Out of the mouths of babes
Here’s another law of politics: all public service tends towards infantilisation. It’s a law in two parts.
I have a seven year-old daughter. She’s not particularly tidy. Most days her bedroom looks like how I imagine how Daily Mail readers imagine how Eastern European migrants live. You see, she can and does make the most stupendous mess without the help, input or consultation of anybody.
But when it comes to tidying that mess? Ah, that’s not a job for a single person at all. No help is begged in making the mess but much is begged in its reversal. There are tears and shouting. A team effort tidies the room but a few days later…
And so it is with government. Or at least this government. Think of all the messes it has made in the last eleven years. Now think of how little clearing up has actually been done. How much mess has been edged away from, swept under the rug of media manipulation and generally ignored? Because all public service tends towards infantilisation. Someone will be along at some point to clean up for them.
The second part of the law involves respect for property. My daughter has a cuddly sheepdog toy called Charlie which is her most treasured possession. She’s always losing him in the house. Panic ensues at bedtime.
I always know where my keys, mobile, money and mp3 player are because I remember where I left them. Even I’m bored at the sound off me giving this lecture. But does it go in? What do you think? My back hurts from all the looking under the sofa I do for that sodding dog.
And so it is with government. Or at least this government. Think of all the important, important stuff it’s lost over the years. Laptops, laptops and more laptops. Data, data and more data. Dignity, dignity and more dignity.
The latest is military ID cards. Eleven thousand have been lost in the last two years.
Like my daughter, the government know just how important these things are to them but will they learn? But does it go in? What do you think? The loss is blithely announced but nothing much else seems to be done. And then there’s another announcement. We rarely even get a ’sorry’, not that that would do much good.
Sorry, as I’m also bored of lecturing my daughter, carries an implicit promise to improve one’s behaviour. It’s not merely a placatory or assuaging device to smooth things over until the next crisis. Sorry’s no good without an attendant change in behaviour.
Because all public service tends towards infantilisation. Lost your laptops, data disks and military ID cards? Here’s some money to go and buy replacements. It’s an adjunct to the magic wallet theory.
Now, all this would be more forgiveable if the government didn’t itself treat us like children. The whispered conversations behind closed doors. The ‘this is for your own good’. The ‘do as I say or go to your room’. The ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. Being infantilised by the infantile is demeaning.
It’s like hearing a disapproving sigh at your behaviour from a seven year-old. Trust me, I get it all the time.
(Cross-posted at Liberal Conspiracy)
Posted on March 12th, 2008 at 10:06am under Pooterism, UK politics
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• 29 Comments |
You sound like Ronald Reagan.
How dare you. Explain, please.
‘All public service tends towards infantilisation’ has at least some similarities to Reagan’s quip about “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”
“Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
– attributed to Ronald Reagan (although it may be apocryphal)
If I were to locate a candidate for causing infantilisation, I think I might opt for consumerism instead. What do I want? I want gadgets. I want better gadgets. I want better gadgets now. I want more television. I don’t want to pay for it, I want it to be funded by advertising. I want better services and I want to pay less tax. I want everybody else to stop complaining and work harder and I want to spend my leisure time complaining about them. I want cheap labour to make my lifestyle possible and I want to complain about immigration. I want to read a crappy newspaper and I don’t want to care about culture and when I’ve done that I want my opinion to count for as much as anybody else’s. I want. I want. I want.
I don’t recall Ronald Reagan ever sounding that coherent.
Michael Bywater wrote a book making this argument (Big Babies).
I’m not sure there’s all that much to it myself – I’m always sceptical of theories that suggest that human behaviour is changing en masse.
ejh’s post seems to me like a typical baseless ‘Grumpy Old Men’ rant. The bit about “I want to spend my leisure time complaining about them” is particularly ironic IMO.
Your reason for saying so?
Yeah! Politicians should just GROW UP and be absolutely frank about everything with everybody all of the time. And then they’d be even more successful and the best politicians would prosper and we’d all be governed a lot better! Yeah!
