians.
[00:18:03] I mean, obviously you're right in sense that they are being shaped by the medium of their days.
[00:18:07] And there's plenty of research has been conducted over the years about how political discourse is shaped by changing medium from the radio to television and how it's through to social media.
[00:18:17] So there's no doubt about that, the role of those things play.
[00:18:21] But I mean, I still think that actually only cleaving towards the affordances, parameters of those kind of technologies is actually a bit naive.
[00:18:31] I think people can, in my sense, people definitely can take a more mature form of debate.
[00:18:37] And I think politicians that actually speak to them like adults lay out in quite clear and lucid form.
[00:18:42] And not in sort of soundbites stuff. And I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, which he soon act in the last election was blabbering one about his, how you'd add as sandbar collection was Coca-Cola collection.
[00:18:53] I mean, he started out his, his, his, his run to be the Tory leader by with the line.
[00:18:59] Let me tell you a story. I mean, surely soon act can do better than that.
[00:19:04] Can't he, can't he treat us with a little bit more? A little bit more.
[00:19:07] So we're all these adults. They were all the questions that should be in there.
[00:19:10] There is that the good question. I think, you know, one of the stuff I got to the conclusion of my book literally and realized that I was really,
[00:19:17] had written quite a long book and the publishers that you might well know don't really like long books these days.
[00:19:24] So I couldn't get stuck into because people can't cope with great long sentence.
[00:19:27] That's what that's actually what my editor said about not sentences about about longer books. But anyway, be that as a may.
[00:19:35] I think politics is in a, you know, 30, you know, out of state here certainly in the US situation. But so the question is, you know,
[00:19:45] we might think, well, okay, when are the adults going to come along, which is your question? When are we going to get this new political class that are going to set the set the set thing straight,
[00:19:54] you know, reboot politics. But the worrying thing of course and I do sort of touch on this in the book at times.
[00:19:59] The little ones in there coming, I think that they aren't the adults in the room or if they are, they're really low down the pecking water and not being included.
[00:20:08] And so I think things are pretty, pretty grim and I didn't, I didn't until at one end with this too much in the book because it's a very negative kind of assertion.
[00:20:18] But yeah, I'm not optimistic, really. And if you think about optical class now, most of them come out of well, a couple of universities.
[00:20:26] They do three year degrees a year studying each subject is hardly as a wealth of expertise. That's bad enough. But then they pop up,
[00:20:34] instead of spad jobs and advise a jobs and so forth. And next thing, you know, a few years, they're running the country.
[00:20:41] It's that kind of conveyor belt through the political system.
[00:20:45] We need professors like you also.
[00:20:46] No, definitely not any professors at the last people you should be.
[00:20:49] This is being going on.
[00:20:50] I don't have any, I'm very careful not to promote my political views.
[00:20:56] Almost post-politics these days, given the state of it. So I certainly don't want any academics
[00:21:02] putting the levers of power. I think that would be a tremendous, a fake, a fake, especially given the state of many of our programs and universities at the moment.
[00:21:11] So no, goodness me, whatever your weakness is, think, don't think that I'm lobbying for some sort of academic lead society.
[00:21:18] I think I'd be probably even worse.
[00:21:19] There are the two things going on here is that on the one, you talked about the handholding all the stuff. You know, just stating the bleed and obvious like you get a bag of nuts that's got to make contain nuts.
[00:21:31] You know, all that sort of stuff and I think a lot of that is being driven by insurance companies. And the fact everyone is so fearful of doing the wrong thing that, you know, they're going to get sued in some way.
[00:21:41] So we're living in perpetual fear because of the litigation that society seems to have adopted.
[00:21:46] And then the other thing is, yeah, which we've talked about is this whole celebrity culture, which has always been around as I mean we all grew up with it. I mean most of those celebrities they weaker
[00:21:55] with unfortunately now in jail for one reason or another. But there's many more celebrities around now and society seems to become much more celebrity centric for whatever reason.
[00:22:06] I think I wonder whether that's why politicians think well for me to get ahead.
[00:22:09] I've got to be a celebrity. I've got to behave like all these other celebrities to try and get the bandwidth. And part of that I think is the responsibility of the media because we've got young producers now who grow that with this celebrity culture. So that's all they know so it becomes a bit self-perpetuating.
