The Frogmen of Aquaria: An Allegory for the Trajectory of Man

Once upon a time there was a group of people who lived in an underwater paradise called Aquaria. The people of Aquaria were quite different from the people known to you or me. They had large bulbous eyes, greenish skin, long tongues, and webbed feet. In short, they were frogmen – the Frogmen of Aquaria. 

Aquaria was a sparkling and beautiful body of water, but it was its climate that made Aquaria so appealing. Ranging between 60 and 65 degrees, the climate of Aquaria was as comfortable and consistent to the Frogmen as a day in San Diego is to us today. The secret to Aquaria’s mild climate was a great sub-aquarian flame which burned deep beneath Aquaria’s colorful gravelly surface. However, this fact was unknown to the early frogman settlers. 

At some point in Aquaria’s history, climate changes began to occur. Tectonic shifts caused magmatic fluctuations and some other sciencee sounding stuff, which resulted in the flame beneath Aquaria gradually intensifying and altering the consistent temperature of the water. But it just so happened that one of the remarkable physical attributes of frog folk was their body’s ability to adapt to incremental temperature changes. This was likely due to the natural sliminess of their skin. 

Over the course of a typical frogman lifespan the temperature rise was barely noticeable without a thermometer. And so, for several generations the slowly rising Aquarian temperatures did not appear to alarm the frogmen much, if at all. The frogmen simply became acclimated to their changing environment without seriously questioning why Aquaria was getting warmer, nor the future extent of the warming trend. 

Yet while the temperature of Aquaria appeared to be relatively consistent on a day-to-day basis, over a long period of time the change was quite dramatic. For example, over the first five centuries after the warming trend began, the average temperature of Aquaria rose an amazing thirteen degrees. Thus over time, despite the remarkable adaptability of frogman physiology, the effects of the rising heat caused noticeable changes in frogman behavior. 

Surviving frogman art shows early frogmen wearing clothing from neck-to-ankle. But in the last generations of Aquarian society it was not at all uncommon for frog-folk to go through their day wearing tank-tops, shorts, or nothing at all – even in public or on frogman television. 

In the midst of escalating temperatures, almost three-quarters of the frogman economy eventually came to be connected in one way or another, with the research, development, production and distribution of so-called “cool technologies”. Cool technologies were products designed to lower heat output, and included solutions such as cooler running engines, cooler operating computers, low heat appliances, and the like. As one would expect, given the Aquarian climatic conditions, “Big Cool” (as the cool tech industry was commonly referred) became extremely successful and profitable. 

In addition to being grossly profitable, or more accurately due to being grossly profitable, the influence of Big Cool significantly shaped Aquarian government policy, and societal conditions. 

But Big Cool’s application of its influence was not always above board and often unethical. For example, new frogmanological research discovered that some Big Cool industry scientists became aware of the subsurface flame about a century or so prior to the fall of Aquaria. And while one would like to believe that at the point when any frogman became aware of their true environmental situation, soon after every frogman would have also been alerted to such a grave threat to their survival. But sadly that did not prove to be the case, as this early awareness of the Aquarian flame was systematically suppressed by cool technology operatives and their political allies. That fact was revealed by numerous artifact documents stamped with the frogman symbol for “secret”. 

So instead of informing the public about the reality of the flame, Big Cool did the opposite by attempting to gaslight the public. They launched a multi-decade media campaign pushing slogans like “Don’t Worry, Be Cool”, “Chill, We Got This”, and “Keeping it Frosty” to allay public concerns about the heat and discourage independent efforts to investigate the source. 

Yet as the laws of nature tell us, a body or force in motion will stay in motion unless it is opposed by another action or force. In the case of the frogmen the flame below was that “body or force”, and getting-hotter-over-time was the “motion”. So while the “cool technologies” approach offered a measure of comfort to consumers, it did nothing to account for the basic reality of their environmental situation – the intensifying sub-aquarian flame. 

Accordingly, the flame below continued to gradually heat Aquaria to degrees unknown until the momentum of the rising heat finally did what it was long on course to do, boil Aquaria. And for the journey of the frogmen that was the end.

Epilogue

The Frogmen of Aquaria tale is a take on the parable of the “slowly boiled frog”. In that story a frog is placed in a fishbowl, and then the water within is slowly heated. The frog is however fully capable of jumping out of the fishbowl. But instead of jumping out to safety, it acclimates itself to the rising heat until the end. The moral of the traditional boiled frog tale is that slow and incremental changes can sneak-up on us and bring along dire consequences. 

But being “snuck up on” is an indication that there is a blind-spot in one’s awareness of their surroundings (environment). And that was certainly the case in both the parable of the frog, and the tale of the frogmen. 

