There’s a famous experiment people like to bring up.
The story goes, some researchers decided to test animals’ sensitivity to a harmful environment. So they took some frogs and dumped them into a pot of boiling water. Surprise surprise – the frogs immediately jumped out.
But what the researchers did next is the punchline. Supposedly, they put frogs in a pot of regular water and slowly turned up the temperature. Instead of jumping out, the frogs boiled to death. The takeaway is obvious – animals (and by extension people) will act quickly to save themselves from an immediate threat, but will inure themselves to a threat introduced slowly over time.
Applied to political situations in democratic societies, the analogous message is equally clear: attack freedom too quickly and people will react strongly; steal it slowly over time and people won’t move a muscle.
But is that really the story of the frogs?
As it happens, there’s a crucial piece missing that’s not widely known. (Or at least, not as widely as the rest of the story.)
Those frogs that remained in the slowly heated water and boiled to death?
They were lobotomized first.
It turns out, no – animals (and by extension people) will not simply remain in an increasingly hostile and threatening situation until they expire (or are expired).
They will jump, they will flee, they will seek shelter and safety, and they will do everything they can to live.
Whether they’re dumped into a dangerous situation or whether it slowly creeps up around them.
Unless they’re lobotomized.
Lobotomies can be physical. Like the researchers did with the frogs, actual portions of the brain can be removed, leaving the organism non-responsive to its impending doom.
Those don’t happen often in democratic societies.
But lobotomies can also be psychological. The result of social pressures and cultural dynamics. The product of mass media technology and mass education curricula. The outcome of a misguided confrontation with ambiguity and difference for generations trapped in a web of myths, slogans, and soundbytes.
Until people no longer read books, they scroll screens.
They no longer have discussions, they watch reels.
They no longer ask questions, they follow crowds.
They no longer think, they just absorb and repeat.
Those kinds of lobotomies are much more insidious, and much harder to detect – you can hear it in someone’s words but you can’t spot it on a brain scan.
Those kinds of lobotomies happen often, even in democratic societies.
And when a person has been thus lobotomized, what they’ve lost isn’t a particular cortex but the faculty to critically observe and analyze and strategize. They’ve lost the ability to trust what they’re seeing, to analyze it against the rules of reason and experience, to plan to effectively escape it if need be.
They’ve lost their survival instincts as a rational animal, and they will remain in the pot while the water is slowly heated, and they will boil to death.
Less than a century after Mein Kampf, one of the world’s most popular AI’s created by one of the world’s richest (and most popular) men is going full MechaHitler and blaming the Jews for everything.
Less than a century after Kristallnacht, Jewish people and synagogues are being regularly attacked for collective crimes uniquely imputed to them as Jews.
Less than a century after Auschwitz, an authoritarian government is once again spending tens of billions of dollars building concentration camps.
The temperature of the water is rising, my friends.
Don’t get boiled alive.