Diamond: The New Norm

Lucy goes into her local coffee shop to buy her favourite drink, and she finds it's a bit more expensive, but it's only a few pennies. And so she shrugs, and she buys it anyway. The next month, it's more expensive again, but she still shrugs, and she still buys it. This happens again and again, until eventually Lucy can't remember when her coffee became so expensive. This is known as creeping normality, and it's when something harmful arrives slowly and where each step feels harmless in itself. In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond argues that whole civilisations have ignored structural disaster because the decline came gradually and not all at once. Karl Popper saw the same in politics, where certain freedoms are removed, one small law at a time, and when no small change seems worth objecting to. But it's not just history and politics, it's everywhere in modern life. For example, people might join social media because it's a good place to connect with friends, but then it wants your name, then it wants your location, then it wants your face, and before you know it, you're handing over your children's faces as well. And one day you realise that you've handed over your entire private life, but you can't quite remember when you agreed to it. The trick of creeping normality is that there are no crunch points. None of the concessions seem worth objecting to in themselves. Until, link by link, the chain is made. The worst chains are not those that are thrown upon you, but would gradually appear and which you never notice. They are the ones which emerge while you are looking somewhere else and doing something else, and before you know it, you can no longer move.