There’s such a lovely planet – somewhere over the rainbow…
Is that what I said, ‘Paulie’? Sorry, I forgot my place there for a minute.
TOLERATE LIES AND CORRUPTION! TOLERATE LIES AND CORRUPTION! TOLERATE LIES AND CORRUPTION!
ALL HAIL OUR ELECTED BETTERS! ALL HAIL OUR ELECTED BETTERS! ALL HAIL OUR ELECTED BETTERS!
Yes, that’s better. Next stop Tehran.
Where did Justin say, or even imply, that politicians should “be absolutely frank about everything with everybody all of the time”?
I know you are more intelligent than this ridiculous straw man suggests.
Here.
“Now, all this would be more forgiveable if the government didn’t itself treat us like children. The whispered conversations behind closed doors. The ‘this is for your own good’. The ‘do as I say or go to your room’. The ‘do as I say, not do as I do’. Being infantilised by the infantile is demeaning.”
And “Next stop Tehran”?
I tell you what; Why don’t you write a post on your own blog saying what your position is on all of this? One of my objections to anti-negativists is that they present a permanently moving target to anyone who tries to take a reasonably consistant position, and I’m beginning to wonder if you’re one of them.
Justin,
I really don’t think that I need to write a post about this. In what way do you think I present a moving target? I’m saying that it’s a bit infantile to make cynical remarks without grounding them with any understanding of *why* things are the way they are.
I know you’ve been on my site before, and you know that my position is that we have a complex hegemony in which everything from the media (it’s interests and it’s self-righteous front-men), consumerism, pressure groups, our long-standing attitudes to bureaucracy, and over-strong political parties contribute to a political centralisation that is – in turn – the cause of the infantilisation that you are moaning about here. For you it just seems to be ‘The Man’.
Remember last time we went around the houses on this one?
http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com/2006/12/code-of-conduct.html
I argued that if you adopt a world-weary and cynical apporach to public life, you will always prove to be the objective allies of reactionaries. And you start this post saying “…all public service tends towards infantilisation.”
I would hate to have a crowd of people like you sitting in judgement of me if I ever won an election on any kind of ambtious ‘lets change stuff’ ticket. It’s a very pessimistic and unstructured way of looking at the world. And that – as Don Paskini and Demon pointed out (above) puts you in a political locus that I don’t think you’d want to be in. I’m surprised that you can’t see that this sort of cynicism is just another form of conformity. It’s very conservative.
EJH’s explaination of infantilisation (comments, above) here is spot on, by the way. Or Chris Dillow’s version:
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2008/03/openness-and-se.html
I just think it’s odd that you couch a post that is – essentially – a sulk – in a ‘aren’t they all childish’ wraparound. I had a great comment on my site a while ago from someone saying:
“Philosophers have sought to understand the world. The point is to complain about it.”
See – that’s a clever wordplay. What he’s done is to take out ‘the point is to change it’ and replaced it with your preferred course.
Paulie, Justin’s post isn’t one I particularly agree with, but I’d take Justin’s cynicism over your apologism every time.
Read the last two posts over at Question That (Friday’s and Saturday’s). The ranks of the “objective allies of reactionaries” are growing all the time…and I don’t give a shit.
Apologism for what exactly?
No – spare me the answer – I can’t take another Groundhog Day with you Ian.
Seems to me that you could prove your point about there being a ’sea change’, a ‘tipping point’, and a ‘boiling over of anger’ by setting up a new political party to attract these moany millions. I would take them a few minutes to agree about all of the things that they are jolly angry about. The wheels come off when they decide what they’re in favour of.
It looks to me like any such project would follow a familiar template.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poujade
“Seems to me that you could prove your point about there being a ’sea change’, a ‘tipping point’, and a ‘boiling over of anger’ by setting up a new political party to attract these moany millions.”
