'Big Babies: or, Why Can't We Just Grow Up?' by Michael Bywater

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

I'm currently reading this book:



His central argument is that the 00s is, materially speaking, an incredibly good time to be alive, and yet we are paying an awul price for it: ie, we're all being treated like children, and behaving like them too.

He blames the baby boomers, who lived through an unquestionable golden age (which he defines as 1951-81), but are now running the world in their 60s and refusing to grow old. He takes three well-worn concerns:

- the 'kidult' phenomenon (grown adults reading Harry Potter and listening to Girls Aloud while drinking Ribena)

- the 'nanny state'/infringement of personal liberties

- the way advertisers create a fake sense of 'something missing from your life'

but he widens it beyond the usual grumpy-old-man territory and paints an entertainingly depressing picture. It's a fascinating book, and hard to summarise. But read his own extracts here.

He talks about the diappearance of the mensch figure (the pillar-of-the-community 'proper adult'). He talks about how Bush and Blair seem strangely less human than Homer Simpson. He talks about how you can't go anywhere in Britain without being admonished by notices. He talks about a sense that everything these days is in inverted commas - men no longer wear hats, but 'hats' (ie, they wear the statement 'I'm the kind of person that wears a hat'). He talks about today's adults as dribbing, burger-guzzling twats constantly needing iPod  tunes like aural Smarties, engaged in an endless demand for stuff and going into a toddler tantrum the second something doesn't go their way. Familiar stuff, but I like his angle on it.

His rules on How To Be An Adult:

Don't be affronted. Being affronted (or offended, or complaining about 'inappropriateness') is no response for a grown-up. Only children believe the world should conform to their own view of it: a sort of magical thinking that can only lead to warfare, terrorism, unmanageable short-term debt and the Blair/Bush alliance

Mistrust anything catchy, whether it's the Axis of Evil, advertising slogans, or blatant branding ('New Labour'). Catchiness exists to prevent thought and to disguise motive. Grown-ups can think for themselves

Ignore celebrities, except when they are doing what they are celebrated for doing: acting, playing football et cetera. Skill does not confer moral, political or intellectual discrimination. (Except in the case of writers. Writers know everything and can lecture you with impunity.) If a celebrity is not celebrated for doing anything but being a celebrity, smile politely but pay no notice

We should not assume that market forces will decide wisely. The market is rigged by manipulation and infantilisation

Consider our own motivations. We may rail about being treated like children, ordered about, kept from the truth, nannied and exploited... but are we complicit in it? Could the reward actually be infantilisation itself?

Autonomy is the primary marker of being grown up. Babies, children and adolescents don't have any. We don't want to be in their boat

Suspect administration. Its purpose is to free the organisation to do what it's meant to do: but the triumph of the administrators - the lawyers, the accountants, the professional managers - means that too many organisations now believe that what they are meant to do is administer themselves. This is a profoundly infantile attitude

Do not love yourself unconditionally. Such love is for babies and comes from their mothers. Ignore fashion, particularly in clothes. You don't want to look like a teenager for ever

Never do business with a company offering 'solutions' as in 'ergonomic furniture solutions which minimise the postural strain associated with sitting' (chairs) and 'Post Office mailing solutions' (brown paper). The word suggests we have a problem, but since we are grown-ups, that is for us to decide

Denounce relativism at every turn. Shouting 'not fair' is childish. Demanding respect without earning it is childish. Don't fear seriousness. Babies aren't allowed to be serious

Watch our language. Is there really much difference between a six-year-old in a fright-wig and his father's waders shouting 'I'm the Mighty Wurgle-Burgle-Urgley-Goo' and an ostensible grown-up demanding to be called 'Tony Blair's Respect Tsar'?

Hide Grown-ups are not required to be perpetually accountable, while the instincts of government and big business, both of which are, almost by their nature, great infantilisers, are to keep an eye on everyone all the time

Eat it up. There is nothing more babyish than having dietary requirements

Never vote for, do business with or be pleasant to anyone who uses the words 'ordinary people'

[Suttonpubcrawl]

Eat it up. There is nothing more babyish than having dietary requirements

I take it he doesn't get on well with people who have coeliac disease then.

