Climate change, wiping out wilderness,.... Hers is an evolutionary explanation:
In particular, we evolved to respond to immediate personal crises, rather than slowly advancing global ones. This is one reason why, as a species, we find it so hard to stop our current destruction of Eden. A frog, placed in a pan of water slowly heated to boiling, will not jump out to save itself, instead boiling to death, because, like us, it is hard-wired to recognize only sudden changes as profoundly dangerous. Similarly, a hungry frog surrounded by sleeping flies will starve to death — the flies aren’t buzzing about so it can’t see them.
(Quoted from page 38 of Perspective and Other Optical Illusions, by Phoebe McNaugton. Wooden Books, 2007.)
Phoebe McNaughton is an industrial graphic designer and a painter living in England.
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