Teach a frog to fight

“Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”

– Joanna Macy

Legend has it that frogs are pretty stupid. Put one in a pot of water, turn up the heat and it’ll just sit there until it’s cooked alive. In actual fact, frogs are smart enough to jump out of the water, but never mind that for the moment. It's the metaphor that counts and the lesson that it holds for humans in a rapidly warming world.

The problem–paradoxically enough– is that the human nervous system is fantastically good at adapting and adjusting. Neuroplasticity is an incredibly powerful force that operates continuously throughout life. Put a human in a novel predicament and after a few weeks or months, that human will find a way to live, even in circumstances that are ultimately hostile to its health. This fact contains vital lessons for how teachers, coaches, trainers and therapists approach their students, clients and patients. The compelling question of the day is simple: How shall we treat, train, coach and educate the human frog in context?

the shadow side of softness

For example, consider a popular wellness-based approach to treating anxiety, depression and related sufferings. Patients and clients are often counseled to relax, be receptive, accepting, forgiving, tolerant and at ease with their circumstances. “Just breathe. Surrender. Live with your predicament, adapt, relax, stretch and breathe. Express your gratitude. Let it be.”

To be sure, this approach sometimes gets results and undoubtedly has some benefits for some people in some circumstances. But what if the ultimate source of the person's suffering lies not within the individual, but in their circumstances, predicament or context?

Seen in this light, our advice seems entirely backwards. Instead of improving the frog's situation, we actually drive her predicament deeper into passivity, compliance and domestication. The frog relaxes, comes to peace with her world and ultimately gets cooked alive.

As in all things, framing and context are crucial. Every time we focus on individual attitude as the solution, we reinforce the notion that the ultimate source of the problem lies within. According to this narrative, the frog is the one with the problem. If only she could relax and be more receptive to his life experience, all would be well.

This is a perilous path, one that we would immediately recognize in other circumstances. For example, what kind of counsel would we give to a person–typically a woman–in the grip of an abusive, destructive relationship? Would we recommend softness, adaptation, breathing and relaxation? No, such a teaching would strike us as absurd, even malpractice. Even an untrained observer would see this clearly: in this kind of situation, the first priority is to fight back and act. Change the circumstances or get out of the water. There’s nothing wrong with you. The problem is with your predicament.

martial artistry: learning how to fight

Today’s human frog has a problem, but that problem has little or nothing to do with a neurotransmitter deficiency or his failure to breathe deeply. Rather, the problem lies in his setting, predicament and context. In the first place, the frog’s body is ancient, aboriginal and millions of years in the making, and now he’s being forced to live in an alien, modern world, one that’s often hostile to his or her health. Even worse, that world is now in the grips of a radical acceleration into ecologic and social crisis. It’s no wonder that the frog feels anxious, stressed, depressed, cynical and angry; it would be surprising if he felt any other way.

In these circumstances, it seems spectacularly counter-productive to teach the frog the arts of surrender, relaxation and acceptance. Instead, what we ought to be doing is teaching our frog how to fight, how to ask questions and how to rebel. Remember, the problem is not the frog, her nervous system or her attitude. The problem is with the system that she is embedded in. In fact, her anxiety, depression and insomnia is perfectly normal and given the circumstances, it could hardly be any other way.

As teachers, coaches, trainers and therapists, this puts our job description in a new light. Instead of teaching the frog to feel better, we should be teaching her how to rebel against the life-hostile characteristics of the world she inhabits. In other words, stop thinking in terms of individual cures, therapies, prescriptions and remedies. Instead, start thinking in terms of practical activism at a large scale. In other words; Don’t adapt, fight back.

Naturally, this proposal makes many of us feel distinctly uncomfortable. Teachers, coaches, trainers and therapists are accustomed to working with individual bodies, individual minds and individual problems, not widespread, system-level dysfunctions. As a culture, we feel uneasy about the whole notion of fighting, rebellion and activism. And of course, we utterly ignore it in most educational settings and curriculums. We’re conditioned to thinking of fighting as a problem, not a solution.

But our avoidance of the issue backfires in some spectacular ways. The vast majority of modern humans are uneducated in the arts of activism and fighting. And because of our ignorance, we tend to behave badly. Some of us simply go passive in the face of conflict and become victims; others become wildly aggressive and destructive. Untrained in the art, many of us fail to find the sweet spots of creative, productive social progress. It’s no wonder that we find ourselves mired in chaos, polarization, trauma and mistrust.

To put it another way, today’s human frog is a white belt, an untrained beginner, loose in a highly complex world. The water is getting warmer every day, but even if he realizes the nature of his predicament, he is poorly equipped to make a difference. What the frog really needs is a “fighting curriculum” or an “activist curriculum.” As teachers, therapists, trainers and coaches, our job is to teach people these fundamentals: when to fight, who or what to fight, and especially, how to fight. In other words, martial artistry.

Naturally, this proposal will strike many as “radical” in the extreme. But from the frog’s point of view, this “radical” curriculum is actually a conservative, life-preserving act. Save yourself by taking action. Jump out of the water, turn down the heat and change the system that is killing us. This is not only prudent, it’s ultimately a healing act.