India, March 29 -- Remember the first time you saw a video of a wildfire? Or of an ice shelf cracking and crashing into the ocean? Or learnt how many die of hunger each year?

How quickly the horror and outrage fade, as we adjust to a new level of knowledge: This is our reality. This is what our world is like, we tell ourselves.

What we're often leaving unsaid is: This is what our world is like now.

The difference is crucial. Because what we think of as desensitisation to a prevailing situation, is often a whole lot more.

It is an active adjustment to a development that is too looming to face head-on.

Science calls it the shifting baseline syndrome, or SBS.

This is the idea that the human mind, when offered no alternative, will soon ...