>Babies are also almost completely unable to move around by themselves and are constantly frustrated by their lack of agency. They are extremely vulnerable and utterly dependent on the kindness of their parents and other older humans in their environment. They lack language so have no other way of communicating than screaming, which is often also a cause of great distress because of an inability to communicate a basic need
Funny, the same things happen when you become elderly, minus the screaming mostly.
Yep, you'd be surprised by how many turn downright violent when unmedicated. Sometimes the violence is a big part of the reason why the family ended up having to send them to a nursing home.
Man, the nursing homes in the 90s germany, where dement SS-soldiers goto attack polish nurses and victims of the russian liberation ran from any nurse with the accent. Sometimes drugs are the only thing keeping a institution working.
> Funny, the same things happen when you become elderly, minus the screaming mostly.
You just unlocked a memory of me reading "The Praise of Folly" in my teens for literature class and having my mind blown by the passage talking about that:
> Yet abating from this, let us examine the case more narrowly. Who knows not that the first scene of infancy is far the most pleasant and delightsome? What then is it in children that makes us so kiss, hug, and play with them, and that the bloodiest enemy can scarce have the heart to hurt them; but their ingredients of innocence and Folly, of which nature out of providence did purposely compound and blend their tender infancy, that by a frank return of pleasure they might make some sort of amends for their parents' trouble, and give in caution as it were for the discharge of a future education; the next advance from childhood is youth, and how favourably is this dealt with; how kind, courteous, and respectful are all to it? and how ready to become serviceable upon all occasions? And whence reaps it this happiness? Whence indeed, but from me only, by whose procurement it is furnished with little of wisdom, and so with the less of disquiet?
> And when once lads begin to grow up, and attempt to write man, their prettiness does then soon decay, their briskness flags, their humours stagnate, their jollity ceases, and their blood grows cold; and the farther they proceed in years, the more they grow backward in the enjoyment of themselves, till waspish old age comes on, a burden to itself as well as others, and that so heavy and oppressive, as none would bear the weight of, unless out of pity to their sufferings.
> I again intervene, and lend a helping-hand, assisting them at a dead lift, in the same method the poets feign their gods to succour dying men, by transforming them into new creatures, which I do by bringing them back, after they have one foot in the grave, to their infancy again; so as there is a great deal of truth couched in that old proverb, Once an old man, and twice a child.
> Now if any one be curious to understand what course I take to effect this alteration, my method is this: I bring them to my well of forgetfulness, (the fountain whereof is in the Fortunate Islands, and the river Lethe in hell but a small stream of it), and when they have there filled their bellies full, and washed down care, by the virtue and operation whereof they become young again.
> Ay, but (say you) they merely dote, and play the fool: why yes, this is what I mean by growing young again: for what else is it to be a child than to be a fool and an idiot? It is the being such that makes that age so acceptable: for who does not esteem it somewhat ominous to see a boy endowed with the discretion of a man, and therefore for the curbing of too forward parts we have a disparaging proverb, Soon ripe, soon rotten?
> And farther, who would keep company or have any thing to do with such an old blade, as, after the wear and harrowing of so many years should yet continue of as clear a head and sound a judgment as he had at any time been in his middle-age; and therefore it is great kindness of me that old men grow fools, since it is hereby only that they are freed from such vexations as would torment them if they were more wise: they can drink briskly, bear up stoutly, and lightly pass over such infirmities, as a far stronger constitution could scarce master. Sometime, with the old fellow in Plautus, they are brought back to their horn-book again, to learn to spell their fortune in love.
(I obviously had to look it up, it's not like I had this memorized after a quarter century)
I don't think Erasmus was right about the elderly growing blissfully happy with losing themselves to dementia, but then again: the book was satire, so we shouldn't expect Folly to be sincere in their arguments.
Funny, the same things happen when you become elderly, minus the screaming mostly.