Uh, as you have clearly noticed by now (since you posted about it on your blog today), such a party has been set up – The UK Libertarian Party (LPUK).
I noticed.
You should join it.
Count the votes and see if you are right about this tipping point of CiFers and bloggertarians.
If I were to locate a candidate for causing infantilisation, I think I might opt for consumerism instead. What do I want? I want gadgets. I want better gadgets. I want better gadgets now.
You want gadgets? That’s great: you work and you save up for them. That’s great: you worked, you deserve them.
The government wants gadgets — ID cards, NHS Spine, bigger aircraft carriers, etc. — and they don’t have to save: they can just milk us for the money.
Now, which one sounds more like the child?
DK
P.S. I would comment on Paulie’s usual load of old tripe but, alas, it would be as fruitless as arguing with Justin daughter. Actually, wait, she’s seven. Justin, can I have an argument with your daughter, please…?
Hello dipshit!
Have you set up this party of yours because you’d prove to be an electoral liability to UKIP if you ever stood for them again?
And I didn’t realise you went to Eton. I’d have been a lot ruder to you if I’d known that. What a waste of Pater’s inherited moolah!
I think I’ll run a sweepstake to see how long it takes Patrick, Andrew and Tim to realise that you’re emotionally incontinent.
Have you sought treatment for that yet, by the way? You should you know…
I think that if Justin erred, it was in using the term “public service”. Would the term “public office” have expressed the point more accurately?
You want gadgets? That’s great: you work and you save up for them. That’s great: you worked, you deserve them.
The government wants gadgets — ID cards, NHS Spine, bigger aircraft carriers, etc. — and they don’t have to save: they can just milk us for the money.
Now, which one sounds more like the child?
Well, to be honest, it’s you.
Firstly, for deciding that as long as somebody’s worked, any subsequent spending decisions they make are “great”.
Secondly, for pretending that government simply “milks us”, as opposed to, say, making decisions according to the responsibilities it possesses and intermittently having to apply to the electorate for permission and approval.
It’s a crude and self-serving view which is, as it goes, precisely the sort of infantilisation to which I referred. “I want” is the motivating pricniple behind everything: but wider questions beyond that don’t exist and a replaced that it’s all the horrid goverment taking MY money away. It’s MINE. It’s NOT FAIR.
What’s the diffence between libertarians and six-year-old children? Six-year-old children at least know better even if they don’t always do it.
“Firstly, for deciding that as long as somebody’s worked, any subsequent spending decisions they make are “great”.”
It’s not that everybody’s spending decisions are great. It’s just that, if it is your money, it is no business of mine what you spend your money on. Do you see?
“Secondly, for pretending that government simply “milks us”, as opposed to, say, making decisions according to the responsibilities it possesses and intermittently having to apply to the electorate for permission and approval.”
This government gained the “approval” of 21.6% of the electorate. And that electorate were, realistically, faced with a hgh-spending centrist Labour Party or a high-spending centrist Tory Party. It’s not exactly a wide choice, is it?
“It’s a crude and self-serving view which is, as it goes, precisely the sort of infantilisation to which I referred. “I want” is the motivating pricniple behind everything: but wider questions beyond that don’t exist and a replaced that it’s all the horrid goverment taking MY money away. It’s MINE. It’s NOT FAIR.”
No, I don’t WANT. I would like to be able to keep my money so that I can, for instance, pay for my own healthcare, unemployment insurance, etc. I am happy to pay a certain amount of tax to fund things like education for all, but I want to know that my money is doing the job that I would wish it to do, i.e. I want children to learn, not for some fifth of them to leave school after 11 years of compulsory education being functionally illiterate.
Paulie,
“Hello dipshit!
Have you set up this party of yours because you’d prove to be an electoral liability to UKIP if you ever stood for them again?
And I didn’t realise you went to Eton. I’d have been a lot ruder to you if I’d known that. What a waste of Pater’s inherited moolah!
