adult babies

What age do most adult Americans seem to act?

That is, when they’re not playing with their Wii, gobbling down comfort foods, throwing tantrums at Town Halls, entranced with the fairy tale lives of celebrities, adopting the latest “cool” fad, going to Dave and Busters (the adult Chucky Cheese’s), watching movies based on toys and calling their home their “crib”.

And let’s not forget the most effective marketing “toy” to entrance and attract the stares and drools of consumers, to get them roaming through malls like in “Day of the Living Dead”…sex. The media, commercials, etc. are flooded with promotions of sex, it’s used to sell shampoo (with moans of ecstasy), cars, beer and even directly to make Viagra the unnecessary drug of choice for insecure Baby Boomer men.

The infantalization or at least adolescentization of the American public has been a goal for the corporate interests that have been usurping our democracy for two main reasons.

1. Children are naturally egocentric and self-indulgent.

This is not a bad thing, for children that is, it is natural and a starting point for emotional development. A starting point, not a place to reside in for the rest of one’s life, building a mega mansion on it one can’t afford and having a family one doesn’t have the time, wisdom or resources to raise properly.

The corporate message has been to convince the public, “Hey Sport, you like that car? It’ll get you laid, make you wittier and enlarge your penis! Honest! Just get it! You can have it all!”

This is very convenient for the corporate world because people become Matrix-like batteries, drained of all their assets while restrained their whole lives by the credit card and mortgage debts they must spend their lives servicing.

How many people do you know who don’t owe on a credit card and haven’t been paying on one the majority of their adult lives? How many people do you know who believe that they will have all of their credit card debt paid off this year? Or next year? Or any year? And no fair counting the people who merely consolidate their debt by paying off credit cards with home equity loans, that’s still indebtedness for the same amount (then what often happens is credit card debt is rebuilt).

We have come to take for granted that part of life in society is being in debt one’s whole life and paying towards that debt one’s whole life. Isn’t something wrong with that? Do we really need all the “things” we are encouraged to become indebted over? I mean, how often are you using that Thighmaster or that George Foreman grill nowadays?

America has become crippled because of the sophistication of market research. Corporations have invested mountains of money dissecting why people decide to like things, how to make them like things and in the big picture, how to condition them through repetitive and omnipresent marketing, to be the most addicted consumers they can be.

In other words…convince and encourage adults to regress into being kids in a candy store with little self restraint, grabbing everything off the shelves that looks yummy. As long as the majority of this society remains in such a mindset, which unfortunately is continuing despite the recession, we are only being human batteries that provide greater and greater power to the  Matrix of the dominant corporate machine out there.

2. Children are easy to manipulate, control and dominate.

If you condition a dog to jump when you say “jump”, when anyone says “jump”, the dog jumps. Even if it’s at the edge of a cliff.

By the corporate community surrounding the public with media that conditions them to be “good consumers” (ie. being easy to manipulate into giving corporations their money for things they don’t need), the public has been wired to gobble up instructions, desires and “facts” from the media without fully processing all of it.

Thus, the other key agenda is achieved, a pliable public that can be “sold” on what corporate interests are also marketing in the political world to benefit themselves. Iraq war anyone? How about Death Panels? Perhaps I can get you a socialist-marxist-Kenyan-antichrist-Hitler-president appetizer plate?

Poor people who live in run down trailers were furious that the “Death Tax” (The Estate Tax) would only allow the first $3 million of assets to be untaxed.

Married couples were furious that gays getting married would destroy their marriages (they may have had a point in Larry Craig’s case). Yes, the same married couples of which over 50% will get divorced…destroying their own marriages with no assist from gay couples. This, not to mention how many of these “family values” people cheat on their wives and husbands, right Gov Sanford and Sen. Ensign and…well…I could go on and on.

And poor people without health insurance along with elderly people on Medicare…fiercely opposing the government providing health care for Americans.

Point being, so many people are so conditioned and child-like in their inability to use critical thinking, reasoning out conclusions for themselves from information they receive instead of simply swallowing whole POVs that come from a source they see as authoritative, that they frequently speak and vote against their own interests.

Some propose that the government’s neglect of education funding, more under Republican administrations (remember, No Child Left Behind was an unfunded mandate that drained time, money and resources from teaching kids various subjects to training them to pass the test) fits hand and glove with this agenda. An uneducated population is easier to dominate than one that has learned enough to know better.

This is a social tar pit, very hard to extract our society from it and the more some of us struggle to do so, the deeper the corporate interests seem to pull us down. As is in the news today, the banks that were too big to fail that destroyed our economy…are now bigger and have a greater monopoly.

So I have one message to all the “good consumers” out there of merchandise and political opinions, if they can put down their McDonald’s Flabby Meals, “Transformers Meet Tickle Me Elmo” DVDs and Rush Limbaugh inflatable dolls for a moment…

…GROW THE FUCK UP!

