I AM thinking of writing a book entitled “All Kids Now: The Infantilisation of British Society”. This has happened before.

The Cumbrian philosopher R.G. Collingwood wrote: “The critical moment was reached when Rome created an urban proletariat whose only function was to eat free bread and watch free shows. This meant the segregation of an entire class which had no work to do whatever; no positive function in society, whether economic or military or administrative or intellectual or religious; only the business of being supported and amused.

When that had been done, it was only a question of time until Plato’s nightmare of a consumer society came true: the drones set up their own king, and the story of the hive came to an end.”

Collingwood was writing about the 4th century AD, but his words are terrifyingly applicable to the way we live today. History is repeating itself, and western European civilisation, especially Britain, has become decadent.

This decadence is most vividly represented in the infantilisation of public and private life. Like the Roman proletariat, we have become a society which lives for sensation, for immediate gratification. And the things which provide our satisfaction are increasingly trivial and banal. We have become, as it were, thumb-sucking babies.

I walk down Cheapside, in London, and I hear smart, well-off young professionals talking baby talk. The same people spend their weekends mindlessly clubbing. They live perpetually in thrall to the empty-headed celebrity culture. Then there’s pop music by which we stretch the follies of our youth to be the shame of age. And it’s everywhere, so that even serious newspapers feature it as if it mattered; and the news and documentary programmes on Radio Four and all TV programmes habitually include a burst of this noise whatever the subject matter of the programme happens to be Even formerly intelligent networks such as Radios Three and Four constantly strive to obliterate the qualitative differences between real music and junk noise. The lie is put about strenuously that pop is just as worthy of our attention as classical.

Celebrity pranksters such as the late Michael Jackson are described as “great musicians” and aging druggy rock stars (who ought to have learnt better by now) are revered as if they bore comparison with Mozart and Schubert.

The Government says it is fighting a serious war on drugs – and then hands out knighthoods to rock music junkies.

People irritatingly live out their private lives in public on the mobile phone. This gadget has done more to destroy public courtesy and good manners than any other single contributing factor.

We have infantilised, mass-market TV and created the unreality of so called “reality” TV.

And allied to this is the pampered self. Me unlimited. We inhabit a therapeutic culture.

Diet and health. Exercise and food fads.

Babyish packaged food. No one can cook any more – and we wonder why there is an obesity crisis.

As Collingwood remarked: “The Roman Empire was not destroyed by barbarians alone. It committed cultural suicide.”

Britain today is rapidly and catastrophically following suit.