[The Widow of Brid]

From the extracts on the website, it comes across as patronising self-contradictory toss. Has it really grabbed you? In which case is there any chance of you typing out any small extracts from the book itself that made it particularly stand out from the crowd to you, as I'm just not seeing how it impresses.

[Baxter]

this sounds a lot like one of my pet social concepts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry

I'm always blaming it for something be it the removal of the idea of 'high' culture or the decline of social responsibility, i do at time feel as if it's a slightly more complex way of saying "it's the meeja, innit?"

[The Mumbler]

Sort of related:

The London Paper, which I saw discarded on a bus the other night, had on its front page the most cursory of weather forecast information ('Cold'). Underneath it was written: "Don't forget your COAT". When I told a work colleague this, they informed me that when 'Rain' has been forecast, they helpfully write: "Don't forget your UMBRELLA".

[Brutus Beefcake]

Sort of related:

The London Paper, which I saw discarded on a bus the other night, had on its front page the most cursory of weather forecast information ('Cold'). Underneath it was written: "Don't forget your COAT". When I told a work colleague this, they informed me that when 'Rain' has been forecast, they helpfully write: "Don't forget your UMBRELLA".

Reminds me of this: http://chilled.cream.org/forums/kb.php?mode=article&k=188

[Labian Quest]

Sounds fairly amusing in an Auberon Waughish kind of way, but if we're supposed to mistrust anything catchy, how come he's using terms like:

"the 00s"  "baby boomers" 'kidult'  'nanny state'  

[Ciarán2]

this sounds a lot like one of my pet social concepts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry

I'm always blaming it for something be it the removal of the idea of 'high' culture or the decline of social responsibility, i do at time feel as if it's a slightly more complex way of saying "it's the meeja, innit?"

Well I got a bit sick of the Culture Industry thing. It's such a pessimistic fucking dead-end! I don't deny that "Dialectic of Enlightment" is an intelligent, brilliant, ground-breaking work, but bollocks if that's the be all and end all of culture.

threeism will come along and call me a pig-ignorant bollocks now...

[Sherringford Hovis]

Plagiarist!
Fucking hell, I can't even remember what annoyed me enough to post such thinking-out-loud mindpiss, and this bloke's extended essentially the same paucity of ideas into book-length drivel, FFS.

Another extract here.

Autonomy is the primary marker of being grown up.

Identikit never-missed-a-meal-in-at-least-three-generations middle class solecism.

Read most of this book t'other day while slobbing in Borders. Although I may agree with quite a few of the author's views on issues on his blogs, this sort of comment above exhibits a plain lack of understanding of UK society as a whole. It's highly unlikely Bywater nor anyone he'd consider a contemporary has ever felt obliged to feed neighbours' kids when the parents are out of work or striking for better working conditions, had to pawn anything nor been forced to go begging to his family for a few quid to see him through til the end of the week; all important considerations in the UK where despite a supposed 'average wage' of around £29,000, 60% of people earn less than £20,000 a year and 80% less than £30,000.

Edit to add:
the 20 largest quoted companies in the UK make an average of over £96,000 pre-tax profit per employee, not to mention the criminal levels of subsidy that the business world receives through well-meaning yet idiotic schemes like Working Families Tax Credit, which hoover up tax money while effectively depressing the minimum wage.
*End of Edit*

Has your ivory tower even got a fucking telescope to regard us lower orders with the contempt that drips from the pages of this waste of trees? Bywater, you should dip your cunty book in bleach and broken glass and ram it up your sanctimonious sphincter.

[/Wolfie Smith]

[Gazeuse]

It's just Grumpy Old Men, isn't it???

[mrpants]

It's just Grumpy Old Men, isn't it???

