@philosophyminis: Lucy goes into her local coffee shop and she finds her favourite drink is a bit more expensive. It's only a few pennies, and so she shrugs and she buys it anyway. The next month it's more expensive again, but still she shrugs and she 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 his book Collapse, Jared Diamond argues that whole civilisations ignored structural disaster because the decline came gradually and not all at once. Karl Popper saw the same thing in politics, where certain freedoms are removed, one small law at a time, and when no single change seems worth objecting to. But it's not just history and politics, it's also in modern life. People might join social media because it's a good place to connect with friends, and 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 too. And one day you realise you've handed over most of your private life, but you can't quite remember when you agreed to it. The trick of creeping normality is that it hides the crunch points. None of the concessions seem worth objecting to, until link by link the chain is made. The worst chains are not those which are thrown upon you, but which gradually appear. They're the ones which emerge while you're looking somewhere else and doing something else. And before you know it, you can't move.

Jonny Thomson

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Saturday 16 August 2025 19:11:11 GMT