[00:22:24] Yeah, I mean you both admit that you haven't read the book so I mean I read some of it. I have written some of it.
[00:22:30] But in the book there's this quite a lot about what you might call celebrity driven politics and that the tyranny really of celebrities voicing their opinions on on every issue.
[00:22:42] I mean, the actual, this against mis-and-research on this about how influential they are.
[00:22:49] But really what's a stake here is that what you're getting is that politics through those celebrity voices. It's being sort of reduced to sort of a fandom, you know.
[00:22:58] And so you're picking your politics a bit like you pick your football team, your musical singer of choice or whatever it might be.
[00:23:07] And so you're sort of construct a vision of the world, a political vision of the world and other things too through a kind of matrix of celebrity opinion.
[00:23:18] Well, that doesn't think that's the good thing not least because a lot of celebrities are incredibly narcissistic.
[00:23:24] They often get involved in campaigns are not for the reason, but it's because they got, you know, they've got edifying elephant-kind levels of narcissism.
[00:23:33] And they want to promote themselves. In fact, there's a currency that can keep their celebrity brand spinning in the media.
[00:23:39] But I think that will be a kind of reduction, again, a form of debasement, a reduction of politics to sort of a form of fandom and you can see that in all sorts of sorts of ways.
[00:23:50] And I want going to think like Glasterbury, but you know, you see these kind of middle-of-the-row politics that's evoked by certain celebrities and musicians, festivals and things.
[00:24:02] And that's sort of look at that, you know, in sort of sheer horror really.
[00:24:07] But again, I might just be listening to the BAM-8.
[00:24:08] Well, the most, I mean, the Glaster and the other way are in their porties, where the average age of the...
[00:24:12] Well, a festival go is in their forties, I think.
[00:24:15] Well, the infram talk, as you call it, stands in lots of different directors.
[00:24:18] That's suppose. But one of the things that seems to me is this has been going on, I mean, I'm very old and when I was a journalist covering wars for the BBC,
[00:24:29] I remember what we were out filming, you'd film obviously, the half, what was going on.
[00:24:34] And the rules were changing all the time about what we could show.
[00:24:38] And I felt very strongly that at a certain point, you know, maybe with health warnings and rest of it, something ghastly should be visible.
[00:24:45] You know, what's going on in the world should be apparent to people, adults, to make decisions and how they feel about it.
[00:24:52] And that caught that line constantly changed to the point where we had to, you know, we could only show people's feet,
[00:24:58] I remember at one point as a... as a thing.
[00:25:00] And what was interesting is that has changed quite a lot over the last 30, 40 years.
[00:25:05] A sense of people must not be exposed to too much reality almost.
[00:25:10] And it feels to me that that's really what we're talking about. If you present reality to people in all its nuance and complexity, people get, oh, that's too complicated.
[00:25:19] We can't deal with that. So it's always derby.
[00:25:21] Are we glossing over the truth? Is the question...
[00:25:24] Well, I mean, there's a couple of points one could make here. I mean, the problem is if you don't treat people as sophisticated enough to understand complexity,
[00:25:35] you reduce things down to what the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis calls, O.D.R.ism, which is, you know, oh, there's a war going on.
[00:25:44] There it is, what can we do about it? Let's not discuss that. So our response is O.D. or the same with family.
[00:25:49] We know what's going on. We can't really deal with that or the complexities of it.
[00:25:52] We're less with just the response being, O.D. isn't it banned? So that that's a kind of one thing I'd say about that.
[00:26:04] The material that Major Broadcast does do. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, you're not your, I have Fred, Fred is a war correspondent.
[00:26:12] She says exactly the same thing today. But the problem of course is that whilst we're being shielded from visceral material that might take place in a war zone or something,
[00:26:25] conflict, conflict spaces, well we're being shielded and told we can't show that. It's too damaging and it's too trauma inducing was too upsetting, disturbing for a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a people. Well, while that's being done at one level,
[00:26:41] underneath mainstream news. I'm sure you'll be very aware is this is that a lot of this stuff comes through in other sources.
[00:26:48] And so it comes up on Twitter. It comes up on blogs and websites. It's not you can't expunge it from the wall. These things are serious and they, and they have serious consequences.
[00:26:57] So they come through another vector. I will the problem with that of course is if you've suppressed it in the mainstream media or you've not done enough to cover in its, is entirety.