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LuluMaysuzycoloradoAdLibKalimaKevenSeven Recent comment authors
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LuluMay
Guest

Great post! The older I get the younger I feel…and act. When I was 11 people thought I was 15 (I was my full 5’10” by then); when I was 15 people thought I was 25; when I was 25 people thought I was 18; when I was 30 people thought I was 25 & now that I am 43 people think I’m 30! LOL I’m not sure if it due to good genes, an addiction to under-eye cream or my overall lack of maturity. LOL. I actually think it’s because I work with kids for a living (tho now I’m outta work which is aging me rapidly) which gives me an excuse to keep up to date with all of their pop references & culture which is not always fun (have you ever sat through the mumble fest that is “Gossip Girl”? They LOVE that show) but it enables me to relate to them) & they keep me young at heart. I am constantly impressed with how politically aware & involved they are too!

My life may not be what I thought it would be at this point (I’m actually not sure if I actually had any idea of what it would be) but it is a life that has been full of adventures & one that I can reflect upon with pride…and I do believe the best is yet to come.

The kids are alright!

KQµårk 死神
Member

I have to add that I think allot of people had learned their lessons at least with finances. I don’t know if it will stick but people are living within their means now and even saving money. Then again we don’t still have a fucking adolescent for a president telling us the cure to all our economic ills is to go shopping.

BTW AdLib I appreciate the shout out but I qualified my remarks to important decisions. Like I said I’m young at heart. I probably still eat too many things that are bad for me, don’t read enough books, watch TV and listen to music too much, blog too much, don’t get enough sleep (now of course that’s difficult when I should be getting 10-12 hours of sleep a day) and since I’m not working I have a full grown beard and long hippie hair. Not to even mention that after taking 1-2 showers ever day when working I now might take a shower a few times a week.

suzycolorado
Member
suzycolorado

Showering every day dries out your skin anyway. And i like beards and hippy hair!

Kalima
Admin

I think that turning 40 was one of the best birthdays I can remember, even though friends warned me I would be tearing my hair out, it didn’t happen. The older I become, the more I get to know myself, it’s a wonderful adventure.

In my teens I was able to think for myself, by my early 20’s I was traveling half way around the world to a place I had never been to, where the culture was alien to me, and I was alien to the people. I grew up fast and never looked back.

Now I’m just an opinionated old broad who is sure of who she is and not afraid to say what’s on her mind although I have learned to listen to other opinions much more than when I first came here.

LuluMay
Guest

I think the best thing about being a broad in my 40’s 😉 is that I simply don’t care what people think of me or if they like me. Actually I was the same when I was younger but now I am even more firm in that. I have enough friends; if someone doesn’t like me for whatever reason I figure they simply have bad taste & that I would not gain anything by knowing them.

The other thing I’ve learned thru lifes ups & downs is that I will be ok. When I was in my 20’s if something went wrong it could send me under the covers in the fetal position. NOW, it’s like, Ok, bring it on. I think that has been so liberating; there is NOTHING we can’t handle. We just take a deep breath & carry on.

ROAR!

Questinia
Member

“Point being, so many people are so conditioned and child-like in their inability to use critical thinking, reasoning out conclusions for themselves from information they receive instead of simply swallowing whole POVs that come from a source they see as authoritative, that they frequently speak and vote against their own interests”.

The message is the medium. I have NO idea what I mean by that, but it sounds kicky.

People have been hypnotized by the swirling seizure inducing images. it is up to everyone individually to get de-fucking-briefed!

KQµårk 死神
Member

AdLib hit the nail on the head. The worst part is liberals do the same thing they parrot their favorite liberal commentators like they can say of do nothing wrong. The worse person progressives parrot now is Arianna Huffington hos is and has always been a lie and hyperbole machine. Why people think she has any credibility just because she has turned “so called” progressive is beyond me. She hated the Clintons. The only reason she became progressive was because she hated Bush. Now she is looking for new people to hate.

KevenSeven
Member

Just running to dinner, and not a chance to read the whole post, sorry, but I just turned 50, and I feel 15 years younger than my image of my father at 50.

Not that I am the least athletic or anything…

Questinia
Member

That’s cause you don’t wear pants!

Questinia
Member

Great piece AdLib. I’d add that adolescence is also the time of compare and contrast socially. The awkward stink of teenage default inferiority is covered up with the elegant french perfume (purchased in Cannes, at $500/oz) of status through sex and possessions. Corporate America has gotten its perpetual flow of unwitting widgets: Adolescent parents giving birth to adolescent children and so on. TV is the new American hearth, the opiate which ensures the fix is within reach.

Horrible really.

Questinia
Member

Don’t think for a second that because I forgot to capitalize French that I’d accept any dime store phonies!

KQµårk 死神
Member

Bravo, Bravo! Apropos and quite a humorous read as well. While I’ve always felt young at heart I’ve learned that you MUST behave as adult when making lives important decisions. The big thing you need to learn is the difference between a need and want. A child or an adult that acts like a child has no discernment between the two concepts.

I haven’t had a credit care for over 10 years. My only debt is my mortgage and hospital bills. That’s being an adult. I literally want to puke when I hear people talking about the evil credit card companies like they are forcing you to take their money as unsecured debt. Congress trying to pass a 15% cap on unsecured debt was a fairy tail amendment. You are talking about unsecured debt when you never know if inflation will go up again in the future. My newest car is 10 years old this year. Of course it only has a little over 66,000 miles so it’s young at hear as well. I never ever consider getting a second mortgage. My townhome is half the price my real estate agent wanted me to pay. If I had not made the right choices and acted like most “adults” these days before I became disable I would be in a world of shit with no home and would have had to declare bankruptcy.