How Society Infantilizes Itself to Death
Watching guests on Piers Morgan Uncensored repeatedly ask, ‘What about the children in Gaza?’ got me thinking—why does the discourse always center on children? Why do we not ask, ‘What about the adults? What about the elders? What about the people who have lived, learned, and have something to contribute? Why are the wise ones erased while society fixates on the youngest among us? We need to stop these knee-jerk emotional arguments and start asking the real questions that no one dares to confront.
Do you want to know what one of the most insidious manipulations of modern discourse is? It’s the fetishization of childhood innocence as a moral trump card. It’s not about valuing human life—because if it were, all life would be valued. Instead, it’s about leveraging the most emotionally potent imagery to shut down rational discussion.
Children are used as symbols, not people. In every war, every conflict, every crisis, the appeal to “think of the children” is the easiest way to generate outrage. Why aren’t we asking ‘what about the adults, the ones who have built things, contributed, earned their wisdom? What about the elderly, the ones who carry historical memory, who should be guiding society? Why do we treat them as disposable while placing infinite value on children who haven’t yet done anything?’
It’s infantilization on a civilizational scale. A society obsessed with childhood innocence is one that is perpetually kept in an adolescent state—governed by feelings rather than reason, reaction rather than analysis. And the worst part? The same people who cry about children’s lives today will have no problem discarding them the moment they grow up and form opinions that don’t serve the dominant narrative.
This isn’t new. It’s been used for centuries as a way to sway public opinion without engaging in real discussion. It’s why you see footage of grieving mothers but not discussions on military strategy. It’s why “protecting children” is used as justification for censorship, policy changes, and even war. Because no one wants to be the person who argues against saving kids, even when the argument itself is being used as a tool of mass manipulation.
The irony is that the people most worthy of protecting—the elders, the thinkers, the ones who carry actual knowledge—are dismissed, ridiculed, and erased. The wise ones, the ones who have survived long enough to see the patterns, to warn about the cycles, to offer solutions—are the first to be ignored. Because their existence is inconvenient. Because they ask the wrong questions.
So we end up in a society where we worship childhood but destroy the very conditions that allow children to grow into wise adults. Where we cry for the young while ensuring they inherit a world devoid of history, guidance, or meaning.
It’s not about valuing life. It’s about controlling the narrative.
- A Christmas gift to myself
- A few of the drawings I destroyed this year
- THE AKATHISIA FILES: PT 5
- THE AKATHISIA FILES: PT 4
- “I like rocks.”
Totally Surreal 
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