I think I’ll run a sweepstake to see how long it takes Patrick, Andrew and Tim to realise that you’re emotionally incontinent.
Have you sought treatment for that yet, by the way? You should you know…”
Um… I’m emotionally incontinent?
Good to see that, as far as you are concerned, the class war is still relevent…
DK
“… but I want to know that my money is doing the job that I would wish it to do, i.e. I want children to learn, not for some fifth of them to leave school after 11 years of compulsory education being functionally illiterate.”
Sorry, all the wants make that sound entirely contradictory. What I meant is that it annoys me that children are leaving school being unable to read and write, because it ruins their entire future.
As someone who was fortunate to have an excellent education, I know how much it benefited me and I really believe that everyone should have that chance.
I don’t think then, that it is unreasonable to look at the system in general and point out that it isn’t working and that this or that idea is better. Paulie calls this negativist: I call it common sense.
DK
It’s just that, if it is your money, it is no business of mine what you spend your money on.
Yes, it is. That’s what ethics is all about. It involves discussion and mudgement of each other’s behaviour and our own. It does not stop at some artificial barrier marked THIS IS MINE. It involves pondering motives and consequences. It involves defence of our own decisions rather than avoidance of same. For this reason, it is adult.
I am happy to pay a certain amount of tax to fund things like education for all
That’s enormously good of you. A functioning education system, I may add, like a functioning ethical system, requires a notion of the common good.
but I want to know that my money is doing the job that I would wish it to do
As does everybody, educationalists especially. They would presumably welcome your constructive suggestions as to how this might be accomplished, based on your well-informed and experienced views.
the class war is still relevent (sic)
One reason it is still relevant is that it is remarkable how many people benefit from expensive educations and affluent backgrounds, and then, when they are well-placed for a successful future for themselves, decide that what everybody else needs is to have their social supports removed so that they may free themseves from dependency.
“This government gained the “approval” of 21.6% of the electorate. And that electorate were, realistically, faced with a hgh-spending centrist Labour Party or a high-spending centrist Tory Party. It’s not exactly a wide choice, is it?”
Remind me again, are you for or against representative democracy? Last time we exchanged on this, you thought it was rude of me to suggest that you weren’t keen on democracy, but you seem to be doing it again.
Oh, and a follow-up question: How much does it cost to go to Eton these days?
Oooooh fuck! I’ve just looked on Wikipedia:
“Eton College currently boards 1,308 boys (15 per cent from overseas) between the ages of 13 and 18 (roughly 260 in each year) at a charge of £26,490 (approximately US$54,000 or €39000) per year.”
26 grand!!! A year!!! So your education would cost me £132,450 if I were to allow my son the benefit of it? Do you have any siblings? Did Pater have to fork out for DK x2 or x3?
And, I have to say, having read your blog and the standard of argument therein, I’m absolutely flabbergasted that this is the product of a £132k education. Most of the Bash St Kids would be able to wipe the floor with you in open debate once you’ve finished swearing or asking people who give you a bit of lip back to leave you alone.
You know what? You make libertarians look ridiculous. If your comrades have got any sense, they’ll dump you sharpish before they become a laughing stock by association.
Remind me again, are you for or against representative democracy? Last time we exchanged on this, you thought it was rude of me to suggest that you weren’t keen on democracy, but you seem to be doing it again.”
That is your counterargument?! That if you (as I do and I’m pretty sure DK does) consider the choice voters face in 2008 Britain to be downright unacceptable, you are ‘against representative democracy’? Uh, I take it LPUK doesn’t fit your conception of democratic?
The rest of it, and your second post, is ad hominem bullcrap that doesn’t dignify a response.
BTW I also think you’ve been rather naughty in that quoted post. You say ‘representative democracy’ the first time and just ‘democracy’ the second time…
If the choice seems uinacceptable to well-off rightwing libertarians, it could be because outside the internet there really aren’t all that many of them.