THE BOILING FROG METAPHOR

Frog Contemplating Boiling Water

The story of the boiling frog is often used as a metaphor to illustrate human beings’ inability to gradually be aware of threats or changes around them until it is too late to do anything about it.  A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an action that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison.

Daniel Quinn, writing in The Story of B, describes the boiling frog metaphor:

“If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, it will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.”

This metaphor nicely illustrates many actual examples that we should be paying more attention to before it’s too late, even though scientific studies debunk this actually happens to a frog.  A frog dumped into boiling water will immediately die, while one introduced to increasing heat will bail out once it gets uncomfortable.  But properly introduced, it can be used like the metaphor of the ostrich sticking its head in the sand to illustrate how some folks simply don’t want to know about impending doom.

 Many political speeches use the metaphor to arouse fear in the populace to get their attention to a real or bogus threat for political gain.  One real example I read about is the gradual increase in prosperity and excess for a culture that can ultimately destroy itself from within if not acknowledged and acted upon.  This can happen in any organization that placidly accepts a gradual change that could ultimately destroy their very existence unless they identify and act to counter the threat.  The last remaining Blockbuster store has now closed while Amazon has shifted consumer sales from brick-and-morter stores to on-line shopping.  There are myriad examples of how technological advances and cultural shifts eliminated once thriving enterprises almost overnight.  Resistance to change and/or the naïve failure to acknowledge the threat was their undoing.

And finally, we need to possess the common sense to distinguish which of the changes creeping into our lives need to be identified and either challenged or embraced!  Learning from the metaphors of frogs and ostriches can enlighten us.