As a counselor, I’ve spent countless hours witnessing the quiet unraveling of minds people trying to make sense of where society is going, what it celebrates, and perhaps more importantly what it leaves behind.
I work with individuals from very different walks of life. On one end, I volunteer in shelters, offering a listening ear to those struggling just to get through the day. On the other, I meet with private clients – mature adults who, by society’s standards, are considered successful. And yet, despite their external success, many find themselves turning inward, confronting their shadows, searching for meaning, clarity and a deeper sense of peace.
What I’ve come to see – across both worlds – is the same underlying question taking root: Where are we really headed?
What are we becoming?…
It’s impossible to ignore how much life has changed in just a century. In a blink of historical time, empires have collapsed, superpowers have emerged, and global dynamics have shifted entirely. But beneath the political and technological revolutions, something far more insidious has unfolded—something few dare to confront: the systematic infantilization of society. Childhood is vanishing, adulthood is eroding, and in their place, a prolonged, hollow adolescence is being imposed upon us all.
Neil Postman, in his seminal study on childhood, warned of this slow but deliberate erosion. And he was right. The unrestricted and unregulated flood of technology, social media, mindless programming, hyper-stylized lifestyles, and unbalanced music has played a central role in this societal decay.
There was once a time when childhood meant protection—when children were not treated as miniature adults, but as individuals still under the guardianship of parents and elders. These caregivers created filters: shielding young minds from content not suited for their level of development. A child was not considered an adult until they could think critically, live independently—economically, spiritually, and intellectually. Childhood and adulthood weren’t just biological stages; they were cultural thresholds. But today, children are left exposed to the raw extremes of the world, unprotected. The media no longer requires literacy, thought, or discernment to consume it. As a result, innocence and differentiation are fading fast.
The same decay is happening to culture and education. Real education—one that fosters critical thinking and intellectual growth—is increasingly reserved for a privileged few. The masses are handed hollow systems designed to pacify, not to enlighten. Genuine cultural expression is mocked, minimized, or erased altogether. Identity, individuality, and depth are slowly being replaced with bland conformity, and ignorance is celebrated as if it were a virtue.
We’re being trained not to think. Curiosity is no longer cultivated; it’s replaced by mindless consumption. People don’t ask “why” anymore. They don’t seek origins. They accept what they’re told—fed half-truths by influencers, advertisers, and institutions that benefit from a passive, unthinking public.
And then there’s the attack on development itself.
Sexual maturity now arrives earlier, thanks to the complex mix of biological acceleration and societal exposure. But our children’s minds haven’t caught up. They’re unequipped to process the oversexualized and hyper-violent content saturating their world. Schools now deliver “the talk” at increasingly younger ages—not as a biological or emotional education, but as premature sexual awakening. I’ve sat through these talks. They weren’t education—they were initiation.
The internet, for all its potential, has only made regulation laughably impossible. Vulgarity, not sensuality; violence, not resilience; absurdity, not wisdom—these are what now dominate the popular psyche. Children are developing disorders once seen only in adults. What else would you expect when they’re robbed of the time and space to be children?
The destruction of childhood doesn’t just affect youth—it mutilates adulthood. A healthy adult is the product of passing through all stages of development with dignity and guidance. Skip a stage and you sabotage the identity, introspection, and emotional depth of the person. Today, adolescence isn’t a phase—it’s a lifestyle. A culture of permanent adolescence dominates, where maturity is mocked, and consumption is king. Being an adult now seems to mean being loud, vulgar, sexualized, and reactive—not being responsible, thoughtful, or measured.
Why? Because mature, rational adults don’t make great consumers. But impulsive, insecure adolescents do. Marketing thrives on the immature—on their anxieties, their desire to belong, and their need to constantly redefine themselves. Corporations understand this. The state, increasingly, does too. And the line between both is thinning.
This isn’t just capitalism—this is calculated infantilization, driven by profit and inertia.
All-encompassing education is no longer valued. People let Google and TikTok do their thinking. Appearances are now more important than content. Everything is fleeting, nothing is rooted. A humanitarian crisis must now compete with the birth of a celebrity’s child for attention. In this circus of distraction, the vulgar and the immature are celebrated.
If something requires research, patience, or effort—people reject it. Social frameworks have dissolved. Since the 1980s, society has transitioned from a community to a marketplace. This has dismantled the consciousness needed for real maturity. We now live trapped in a shallow, never-ending present—one where the past is distorted, the future feared, and critical thinking made obsolete.
Aldous Huxley was right. We’ve entered a future where identity is diluted, history ignored, philosophy abandoned, and ignorance deified.
And when identity dissolves, strength and resilience go with it. The ability to hold diverse ideas becomes the ability to deny all of them. And in a society of children, the natural instinct is to seek a parent—a protector. Enter: the State. But instead of guiding, the modern State increasingly censors, surveils, and punishes. It serves corporations, not citizens. It keeps people ignorant instead of empowering them.
We’re now watching young people crippled by anxiety like never before. Why? Because anxiety is the mind’s natural reaction to contradiction. These are curious, capable youth. But they’re overexposed, overstimulated, and under-guided. They’ve never been taught to deal with life’s discomforts, only how to escape them through screens and dopamine hits.
Conversations are dying. People are scared to even talk on the phone. Children barely play outside or read books—they refresh their social feeds every few minutes. They’re being led into a world that kills their potential and erases their identity. They are taught not how to think, but what to think. And that, more than anything, is how we raise obedient subjects instead of free individuals.
Technology is not the enemy. Business is not evil. Profit is not immoral. Youth is not a sin. The problem is imbalance. When technology is given without boundaries, when profit trumps people, when education is shallow, when parenting is outsourced to devices—then we destroy the very fabric of human development.
Wealth is not a substitute for parenting. Gadgets will never replace human connection. And no amount of consumption will fill the emptiness created by a lack of guidance. Growth must come from both the outside and the inside. Without coherence between the two, indoctrination will always fill the void.
This phenomenon of global infantilization affects all classes—from the elite to the impoverished. In a narcissistic society that forgets the past and fears the future, transformation will come—but at the cost of identity, dignity, and real education.
The solution? Respect each stage of growth. Restore maturity. Fight for depth. To mature is to face reality, take responsibility, protect the vulnerable, and resist blind conformity. Maturity isn’t weakness. It’s power. It’s clarity. It’s the balance between mind, body, spirit, and society.
And it’s exactly what they don’t want you to have.
We haven’t simply lost our way…we’ve been herded off course.
What you’ve just read is not a nostalgic lament for the past. This is not an elegy – it is written as a wake-up call. A refusal to sleepwalk into a future engineered by profit and propped up by passivity.
It is a call…
To reclaim our capacity for depth….
To protect our young from the machinery of mediocrity….
To grow the hell up – without losing the poetry of youth and the magick of childhood.
Because balance is not repression….
And freedom without consciousness is just another form of control.
“Freedom is useless if it only leads and serves destructive self-satisfaction.”
Eiros 