[00:27:08] Other people will do it in other media vectors and then of course you open the door to what I call kind of polarizing distractions in the book of conspiracy theorism alternative political discourse when,
[00:27:20] when it, on these things spread they grow because people feel well I want to know I want to know what's going on. I want to know what the truth is I feel I'm being protected. I'm feeling being told a partial truth.
[00:27:32] And so I'll find it somewhere else. So the course when you go to other sources, you are likely to find these things wrapped up in another kind of discourses, including conspiratorial discourse. Not always could be very good of course, but that's the worry that I feel that, you know,
[00:27:47] when you're told partial truth, you've thought you'd search for truth elsewhere.
[00:27:51] And isn't that again a failing of broadcasts? Is in particular, you know, a public broadcaster that people feel as though that truth is being hidden or stuff is just not being explained or there's not enough discourse.
[00:28:04] So they do go into social media, which is not always truthful. As you're pointing to, is that part of the problem that we, you know, this just such a diversification of media now there's such a diversification of messaging.
[00:28:17] And people do go well, you know, this is all, yeah and so at some point, yeah you will go well I don't know what the truth anymore. I'm just going to stop trying.
[00:28:23] Well, I don't do too much mainstream media bashing in the book, but I mean, and but this is where you're going.
[00:28:29] So even that for the second book.
[00:28:33] I think picking up on your point because this is obviously you guys have got a long association with media, mainstream media.
[00:28:42] I mean, I think the thing is mainstream media has got itself into the bit of a dilemma hasn't it? I mean if you take the BBC, I mean it's constantly it's covering up things that you can't cover up ultimately.
[00:28:54] And so it undermines their position and I think what's happens, not just in the BBC, other mainstream broadcasts too is that they take it to decisions.
[00:29:05] They've made choice editorial choices about things, prioritize some and marginalised or excluded others.
[00:29:13] And when you do that, again it's the same thing. You know, when these things occur and it could be say the cover the large cover up of the grooming gangs up in the in various towns in England or could be the sex scandals or whatever it might be.
[00:29:29] These things only fester than they and what they do when they eventually emerge is they really hack away the foundations of these legacy media institutions.
[00:29:39] And that's a great shame because in an adult society you should have trust in your state's broadcaster.
[00:29:45] I think that was there for a long period of time, but it's not there anymore and that's a great shame. So I think that's what I would say about that again.
[00:29:53] Like this is not, I don't want to sort of lay the blame too much of that mainstream media because I think it's good and bad.
[00:30:00] So what about then the celebrity status of politicians? So when was the last leader that we saw that wasn't sort of chasing celebrity status and actually was
[00:30:11] concerned about policy and depth of thinking? And I wasn't a big fan of the lady, but I wonder whether we have to go back as far as Margaret Thatcher.
[00:30:18] I think John Major who has been around the last few days a bit more.
[00:30:24] Again, I mean you couldn't really describe him as celebrity.
[00:30:27] Yeah, anti celebrity almost. Yeah exactly.
[00:30:29] And he was sort of into, he liked his peas and going to the cricket.
[00:30:33] Yes. He's very humdrum kind of ghost. I think the described sort of great figure wasn't on spitting him.
[00:30:38] But this is a serious, you were great.
[00:30:40] And he spoke a bit like this to this.
[00:30:42] I'm not very interested in what we're doing there. It was very evangelizing.
[00:30:46] He actually wore, I know, great with my rub but he was, I'm a certain, then, say, a serious, a little of the
[00:30:52] degree with his peak, he's an adult politician. Yeah, I probably would agree with that.
[00:30:55] I mean, that's a such a divisive figure that the very mention of her, and we'll have me sort of,
[00:31:04] a burn of, you know, hammer to the stake by, by the violence of the left.
[00:31:10] But I mean, you're right. I mean, she didn't really care too much about her sort of image or branding if you want to use the
[00:31:19] peas, these peas terms. You know, her strength, if you want to call to that, was that, you know,
[00:31:26] clearly articulated policies, not slim-flaming around.
[00:31:30] To now obviously, you know, you have, I'll say, I agree with the policies but I think you're right.
[00:31:35] I think you have to go back to that kind of era.
