Looking for a better term than "calculated desensitization" to describe a certain behavior

[Baitball Blogger]

These days people are resorting to the boiling frog explanation to describe why people do not react to protect their own self-interest, even in the face of apparent peril. Essentially, if the danger creeps up on you, you will tend to ignore the immediacy of the problem until it's too late.

Taking it from another angle, if we know that people tend to ignore or avoid taking action for a number of reasons, i.e. inconvenience, or fear of the unknown counter-reaction, wouldn't it be natural to assume that someone else will learn to exploit the situation, pushing and testing a person's limits until the social dynamics are so twisted, you can even remember what civility looks like?

I call that exploitation, calculated desensitization. But, I'm looking for something a little less clinical.

[Sherman A1]

1. I believe the term is spot on

With no need for any changes.

[HopeAgain]

2. One term being used is "hypernormalization."

There is a BBC documentary by that name that everyone should see.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. Whatever we can do to bring attention to this behavior, the better.

I fear for the young. I know how things are supposed to be, because I grew up in a different era. I will never adapt to whatever is happening, today. My main objection is that they expect you to respond with all the goodness that came with a more civil era, because it's easier for them to exploit you.

[randr]

4. Deer in the headlights syndrome

[procon]

5. "Curated apathy." I heard someone use that term in referring to Republicans

who don't seem to care about anything but themselves.

[malthaussen]

6. It sounds good to me as is...

... it's very similar to testing to destruction -- see how far you can bend it until it breaks. We've been doing it with workers for years, now the trend is spreading. The point, it appears, is to break the bonds of community and make each individual a feral, frightened atom, and thus more easy to manipulate.

Since I'm all for clinical terms if they accurately express behavior, "calculated desensitization" works fine for me.

-- Mal

[Baitball Blogger]

7. I have been watching the changing bonds in the community since the nineties.

Where our social organizations once thought of "the public" as everyone who lived in the same zip code, now it means just a select group of very well-networked individuals who set their own agenda and do whatever they have to do to make everyone else follow their lead. If that includes inducements for their buddies, and defamation and isolation for everyone else, so be it.

But, it's very calculated. And I'm afraid that Republicans, who have the inside on controlling the status quo in small towns, have perfected the system. Starting with all that anti-regulation, anti-government and sovereignty bullshit they believe in. Tear things down that work for the entire community, and change the rules of the game to divert the resources to their own.

No wonder they love Trump.

[malthaussen]

8. The Religious Right has become a self-licking ice cream cone...

... small communities which control local government, school boards, community organizations. No route available for change, they will just keep replicating. The only hope (considering the question from the standpoint of epidemiology) is isolation.

-- Mal

[patricia92243]

9. planned desensitization?

[Donkees]

10. Synchronized subjugation