I am not sure where I heard this analogy originally, but it has been on my mind for a few months, and it seems very relevant today.
There was a very insensitive rodent experiment conducted in the 1950-1960's where scientists placed a single rat in an area where the rat was repeatedly shocked causing the rat some level of pain. In the experiment where there was a solitary rat, and no obvious source of the pain, the rat simply curled in a ball and gave up. There was no escape and no obvious source of the shock, and there was no fight.
The same experiment was repeated with 2 rats in the same area, both being shocked causing both rats some level of pain. In this experiment, where there were 2 rats, each one became aggressive and they attacked one another where one rat subsequently killed the other rat. In this experiment, although the rats were wrong about the source, they found each other to blame for the pain and responded accordingly.
This experiment reminds me of what's happening here in America, where there hasn't been so much hatred between different groups of people in decades, if not longer, all feeling some level of pain and blaming each other. The pain is real, the pain is being felt, but the different groups - capitalism/other, young/old, wealthy/poor, racial, political, ideological - are all blaming the other side and not realizing where the pain is actually coming from.
The middle class is being destroyed, destroyed by the economic situation in this country. The money is bad, the wages are stagnant, the taxes are oppressive and nobody is getting ahead. Life expectancies are dropping and drug addiction is surging. The political climate is becoming violent and toxic. Groups are pitted against each other sure that the opposition is the source of their pain.
A new perspective is needed, and the systemic economic problems that are providing the "shocks" have to be fixed so that we can stop tearing the country apart, and stop tearing ourselves apart.