[00:31:37] I mean, Blair came in and the first thing he did wasn't it was associated himself with all bunch of celebrities,
[00:31:44] the brick pot phenomenon, had them all ran down in straight for parties, trying to cash in on some sort of sort of,
[00:31:52] you know, that basking in the light of celebrity glimmer.
[00:31:56] And so, you know, Blair's definitely opened the door to this, but I think even, I think Blair, even,
[00:32:01] you know, he had a sort of meeting for political agenda.
[00:32:04] Again, whether you agree with or not, you know, you knew what the person was stood for, but if you look at our
[00:32:12] discredits, that's all sort of childlike ship of fools. I mean, it's grim stuff, isn't it?
[00:32:18] It's very thin, gruel when you look at this, this kind of last or two or three prime ministers.
[00:32:24] They can't seem to get anything right.
[00:32:27] We've, starm has been in power for the 75 days or something and he's already sort of,
[00:32:32] he's always rolling back from various crises.
[00:32:34] I mean, this is this is kind of like, you put the bunch of teenagers in charge of things and guess what?
[00:32:38] It's gone pear shape quickly. So, yeah, I mean, there hasn't been a transformation in the kind of thing about agree with him.
[00:32:46] Draw it drawing this sort of together now because I mean, do you see whether we're argument is, I mean,
[00:32:51] would you say that any way back from this?
[00:32:54] Because it is, as you said, right across culture, across Western culture anyway and in politics and everything else.
[00:33:01] Is it unstoppable?
[00:33:02] Are we heading towards what you would call bapson in fan talk, receiver and EDocracy or something of that nature where,
[00:33:08] the level of which decisions are made is going to be completely infantilised, non-adult for the foreseeing.
[00:33:15] I'd say, I mean, I might, this interview, I may have come across as extremely, extremely negative but in actual fact,
[00:33:20] I mean, I'm in education, so my goal is to sort of try to present a positive worldview from my students.
[00:33:27] So, I mean, I generally speaking, I'm, I'm positive about humanity's ability to change and develop.
[00:33:34] So, I'm not sort of walk at tune, not just to give all these things.
[00:33:38] I think can we write the shit? Can we get it back on track if you like possibly?
[00:33:46] It requires us to do a series of things that seem unlike at the moment so sort of reject identity,
[00:33:53] it is politics and, you know, rally around the old-an't-pun palatable thought that we need to be to recognize that we need to share things in common rather than
[00:34:04] be divided up by, by a single race gender, whatever it might be because if we want to make progress, we've got to recognize that progress comes through,
[00:34:13] you know, bring people together around shit, shit, concerns and trying to change shape politics that way.
[00:34:18] So, can we do that? I think we can. Is it going to be easy, probably not? We certainly need to reject the kind of dystopianism and fearfulness that's just pedaled every day on the media,
[00:34:28] whether it's about, you know, there's sort of, you could a whole cast or whatever you might want to call the latest crisis,
[00:34:36] the jour. We need to stop being as fearful as we appear.
[00:34:40] You can see really at the core of it, isn't it? That's why we're talking about that.
[00:34:44] I mean, we all grew up thinking that we're going to turn in nuclear war.
[00:34:48] I mean, the other, you know, far worse in the 80s than it is now this fear that, you know, at some point,
[00:34:54] we're all going to be wiped off the planet.
[00:34:55] I mean, you could replace that. I was still around if we're certain.
[00:35:01] You could replace that with the environmental dystopia that was pre-prevalent.
[00:35:06] And it's a point where actually people, young people, I speak to say,
[00:35:09] I don't want to have any kids anymore because I'm worried about the planet.
[00:35:13] You know, so that is, there's these things that are, there's a continuity here as well.
[00:35:16] You're not surprisingly want to be wrapped in cotton wool and told, you know, not to make sure and bring them off of the trade.
[00:35:22] But I'm not really concerned about it.
[00:35:23] But I don't think there's no difference in the world.
[00:35:26] I mean, the person who's saying that will be, you will have four kids in five years time.
[00:35:31] I mean, people say that, I would take a look at age, don't they?
[00:35:33] You know, it's just the same as saying, you know, as young people going,
[00:35:37] well, you know, the world's an unsafe place.
[00:35:38] I don't want to be in kids up into it.
[00:35:39] It seems like people are saying that that all the time.