Had the frog been aware that the fishbowl was being terminally heated, it would have simply hopped out. And had the general frogman public been aware of the true circumstances of their environmental predicament, they likely would have exited Aquaria to safety, despite the opposition of Big Cool. Instead, lacking awareness of their true environmental status, both the frog and the frogmen perished right where they stood, sat, or laid, – as casualties of environmental ignorance. 

However the area of ignorance that ultimately proved to be more fatal to the frogmen than even their lack of awareness of the flame, was their lack of awareness of the character of their society (social environment). As the temperatures in Aquaria increased, so too did the profits and influence of the cool technology industrial complex. And that circumstance stoked a dangerous divergence between the survival interests of the “average” frogman, and the agenda of the Big Cool controlled frogman bureaucracy. 

Quite satisfied with the societal state of affairs which had it on top, Big Cool through its actions demonstrated depraved indifference in regard to the growing risk that the rising heat posed to the general frogman public. As an example, Big Cool leveraged its influence over the media to limit the public’s ability to access information, news, and facts that might upset their profit streams. And that of course included suppressing information about the existence of the subsurface flame. 

So largely and tragically unaware of the threat below their webbed feet, the frogman masses departed existence as victims of their societal circumstances even more so than they were victims of the heat. That again is because they could have all just left Aquaria and its heat.

However those “average” frogmen who died unaware of the flame, did not depart alone. And that statement leads us to perhaps the most perplexing aspect of the frogman situation; and it is a concern which echoes into the world of mankind. Since the intensifying heat was clearly a survival threat to everyone in Aquaria, including all those working in the cool tech industry, why on Aquaria would Big Cool and its allies endanger the lives of everyone by covering up the flame’s existence? 

The answer to that question is a matter of perspective, or rather, who’s perspective mattered. Because like a biological organism, an artificial entity such as a corporation can have a will and agenda that is distinct, even from those who operate the corporation. As it turned out, the collection of artificial entities that comprised Big Cool did indeed have their own will and agenda. And that agenda could be summed up by one word – more. 

Unfortunately the survival needs of the general frogman populace were not aligned with the cool tech industry’s insatiable desires to make ever greater levels of profit. Afterall, Big Cool’s very existence was predicated upon producing products for, and profits from, providing customers relief from the heat of the subterranean flame. Thus the potentially deadly heat condition of Aquaria was the lifeblood of the uber-powerful cool technology industry.  

So while initiatives to dig down to directly address the flame, or an effort to move away to safety, may have meant survival for biological frogmen, they bode death for Big Cool. Therefore in the cold calculus of the cool tech industry, sticking it out in Aquaria was a risk worth taking, like the last ditch hope of surviving a leap from a tall building that is on fire. 

In the end the Aquarians were facing an environmental state of emergency that required everyone (or at least a great majority), to be pulling in the same direction. But due to conflicting interests and an information disparities between the frogman masses and the artificial entities that comprised frogman bureaucracy, the Aquarian society could not align. 

Thus when the full force of their environmental reality finally hit home, the life or death decisions that determined the fate of the frogman fell to who or what was ultimately pulling the strings at that crucial juncture, – the great frogman masses or the frogman bureaucracy. Since the answer was clearly “the frogman bureaucracy”, it was the bureaucracy’s will that was done; and that was a condition that sent all frogmen to kingdom-come.

The end.

Purpose of the Story

Sadly, the Frogmen of Aquaria tale is an allegory for the state and trajectory of mankind. Like the frogmen, the human masses are oblivious to the environmental reality that we must survive. And like the frogmen, humanity’s condition of environmental ignorance is one that has been purposely induced by entities that are satisfied with the existing state of affairs.

Environmental ignorance has induced apathy and inaction on the part of the global masses. Yet an unwatched pot will still boil. So just as the unrecognized flame below continued to heat the waters of Aquaria, the unrecognized environmental reality of mankind continued to evolve. And now after thousands of centuries, it has finally neared or reached a boiling point for both our civilization, and our species.

But while the shoe fits, humanity’s boiling point event is not a reference to the real and serious issue of climate change, but instead a reference to a deadline toward which mankind has been incrementally approaching for thousands of years. That deadline is doomsday, or more specifically self-inflicted annihilation. Climate change is but one of numerous potential avenues to human self-destruction that have been paved by our ignorance in regard to the true environmental reality to which we must align.

So just as the frogmen failed to recognize that neutralizing the flame or evacuating Aquaria were their only environment-allowed survival opportunities, the global human masses have failed to recognize that from the moment humans emerged as the planet’s most dominant species, our next survival mission was (and is) to evolve into a global collective.

Our failure to accept that mission stems from our failure to recognize our true environmental reality. Helping to enable that awareness is one of the primary objectives of KnowledgeWorld.

Copyright Reginald Patterson, KnowledgeWorld.org, All rights reserved.