Let me tell you a story about cages — both visible and invisible. In the late 1960s, then–graduate student Martin Seligman and colleagues ran experiments that would come to define how we understand trauma. It started with harnessed dogs who were given electric shocks.
There were two groups of dogs. The first group of “experimentally naive” dogs received so-called training in escaping or avoiding the shocks in the first place, through use of a shuttle box. Over time, the dogs discovered, first by accident and then purposefully, that they could jump a low barrier to escape the painful electric shock. They learned to evade the pain quickly over subsequent trials. The second group of dogs, however, were rendered unable to escape those excruciating shocks. That group also learned something.
When the dogs in group 2, who had no escape or avoidance training, were placed in the shuttle box with a low barrier, over which they could jump to avoid the shock, they simply lay down and whimpered, even as the shock continued.
Seligman and colleagues called it “learned helplessness.” When you’ve been hurt enough times, in enough ways, with no way out, you stop believing in the idea of escape. Even when freedom is right there, just one jump away.
Years later, Seligman realized something else. Helplessness wasn’t permanent. When the researchers physically lifted those broken dogs over the barrier a few times, they began to try again. They remembered they had legs. They remembered they had options. It took repetition. It took care. Learned helplessness could be unlearned.
A Pavlovian hammock,or harness, like this was used in the research by Seligman et al in the 1960s, to achieve operant conditioning of “learned helplessness” in the restrained dogs.
The methodology was straightforward but brutal. In the first phase, Seligman and his team used a Pavlovian harness apparatus to restrain that group of dogs, delivering inescapable shocks in regular intervals. In the second phase, these same dogs who’d undergone unavoidable shocks were placed in the shuttle box, where escape was possible. This second stage revealed that the barrier wasn’t the issue. The barrier itself was low, easily jumped. But the conditioning was stronger than the physical limit. The real trap was mental.
That experiment was about dogs. But this story is about us.
“It’s Too Late to Halt the Climate Crisis.”
“Ceasefire Talks Fail in Sudan.”
“US Vetoes UN Security Council Resolution Calling for an Immediate, Unconditional Ceasefire in Gaza.”
“Too Much Peace Can Bring Its Own Dangers.”
“The Fatigue Is Not Only Real — It Is Absolutely Legitimate.”
The pattern is recognizable. A crisis erupts. Images circulate. Outrage builds. And then comes the slow drip of statements from officials and columnists: “It’s too complicated.” “There are two sides.” “It’s been going on forever.”
The geography changes. The victims change. The year changes. But the underlying message doesn’t: Do not expect change. Do not imagine change. Do not try.
We’ve heard these lines for decades. They are dressed up in new words but carry the same message — that it’s too late to halt the damage, that peace is a fool’s dream, that ceasefire talks will fail before they even begin, that even when almost every nation agrees, one powerful hand can veto the will of the world. That exhaustion is not only normal but inevitable, so we should adjust to it.
Over time, this repetition does something to you. It works like Seligman’s shocks, chipping away at the belief that your actions matter. You start to compartmentalize: The big things are too entrenched, so you retreat into smaller, private concerns. You focus on your own survival, your own family, your own work, telling yourself it’s practical.
But the cost is subtle and devastating — you carry a quiet, corrosive belief that injustice is permanent and that the moral horizon is fixed in place.
This conditioning isn’t only political; it’s also generational. It seeps into how communities raise their children, how educators teach history, how movements decide whether to fight or to compromise. In colonized nations, the memory of uprisings crushed is passed down like an heirloom, shaping the limits of what feels possible. In occupied territories, even imagining a free future becomes dangerous because it risks drawing the attention of those who hold the keys to the cages.
But it’s not only in the history books or the speeches. It also shows up in the smallest choices we make without even noticing. It’s in the career you decide not to pursue because “people like us” don’t get those jobs. It’s in the story you don’t tell your child because you don’t want them to get their hopes up. It’s in the friend you don’t visit because the checkpoints make the trip too hard. It’s in the way communities quietly stop making long-term plans because the future feels like someone else’s territory.
We’ve heard these lines for decades. They are dressed up in new words but carry the same message — that it’s too late to halt the damage, that peace is a fool’s dream, that ceasefire talks will fail before they even begin, that even when almost every nation agrees, one powerful hand can veto the will of the world.
The result is a kind of invisible shrinking: of horizons, of ambitions, of the collective imagination. Neighborhoods stop expecting investment. Students stop expecting the curriculum to reflect their lives. Families stop expecting justice from the courts. Even joy is rationed, saved for small, “safe” moments so it doesn’t draw too much notice. Over time, this isn’t just about what is done to us — it becomes about what we stop trying to do for ourselves. And when enough people in a generation absorb that lesson, it calcifies into culture. The cage doesn’t need guards at every corner if the people inside believe the walls are immovable.
Those in power rely on this. They rely on our fatigue. They rely on our lowered expectations. They rely on us adapting instead of resisting. And if you step back, you’ll see how much of the news, the commentary, the “expert” analysis serves to reinforce the idea that change is impossible, whether it’s the drowning of entire towns in floodwater, the starvation of civilians under blockade, or the slow erasure of a culture under military occupation.
Every generation is told that the battles of the past are over, that history has already been decided. But the truth is, the script ends only when we stop playing our assigned role in it.
The worst part is how invisible the barrier becomes. When you grow up inside it, you forget it’s a barrier at all. The cage becomes the world.
And yet Seligman’s dogs also show us something else. Helplessness is not inevitable. It can be reversed.
When someone lifts you over the barrier and shows you the other side, you remember. The same occurs when a strike wins its demands. When an occupying army is forced to withdraw. When a court convicts a war criminal despite all predictions of immunity. When a dam is torn down and a river runs free for the first time in a century.
These moments are jolts of possibility. They are the political equivalent of being lifted, paws and all, into safety. The more we see them, the more we believe they can happen again.
That’s why history matters. Not just as a record of atrocity, but as a record of escape.
Algeria wrenched itself free from 132 years of French rule. South Africa dismantled apartheid under the weight of both domestic resistance and international solidarity. Northern Ireland ended three decades of conflict with the Good Friday Agreement. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe forced a pause to a massive oil pipeline project against overwhelming odds. A dyslexic student once told they’d “never make it” became a best-selling author. An immigrant who arrived with nothing built a global company from a one-room apartment.
None of these victories were inevitable. All of them happened because people refused the lesson they had been taught: you can’t change this.
The question now is whether we still recognize the low barrier when we see it — and whether we are willing to lift each other over it.
Because the cage isn’t just steel and laws and borders. It’s in the news headlines that tell you to stop trying. It’s in the speeches that call your demands “unrealistic.” It’s in the fatigue that whispers you should just sit this one out.
The shocks may have been real. The wounds may be deep. But the barrier is still low. And we still have legs.
