Creeping normalcy refers to the way a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments, when it would be regarded as objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period. Examples would be a change in job responsibilities or a change in a medical condition.

The North Korean Army has been accused of using a strategy of creeping normalcy to build up its forces near the demilitarized zone

Korean Demilitarized Zone

The Korean Demilitarized Zone is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula that serves as a buffer zone between North and South Korea. The DMZ cuts the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, crossing the 38th parallel on an angle, with the west end of the DMZ lying south of the parallel and...

 next to South Korea.

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond

Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist and author whose work draws from a variety of fields. He is currently Professor of Geography and Physiology at UCLA...

 has invoked the concept (as well as that of landscape amnesia) in attempting to explain why in the course of long-term environmental degradation

Environmental degradation

Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...

, Easter Island

Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

 natives would, seemingly irrationally, chop down the last tree:

Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.

See also

• Shifting baseline
• Boiling frog
  Boiling frog
  The boiling frog story is a widespread anecdote describing a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death...
  
   - creeping normalcy metaphor
• Camel's nose
  Camel's nose
  The camel's nose is a metaphor for a situation where permitting some small undesirable situation will allow gradual and unavoidable worsening. A typical usage is this, from U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater in 1958:...
  
   - creeping normalcy metaphor
• Death by a thousand cuts
  Death by a thousand cuts
  Slow slicing , also translated as the slow process, the lingering death, or death by a thousand cuts , was a form of execution used in China from roughly AD 900 until its abolition in 1905. In this form of execution, the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions...
  
  
• First they came… - poem about creeping normalcy under the Nazis
• Slippery slope
  Slippery slope
  In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope is a classic form of argument, arguably an informal fallacy...
  
   - an argument, sometimes fallacious
• Salami tactics
  Salami tactics
  Salami tactics, also known as the salami-slice strategy, is a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances used to overcome opposition. With it, an aggressor can influence and eventually dominate a landscape, typically political, piece by piece. In this fashion, the opposition is eliminated...