The minority trap works

It is a well known fact that individual apathy, when multiplied results in collective apathy.  Never did, and never will apathy become action.  The minority have used this fact time and time again to gain ground, mainstream and ensure they and their issues grown and mature into the majority.  I call this the minority trap.

The minority trap I define occurs when something that was abhorrent or distasteful to the population becomes the new norm.  Something that was perceived as going against a collective consciousness becomes acceptable to the majority of that population.

Here is how I have seen it work.  The minority take their issue.  For example – a person or a minority group of people decide that it is okay for one to talk to oneself.  Or they decide they like talking to oneself.  Next is to make the “talking to oneself” real.  They do this by giving it a name.  Let’s call this “talking to oneself” self-talk. 
Self-talk, Self-talking, self-talker, self-talkingly.  Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are coined and used.  Self-talk develops characteristics.  It gets an identity.  It has a genesis. It has a history.  It even has a discovery date.  And the first self-talker.

Self-talking may grow rules, but right now it is fluid.  Or maybe self-talking may be an art.  Either way, self-talking grows.  Dull monologues, quarreling, laughing, questioning, answering, exclaiming, shouting, rhetoric – all the aspects of normal dialogue apply, except that one does it by one’s self. 

I am a self-talker.  In fact, I am the first self-talker.  I talk to myself whilst alone.  And slowly I start self-talking in company.  Quietly, seemingly accidentally.  Then more openly.  I am not hiding or disguising my self-talking.

Strange looks.  Odd comments.  Of course people start wondering what is wrong with me.  Some move away from me.  When moving away from me does not work, they ask me to “please stop that”.  I ignore them.  Self-talking more often and more loudly.  People tell me more persistently and angrily to stop self-talking.
And now ladies and gentlemen - it is tie for the minority card.  Loudly and clearly I speak out, yell out, sing out.  You people (the majority) are against me because of my uniqueness.  I was born this way, or it happened to me all of a sudden, it is an emerging talent, it is my new norm.  You are infringing on my right to talk.  My right to talk to myself.  It is my basic verbal right, my oral right to talk to myself.  If I do not self-talk, I will suffer irreversible physical, emotional psychological harm.

Who will stand up for the populace and tell me to take my debe mouth elsewhere.  No one.  No body. No one can.  And no one does. In any case, I am ready for any opposition.  If even one lone soul does speak out, my minority oppression card gets bigger and bigger.

Concurrently the “cause takers” - the people who like a good cause, and if it is not a good cause will make it a good cause by force – harken to my call to arms, and take up the self-talk cause.  They go beyond singing out the issue.  They drum it.  They march it.  They riot it.  They explode it. 

The pied piper of self-talk is born.  More and more now claim the ability and the need to self-talk.  They are coming out and self-talking right left and centre.  In private and in public.  Everywhere you go, the self-talker is there.  They are among you.  They are surrounding you. 

You cannot speak.  No one else speaks.  No one in the whole world dare speak.  And be labeled “discriminator”?  So the world looks the other way and does nothing.  We the self talkers are so loud.  Each of us talking to ourselves.  

You – poor you!  You cannot hear anyone else – because we have shut up your ears by our self-talking.  One self-talker.  Two louder self-talkers.  Many many very very loud self-talkers.  You cannot hear when others speak to you.  We have closed your ears by our noise. We drown you out.  Normal conversations stops happening.  What was your normal is finished. 

What was strange, abhorrent, unacceptable, immoral becomes familiar.  The familiarity breeds contempt.  Contempt to being outraged.  Self-talking is now the acceptable normal.  The new normal.  The new desired normal by so many.   Multitudes are self-talking.  Soon “everyone is doing it” we say - to assuage the collective apathy.

The minority trap works.  The step from moral outrage, via amorality to immorality is something that is calculated and very easy to achieve.

“Would” I wonder, “the trap works in reverse – from immoral to moral?”

image; http://www.likeateam.com/why-does-the-minority-rule-2/