EDIT:  Wasn't very funny.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Sounds fairly amusing in an Auberon Waughish kind of way, but if we're supposed to mistrust anything catchy, how come he's using terms like "the 00s"  "baby boomers" 'kidult'  'nanny state'

It's actually only 'baby boomers' he uses. The other terms were mine.

[Totem Hokum]

So is this just another way of putting forward the theory that we're all 'dying' from too much choice?

[sick as a pike]

I loved Michael Bywater when he was in Punch as Bargepole.  To anyone else who was a fan- have you noticed that Euan Ferguson in the Observer magazine has entirely stolen Bargepole's 'act'?  He did have the grace to admit it a while back, but it is a little bit naughty.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

He's bang-on about companies/advertisers treating us all like children, though. Simply getting from a tube carriage to the street outside involves being patronised at least twelve times.

He's generally talking about our childish need to be endlessly entertained, though. And I think he's bang-on about that too.

[Brutus Beefcake]

Although I may agree with quite a few of the author's views on issues on his blogs

A blog?  How much more "kidult" can you get?

[biniput]

not to mention the criminal levels of subsidy that the business world receives through well-meaning yet idiotic schemes like Working Families Tax Credit, which hoover up tax money while effectively depressing the minimum wage.

Could you explain.  Yes i have all day.

[Pinball]

Well-trodden ideas, nothing new, not the best presentation of them either. We're all Peter Pans now etc. yadayada

I find US (and to a lesser extent our) society fascinating. The best descriptive term I could define is hyper-consumptive. It's not that we're childlike, it's that we consume like the Devil himself, on steroids. It's shallow, it's materialistic, but it's often (not always, not even usually, but often) fun. Otherwise why would we do it??? Operant conditioning is why, with a massive helping of corporate power and control of media, politicians, money supply, job market etc. Mainly due to the conglomerates, "we" can never grow up, because "we" are not in control of this bloated, greedy, self-serving system, except insofar as we don't, fundamentally, want the pellet-feeding to end.

Y'know chaps, if we got together to write a book about this sort of shite, it would be a damn sight better than drivel like "Big Babies". Ah well...

Night all.. Time for bed, ready to tread the whore desk job tomorrow.

[Ciarán2]

He's bang-on about companies/advertisers treating us all like children, though. Simply getting from a tube carriage to the street outside involves being patronised at least twelve times.

He's generally talking about our childish need to be endlessly entertained, though. And I think he's bang-on about that too.

Sorry I'm going to bite the bait.

It's not being treated as children, or childishness that's the problem, but being condescended to.

Perhaps we should be more like children and play more often.

Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" exalted the child and is ingrained on my memory. I remember arguing with ELW10 in the past that a child has as much to offer to criticism as an adult in many cases (music is one example). You base your criticism on a disregard for and dismissal of the experience of being a child.

Now, being bullied, I'd agree is co-ercive, violent and wrong. But given that the idea of "growing up" is in the thread title, I thought I'd just say that growing up is not all it's cracked up to be.

[threeism]

this sounds a lot like one of my pet social concepts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry

I'm always blaming it for something be it the removal of the idea of 'high' culture or the decline of social responsibility, i do at time feel as if it's a slightly more complex way of saying "it's the meeja, innit?"

The notion of 'The Culture Industry' is quite inadequate to contemporary conditions in which reality is almost indistinguishable from culture. It's difficult to find words for it since the the concepts are more or less pre-given.
'The Day Today' offers quite a good account, though a little bit dated.

[threeism]

There's 'childish' and 'childlike'.

[Ciarán2]

The notion of 'The Culture Industry' is quite inadequate to contemporary conditions in which reality is almost indistinguishable from culture. It's difficult to find words for it since the the concepts are more or less pre-given.
'The Day Today' offers quite a good account, though a little bit dated.

Was reality ever distinguishable from culture? Eh? Eh??

[Ciarán2]

'The Day Today' offers quite a good account, though a little bit dated.

Childish (not childlike) humour. And all the better for it.