[00:35:42] But a kid's getting do something.
[00:35:43] I mean, your, your senior kids every day, obviously, through university or young adults,
[00:35:46] you know, we're being politically correct.
[00:35:49] Are they any less smart than they were?
[00:35:52] 20 or 30 years ago, or were actually smarter?
[00:35:54] I mean, it's, you know, that the human brain is not shrinking.
[00:35:57] Is it so whatever's going on?
[00:35:59] It's not through like a thinking, isn't it?
[00:36:01] Well, I mean, we're running out of time, aren't we?
[00:36:04] So, I mean, that is a question for another debate, possibly.
[00:36:08] But I mean, probably things going in both directions simultaneously.
[00:36:13] So, you might say that they're exposed, they are, they have the availability to seek out more information than any generation in history.
[00:36:19] And that's a good thing.
[00:36:20] But the same token was something like chatGPT.
[00:36:23] You could make the counter-argument that what's happening is you're handing over to the algorithm, the ability to seek.
[00:36:30] Now, I know that people say about that well, I'm just using it as a basis and then I'll shape it myself.
[00:36:36] But I think red, quite a few of these essays.
[00:36:38] It seems to me that what you're really doing is picking a massive shortcut.
[00:36:43] Not doing the kind of critical thinking that you would hope students would do.
[00:36:47] And instead handing things over to the sort of the technocracy.
[00:36:53] Now, the problem with that is if you've kind of everything over to technique regimes or whatever,
[00:37:02] you can use it at a danger, you're going to have a sort of soft sort of petition world where people happily give over things that they had control or autonomy over before.
[00:37:12] To, to, to, you know, digital programs or whatever might be.
[00:37:17] That's the other way to work.
[00:37:18] And like you might, you know, there's no nuance is that that's the book.
[00:37:21] If you if you wanted a world in which we debate and come to conclusions,
[00:37:25] you've got to have that nuanced debate.
[00:37:26] You don't get that by mission.
[00:37:28] And what you're saying is the infantilization in reality,
[00:37:31] which is that we hand over to the the father or the parent figure, which in this case is big corporations.
[00:37:37] Yeah, maybe.
[00:37:37] Now, I sort of in the book and thought in the book a little bit about that.
[00:37:41] But also in the book, again, I'd urge you to read it with a lot of section called 10 rules for an in less than a finalized world.
[00:37:50] And so I do offer some prescriptions about how one can stay off the tide of culturally induced.
[00:37:57] Give us the biggest question.
[00:37:58] I don't want to get everything away on the on the podcast.
[00:38:01] I've got to do my own part of the book.
[00:38:02] You're just one of one of the 10 that's all people can still get the book for the other nine.
[00:38:06] Which what's the biggest one?
[00:38:07] Well, I mean, I think one of the things I'm going to say is quite simple, but it seems to be very fashionable.
[00:38:11] It's to treat adult hooders and aspiration and not something to be dreaded or worried about.
[00:38:17] I mean, a lot of our culture, again, celebrity driven perhaps is a sort of infantile illusion of impotence.
[00:38:24] I mean, we're not going to last live forever, sadly.
[00:38:27] And one of the consequences of that is that you know, you're going to age.
[00:38:32] And it's not that bad.
[00:38:34] You know, in fact there's some very good things about.
[00:38:37] They are adulthood that shouldn't be kind of ridiculed or avoided at all costs.
[00:38:43] You know, youth is great and we all want it back down.
[00:38:45] But I think it's just okay to say, you know, we're going to go into adulthood when you cross over that threshold.
[00:38:51] It's not bad as you think it is.
[00:38:53] In fact, you could argue that you're a better person with better levels of experience and so on and so forth.
[00:38:58] So why not celebrate it as opposed to sort of pushing it away with a tenth of a barge.
[00:39:04] Here here, you know, right, just as a final point because I do get this when I talk to my kids and look, we are more than half an hour into this podcast.
[00:39:10] So if they even if they started listening to they tend up by now.
[00:39:13] Absolutely.
[00:39:14] Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:15] If we get into a debate or anything and I feel like I've got, you know, a bit more experience to be added to the discussion.
[00:39:22] It's largely dismissed because I'm just an old fella.
[00:39:24] You're a movie.
[00:39:25] Exactly.
