My Dad just sent me this story from the Rutherford Institute. The author, John W. Whitehead, describes how we are acclimating to a police state, a 1984-esque lifestyle, without even noticing. This change is palatable because we are "saving the children". And as they grow up, accustomed to a lack of privacy, those invasions of privacy will start to seem less, for lack of another word, invasive to us as a popular culture.
It reminds me of a term I heard recently shifting baselines. As we grow to accept new practices, we forget the old, and then one day the world is unrecognizable and not what we want it to be. Am I a conspiracy theorist?
I worry as I get inured to these concepts that used to enrage me. Am I 'growing up' and realizing I need to pick my battles - you can't win them all and you can wear yourself out trying to fight them. Or am I allowing what was once unacceptable to get away with existing and sometimes even thriving, without a peep out of me. How much of my shifting baseline is acceptable?
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