Bad, worse, better? How shifting baseline syndrome dims our outrage

Why do humans adjust with such ease to radical change? It’s one of the ways we refocus energy on survival. This was once invaluable; it is often now a liability

Remember the first time you saw a video of a wildfire? Or of an ice shelf cracking and crashing into the ocean? Or learnt how many die of hunger each year?

An Antarctic ice shelf scored with cracks, as seen in 2016. (NASA)

How quickly the horror and outrage fade, as we adjust to a new level of knowledge: This is our reality. This is what our world is like, we tell ourselves.

What we’re often leaving unsaid is: This is what our world is like now.

The difference is crucial. Because what we think of as desensitisation to a prevailing situation, is often a whole lot more.

It is an active adjustment to a development that is too looming to face head-on.

Science calls it the shifting baseline syndrome, or SBS.

This is the idea that the human mind, when offered no alternative, will soon accept as normal something that seemed extreme or abhorrent at first.

It is one of the ways the mind (that ephemeral engine of our being) protects the self and refocuses our energies on survival. The fundamental message is: “Things are still okay. You’re okay. Let’s just get through this.”

The term “shifting baseline syndrome” was coined by French marine biologist Daniel Pauly in 1995, while researching fisheries management. Fisheries managers were adjusting to a shifting baseline of fish populations without considering the earlier data, the ecological reasons for the shifts, or the impact, he noted, in an article published in a scientific journal that year.

The term gained popularity in conversations around species disappearance, and then in conversations about urban planning. It began to be used to describe, for instance, how people adjust to intensifying traffic jams on a daily commute.

Applied to human behaviour, it proved to be revealing. Because the thing about SBS is, it doesn’t end with the active adjustment.

What often follows is a cycle of denial, leading to what social scientists call “generational amnesia” and “personal amnesia”. In the first, people pass on skewed ideas to children and other young people, perpetuating the now-prevailing idea of a new normal.

In the second, they do this in their own heads and “forget” what the old normal was.

We see this in society, when people voice biases that were, until recently, treated as abhorrent. Or behave in ways that were recently considered inhumane or even criminal.

We have been down this road, over and over, as a species. And it is a dark one. It has perpetuated horrors ranging from slavery and concentration camps to atrocities against women, and crimes against those of certain castes, tribes and communities.

What makes SBS so dangerous is that, psychologically and sociologically, it allows us to remain at rest, somewhat at peace, in an increasingly abusive and restrictive environment.

It helps most convicts, for instance, adjust quickly to life in prison. “At least I can still see the sky,” they have been known to say. Or, “At least I can still see it for an hour a day.”

This was an effective evolutionary survival tactic when the extenuating circumstances we faced were out of our control: when certain foods were no longer available to us, or an injury required one to adapt quickly to a new reality.

Today, we control much of our world. Which means the extenuating circumstances are often of our own making. SBS has not evolved to recognise this, and so it has gone from survival skill to liability.

The truth is, we cannot afford to forget the old realities, because there is still hope that they can be restored.

What’s one thing you should be fighting for, that you might be using SBS to block out? What can you do about it today? Voice an opinion. Support a friend. Be more honest with the kids.

That’s how we built our world. It’s often been how we saved it.