That’s the dizzying cognitive dissonance of “shifting baseline syndrome.” A socio-psychological phenomenon, shifting baseline syndrome describes how environmental information is lost from memory over time, so changes go unnoticed. The generational amnesia observed by Pauly, my Quadra neighbours and me is a main cause of shifting baseline syndrome. Proof is in the subtleties, and shifting baseline syndrome proves that fatalism becomes fatal. Shifting baseline syndrome lays bare all the ways past generations failed future ones.