[00:39:25] And yet, you know, I do think, you know, I've got the beauty of age is that you have got all this experience and the sense of balance.
[00:39:32] We are the wise elders.
[00:39:33] The people they must understand.
[00:39:34] Exactly.
[00:39:35] They've got to realize that.
[00:39:36] That's what you're saying isn't that?
[00:39:37] Well, I would say that I agree with that.
[00:39:39] And I urge the wise elders to obviously buy my book.
[00:39:42] But I would also urge the young generation to buy as well because I think there's some important critical reflections on the world they live in.
[00:39:50] So there's the stuff about social media and maybe had to add a turn that off, which of course is becoming quite a trend.
[00:39:56] As Gavin momentum isn't this idea of push push back against digital.
[00:40:00] I understand the angle of the United States.
[00:40:02] I don't know where people are.
[00:40:03] You have to say that down on the board.
[00:40:05] But I understand the angle of the United States.
[00:40:06] No way.
[00:40:06] For the even shorter version.
[00:40:08] He said it's half as long.
[00:40:09] Then he got half as short a book.
[00:40:11] You know, which is very nice.
[00:40:12] They wouldn't be still wouldn't really.
[00:40:14] Yeah.
[00:40:15] That's come from wisdom from your age.
[00:40:16] Maybe a pamphlet.
[00:40:17] Okay.
[00:40:18] Thank you very much for talking to us.
[00:40:19] Really appreciate your time.
[00:40:21] Yeah.
[00:40:21] Thanks, thanks a lot.
[00:40:22] Out of great day.
[00:40:23] How are you?
[00:40:24] Interesting stuff is done.
[00:40:25] But we have to well, yeah.
[00:40:27] Anyway, next week we're going to talk about politics specifically and not in child-like terms because we're going to talk about the Labour Party, which has its conference.
[00:40:36] And they are six weeks.
[00:40:39] All of a month and a half, two months.
[00:40:41] They're almost guilty of the same thing that we've been talking about.
[00:40:43] Yes.
[00:40:44] They are just working for the sound by it.
[00:40:46] They've basically promised what people wanted to hear.
[00:40:48] You know, you say well, I can't.
[00:40:49] They're now saying what things are, you know, things are tough.
[00:40:52] Yeah.
[00:40:52] They're all are all different.
[00:40:53] But that's the point.
[00:40:54] We're going to say, you know, Labour in power.
[00:40:57] After everything that they've said and all the years of opposition about what they might do,
[00:41:01] what are the prospects of it?
[00:41:03] When they say, well, frankly, the kitty's empty.
[00:41:04] There's nothing we have money.
[00:41:05] But are they trying to be grown-ups?
[00:41:07] Well, there's an interesting point, isn't it?
[00:41:09] Are they doing grown-up politics after what they've described as being very much
[00:41:13] the infantilised state of politics under the talk?
[00:41:16] Well, it's right or not.
[00:41:18] I mean, you know, there is the counter argument that if they take us down the road of less and less
[00:41:23] spending because they feel as though they've got a balance to books.
[00:41:26] There's an argument that says, well, look at the United States where they are spending like crazy
[00:41:30] and their economy is picking up.
[00:41:32] You spend yourself, spend your way out of trouble not, which would be very popular with a lot
[00:41:38] of their members.
[00:41:39] And it said, please bid the thing is whether it's right or not, it is debating.
[00:41:42] And that's the example is they will have a discussion.
[00:41:45] And the conference, that's where it is.
[00:41:46] They meet them in the ship.
[00:41:47] Now, the members should be very pleased that they're part of his back in power.
[00:41:52] But we'll maybe please enough to say, well, let's not do things that are going to cause trouble
[00:41:55] because if you've got a parliamentary majority of the sides of the case,
[00:41:58] Thomas, frankly, you can do almost anything you want.
[00:42:01] Yeah, and I bet there'll be people pushing very hard for some pretty radical moves.
[00:42:04] Right.
[00:42:04] So can they find their feet?
[00:42:05] Can they become together as one, is the question?
[00:42:08] It's an interesting point.
[00:42:09] That's what we'll be talking about next week on.
[00:42:11] The Y-Cave will see you then.
[00:42:12] Thanks for listening.
[00:42:13] Catch you next week.
[00:42:14] The Y-Cave.