Opinion: Desensitized public can fight politics, business

Psychologically, it is called desensitization. A Mount Everest climbing guide would call it acclimatization. Organizational consultants would use the phrase getting comfortable with pain.

Whatever label is slapped on it, I am convinced this behavioral principle is actively applied to our politics, to how we structure our daily schedules and to the way we do business. Frankly, the aphorism scares me.

Humor my paranoia for just a few paragraphs.

When I saw the price of gasoline take a slide to $3.11 per gallon from $3.29, I got certifiably giddy. I developed Fred Astaire-clicking heels, a Mary Poppins’ happiness-gulping lilt to my voice and joined Annie in a rousing chorus of “Tomorrow.”

Then reality intruded. In my wild, often accurate, imagination I heard a Venezuelan oil-baron, leaning back, puffing on a huge Cuban cigar, say, “I knew they would learn to live with it.”

It was just nine months ago we were paying $1.97 for regular, and now we are eternally thankful for $3 a gallon. Go figure!

I am asking for a few minutes of your time to decide whether or not acclimatization is going on between our ears.

My pharmacist delivered the bad news years ago that my Lipitor prescription can only be parsed out one month at a time. Every month, I have to call the automated helpline and talk with “Serena” about filling my order.

My research has unearthed the dirty little secret that medical insurance companies get “rebates” from drug manufacturers when the manufacturers are assured, from monthly reports, these drugs continue to show up on their formularies.

I can hear someone in a medical insurance company grousing years ago in an executive board room: “The public will never put up with coming back to the pharmacy every month!” Followed by the patient, assured reply: “Oh, they will learn to live with it.”

There has been a seismic war in Iraq that has cleaved this republic right down the middle for the past five years. We expected “reasonable losses” in the “shock and awe” days. We assumed we were protecting ourselves from nuclear holocaust or another Sept. 11 horror show.

None of us ever expected 3.29 deaths each agonizing day since Memorial Day 2006. My worst fear is that in some bureaucratic hovel, a government staffer responded to this carnage with, “Oh, they will learn to live with it.”

Today, it takes 25 minutes longer than it did 10 years ago to fly to Los Angeles from New York. The airplanes are faster, but there are so many in the sky, the air traffic control delays are off the end of the map.

Try, on a sunny day, to fly on-time into Chicago’s O’Hare, New York’s JFK, Atlanta’s Hartsfield or Boston’s Logan. Good luck.

Passengers are regularly imprisoned for hours on rain-pelted tarmacs, flights are consistently over-booked, and lost luggage is the norm; yet someone in the airline industry is probably saying, “Oh, they will learn to live with it.”

BlackBerrys, Treo 700s, Nokias interrupt conference calls, staff meetings and personal conversations with blaring downloaded renditions of Sting and the “1812 Overture.” And someone in the cell phone business conference room is whispering, “Oh, they will learn to live with it.”

When you get into your car to run to the store and see someone pulled over for driving under the influence, the statistical truth is there are another 2,000 drunk drivers right around you who will not go through a sobriety checkpoint or ever get a ticket. They are lethal killers who are tolerated by our society. And someone in some backyard after downing a couple of six-packs is probably saying right now, “Oh, they will learn to live with us.”

There is a moment when we personally, and as a society, have to refuse to acclimatize, desensitize or get comfortable with the pain.

Is it not time for us to cease our accommodation to political kingdom-builders? And do we not have an obligation to ourselves and to our children to stop spending money on products that cost us our lives and our sanity?

We can scream back, “No, we will not live with this!”

Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting. He can be reached at execenrichment@aol.com.