Found a fascinating article from The Wall Street Journal that explains the way the bureaucracy keeps us in line. The Victorian crowd seems to be particularly expert at this.

“Deer Still Prisoners to Cold War Borders

“A red deer called Ahornia apparently never got the memo that the Iron Curtain doesn't exist anymore. The deer lives in the mountains that were once the site of the electric fence that stood between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. Where the fence once stood is one of Europe's largest nature sanctuaries, and while all sorts of animals have moved in, the Ahornia have mostly refused to cross the long-gone border. "The wall in the head is still there," a producer of nature films said. The amazing part is that the deer alive today were born long after the fence wasn't there anymore. Yet deer have an impressive collective memory of their trails that is passed through generations, so stopping at the border continues to be passed on. A few rebel Ahornia have made it to the other side, and experts say it's only a matter of time before adventurous young ones begin to explore beyond the imaginary fence.”

A bloke called Jim Finley explained this on the website Slatest.

“Learned helplessness, they call that. If an animal (or person) is stuck in an unpleasant situation for long enough and tries unsuccessfully to escape it enough times, they give up, and then don't escape it even if it becomes easy to do so. The original experiment was with dogs. The experimenters would put a dog in a small enclosure with a metal floor and high sides, then give it electric shocks through the floor at random intervals. At first the dogs would go into a frenzy trying to get out, but eventually they'd give up and just stand there whimpering and shivering while they got shocked. Then the high sides of the enclosure were replaced with ones low enough for the dogs to easily get over, but the dogs would still just stand there shaking and whimpering and get shocked without trying to get out. A grim experiment - I couldn't do it. Some abusive situations produce similar results in humans; I think it's related to Stockholm Syndrome.”

“Some abusive situations produce similar results in humans”, eh? See how it’s done in our case? Treat motorcyclists like outcasts, charge us “road safety levies” that nobody else has to pay, tell us porkies about how dangerous riding is, show us television commercials that misrepresent riding, demonise us as drug-selling bikies (and don’t listen to reason, because that’s not what you’re after) – and eventually we won’t even complain any more. We’ll just stand there whimpering and shivering.

Don’t put up with it. Complain to their political masters, as hard and as often as you can. Stop them!

Peter “The Bear” Thoeming