The Pike Syndrome

The professor had the graduate students that were his aides bring in a table. Then he had them bring in a big glass fish tank. It was pretty big, about five to six feet long and about four feet high. Then he had them bring in the pike, which is a carnivorous fish—and then bring in the minnows.

It was a pretty convincing act. The pike eats faster than the human eye can react to and calibrate what's actually happening. You actually have to have slow motion photography to see that pike—it goes up, moves forward, takes that fish inside its mouth, and backs up to approximately the same place it was before. Deadly action.

Lo and behold—I'd hate to be a minnow, because those 40–50 minnows were history in, it seemed like, five to six seconds.

And then the professor brought in a bell-shaped container that was open on both ends and put it into the tank. And now we have a boundary—a separation in the middle of this big tank where this pike is. There is an interior wall, and they put some more minnows down in the water. But this time, they don't go in the water where the pike is. They go in the bell-shaped container.

Now, the pike may be a master eater, but it doesn't have the best vision in the world. And so, the pike strikes—and is foiled. In fact, it's hurt. It strikes and is hurt—it bumps its head into the glass. It can't even fathom that it's there. Can you imagine? That that's what happens time after time.

And the pike, who loves those minnows, the pike who can eat 40 minnows in six seconds, finally becomes docile. And then the professor lifts that bell-shaped container out of the water… and now the minnows are swimming free, co-existing peacefully with a pike who wouldn't dare strike at a minnow.

It's amazing how quickly we can learn. It's amazing how quickly we can learn the limits of our abilities. And of course, it's amazing how often the environment changes underneath us, and we refuse to acknowledge it.

Maybe we couldn't see the glass, no, but we refuse to be aware and have sensual acuity. We refuse to retry the capabilities we once had… We refuse to even strike out and try it again at a different time, in a different way.

It's so obvious they even have a name for it. They've christened it the Pike Syndrome