Ever notice the funny thing about car alarms?
Let's think about the original intention of the car alarm. To keep someone from stealing things out of your car, right? Or even stealing the car itself.
The alarm would startle the would-be thief, attract attention from nearby pedestrians, and in effect thwart the attempted robbery.
But over the course of decades, car alarms were set off due to malfunction, by accident, or as a beacon for people who forgot where they parked.
The result? We don't pay much attention anymore when car alarms go off.
It has a different association in our minds.
We don't think "someone might be getting robbed" so much as, "someone accidentally pressed the panic button again."
In effect, someone can break into a car, set off the alarm, steal everything inside, and get away without anyone having noticed.
We can see other examples in our lives and history.
Most of society associates music with being an optional extracurricular activity as opposed to the core subject it was hundreds of years ago.
Many aspects of our government have different associations now compared to their original intentions in the late 1700's.
The question to ask ourselves is whether our associations are the right ones. Or, if we need to take a moment and reconsider them.
