POINT OF VIEW. Stop the generalized infantilization.

Not a day goes by without an advertisement, a government message, a billboard, a municipal decree, an SMS from Doctolib casting doubt on our ability to feel responsible for ourselves. As if, in 2022, at a time when technology is supposed to free us from constraints, it comes as a reinforcement to demand that people do not stray, obey the injunction, abandon all free will.

One example among many others. “Eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day”, a slogan launched in 2001 by the WHO in order to fight against obesity. Good intentions for sure. But who is fooled? Who can think that the massive repetition of the health message for more than twenty years has served the cause in question? If it were true we would know. However, a poll carried out ten years later in France and the United Kingdom concluded that 8 out of 10 people do not respect the advice. As for the 2% who follow him, “they find there a good way to relieve themselves of guilt by eating more fat and sugar than before”. Same for tobacco. Who are the cigarette addicts still sensitive to the “smoking kills” printed in black and large on all the cigarette packets exhibited behind the counters of tobacconists?

As for the SNCF, the sum of the injunctions that it delivers on board a TGV makes you dizzy. Not only are recurring sound announcements politely inviting travelers to follow safety instructions, but train windows are now lined with slogans such as “discover the landscape” or “let yourself dream”.

Ditto for the environment: “think about sorting”; “don’t forget to recycle your batteries” etc. are repeated like mantras. Nothing very bad, nor threatening, but a repetitive principle that tires, generates anxiety and above all questions its purpose in view of the cost of advertising campaigns.

Polluted public space

What is now the boundary between information and infantilization, when, at the same time, the State requires its constituents to be, rightly, ever more responsible for their actions? When school and parents are supposed to have prepared young minds to know how to work with a minimum of civility?

Given the state of general resignation that has crossed the country since the start of the pandemic, it is not out of place to inquire into the reasons why we have come to pollute the public space with such a mass of information. written, audio and visual. Are the French so indomitable that you have to constantly find malicious tricks to call them to order?

Academician François Sureau indirectly puts his feet in the dish in his book “Sans la liberté” published by Gallimard in 2019 (Tracts collection). The writer recalls there “that no one other than the free citizen has the capacity to judge the use he makes of his freedom, except to see it disappear”. But the devil is in the details, no one has yet taken the time to look in these examples of infantilizing slogans mentioned above what, suddenly, makes us second-class citizens.

Yes, the peaceful, playful but systematic infantilization of minds is a flaw. Ultimately, it plays against the requirement to think, reflect and take responsibility; unfortunately, it puts the malevolent minorities and the benevolent majority on an equal footing before common sense, without distinction of any kind.

Journalist and writer

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