@HebrideanHecate @Flick Indeed.
One thing I noticed more and more when I went into teaching was how resilience started to go out of the window. Children would cry at the thought of having to learn something new because they only wanted to do things they could already do and feel good about themselves. Parents would demand perfect scores in every test rather than see improvement over time. Adults in the school would value the constant success of *prizes for all* rather than reward effort to overcome obstacles. Learning is hard, but it's essential to becoming an adult. It means failing and getting up again. It means small steps rather than instant wins.
Small wonder we have an infantilised population who cling to the comfort of childhood idylls.
We see it in the *most marginalised* arguments, in the *government must keep us safe* covidians, in the hate speech laws. We have people crying out to be controlled and nannied. These people have always been there, but we're making more of them and calling it a virtue. And for every person demanding to be treated as fragile and needing help to exist, there will be a bad actor who would love subjects to control.