To be old without being adult or to be adult without being old?

Our society is saturated with directives designed to guide our actions. We need to preserve our autonomy, by remaining responsible adults, i.e. free and aware of what we are.

If Jacques Brel, in his sublime Old lovers' song, As the French poet and poet-songwriter sang that it took him and his lover «a great deal of talent to live to be old without being grown-up», the opposite objective could be aimed at for our lives as citizens and taxpayers: to be grown-up without being old. For we, as adult beings, are gradually becoming old children, while the servility that the lover shares with the child should not be our compass. Yet this is the kind of program that the state, and the private sector too, are increasingly offering us.

Like our thematic dossier of the month The examples are legion: incessant injunctions to eat one's fruit and vegetable ratio every day, systematic recommendations by public authorities and the media to drink water in hot weather, the arrival of «drinking kills» labels on wine bottles, visual rewards from our telephone at the end of a good day's sport, audible congratulations from the city's garbage cans when we throw away our garbage... These are all good causes, but the means we use actually supplant our individual responsibility, and that's probably not good news for adults' ability to react to the unexpected, to judge their own actions, to assume the consequences of their actions or to innovate.

This is not to deny the relevance of incentives, which are always more desirable than obligations, or of government awareness campaigns, when they address a public health issue for example. But to reach their target, they must, by definition, be targeted. Otherwise, as we are all recipients of these campaigns, and see them everywhere, we are no longer attentive to them. Worse still, when they take the form of paternal orders or maternal attentions, we no longer take them seriously, tired of being treated like children. In Switzerland, republics are only cantonal, and we don't expect them to discipline us, but to look after our public affairs, leaving us to our private pursuits.

Faced with this problem, however, it would be short-sighted to attack the «system». There's no reason to believe in a grand global conspiracy fomented by public and private institutions to anaesthetize people in order to better control and abuse them. If there is such a phenomenon of infantilization - growing, but not generalized - it's because we ourselves participate in it. By accepting it too readily, but also by demanding that more and more of our tasks be delegated to technology or third parties. The key is to remain in control of our choices as individuals. And to remain an adult: to take action for its own sake, not for the sake of some sweet treat. This presupposes a sense of virtue, but also of wonder: not always expecting something from life, just living it. Applaud yourself instead of waiting for external bravos. Give of yourself, and appreciate gifts when they come. To be an adult without being old is the challenge of a responsible life that retains the precious insolence of youth.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

You have just read an open-access editorial from our INFANTILATION folder. Debates, analysis, cultural news: subscribe to support us and get access to all our content!