It’s one of the more famous experiments in modern psychology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Martin Seligman set about electrocuting dogs.

In the classic experiment, he divided the animals into three groups. The dogs in group one were subjected to painful electric shocks but could easily avoid them by a simple action. The second group received jolts of the same intensity at the same time. Their pain, however, couldn’t be escaped, no matter what they did. The dogs in a fortunate third group – the control – were not electrocuted at all.

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Seligman then transferred all his subjects into so-called “shuttle boxes” – apparatuses in which the beasts could escape pain by leaping over a dividing barrier to the non-electrified side.

The dogs from group one and three discovered the trick quickly, bounding to safety whenever the experimenters flicked the switch. The dogs from group two reacted differently. They didn’t jump the barrier. They didn’t do anything at all. They remained still and they passively suffered until the scientists turned off the electricity.

The dogs had learned from the first procedure that they were helpless. Concluding their circumstances could not be changed, they resigned themselves to endure.

Seligman’s wretched animals come to mind in respect of the so-called Panama Papers. Iceland’s prime minister, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, has been forced to resign by revelations of a family connection with a secret offshore company. In Britain, David Cameron’s given a sequence of partial and contradictory explanations for his late father Ian’s investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc.

Elsewhere, though, the response has been more muted: less a sharpening of pitchforks and more a weary shrug.

“A healthy social system would mark this moment as a historical turning point,” writes Fredrik Deboer. “But this is not a healthy social system, and most of the people living within it know that, and so few of us can muster much in the way of righteous indignation.”

Let’s not forget, the Panama Papers follow close on the heels of a major investigation by Fairfax and Huffington Post into another huge data trove, this time leaked from the Monaco-based company Unaoil. The Unaoil documents also imply criminality and corruption stretching across the globe.

Within the Fairfax/HuffPost reports, we see traces of the massive document leaks of yesteryear.

“After the US led coalition won the second Gulf war,” explains one report, “it went to guard the oil ministry – leaving the Baghdad museum undefended to be looted of its treasures. But they did not save the oil industry from thieves. The Unaoil files reveal that Western companies, in concert with Iraq’s new elite, themselves began a sustained campaign of looting.”

That passage brings to mind the Wikileaks data dumps that showed how Operation Iraqi Freedom, one described as a great moral cause, became (per Eric Hoffer) first a business and then a racket.

And therein lies the problem.

The Fairfax/HuffPost series traces the correlation between Unaoil’s chicanery in Iraq and the western invasion of that country, with the criminality of the first flowing inexorably from the criminality of the second. Yet, despite everything we now know about the war – the orchestrated campaign to ensure the invasion happened to schedule; a butchers’ bill for ordinary Iraqis of nearly a million excess deaths; the cascading implications for the region as a whole (of which the emergence so-called Islamic State is merely the most obvious) – the policy makers responsible for the disaster have, by and large, emerged unscathed from the wreckage they wrought.

Iraq is old news and demands for accountability now elicit weary groans from all the savvy pundits: are you still going on about that? Or, to put it slightly differently, the war’s been naturalised, transformed in the public sphere from a political choice into something like an act of God. The invasion just happened, you see, and no one can be blamed for it, any more than we might hold anybody to account for an earthquake or tsunami.

Each time the powerful successfully stare down public outrage, a precedent gets set. Every demonstration of impunity sets the stage for the one that follows. Like laboratory subjects, we learn that nothing can be done, that the world cannot be altered.

The game is rigged, and unless you are part of the global one percent, it isn’t rigged to help you. Fredrik Deboer

“Helpless dogs seem to wilt,” wrote Seligman about his experiments. “[T]hey passively sink to the bottom of the cage, occasionally even rolling over and adopting a submissive posture; they do not resist.”

That’s what’s at stake now.

“For some,” says Deboer, “reading about the Panama Papers will feel like being told by your parents that Santa isn’t real: merely the final confirmation of a suspicion that you have harbored for a very long time. The game is rigged, and unless you are part of the global one percent, it isn’t rigged to help you.”

The problem’s not that such people don’t realise there’s something wrong. The problem’s that they’ve been convinced by prior experience (all those shocks!) that they can do nothing to change that wrongness.

The Panama Papers have stripped away the layer of opaque smarm through which wealthy and powerful usually obscure their activities. The statesman feathers his own nest; the advocate of austerity enriches herself beyond measure; the great patriot plunders the national treasury and sends it offshore.

Mossack Fonseca’s not the only company servicing shell companies – in fact, it’s not even among the first rank in its field. Everyone knows that gaining access to its larger rivals’ databases would be akin to kicking over a rotten log so that all the creatures underneath scurry for cover.

But the problem isn’t knowledge. The problem is power.

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“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” promises the Book of John. That might hold for the Kingdom of Heaven but down here on earth matters work rather differently. Truth, in and of itself, doesn’t bring freedom. On the contrary, there’s nothing more demoralising than understanding how the world works and simultaneously feeling you can do nothing to change it.

The dogs in Seligman’s experiments did not easily recover from what was done to them.

“[W]e took the barrier out of the shuttle box,” he explained, “… but [the dogs] just lay there. We made the dogs hungry and dropped Hebrew National Salami onto the safe side but still the dogs just lay there.”

Fortunately, people are different. By and large, they can learn as quickly from political victories as from defeats. One suspects that a successful revolt against the global elite in any country now would quickly ignite the sullen discontent that dominates the political landscape just about everywhere.

What do you suppose Seligman’s dogs might have done had they been offered the chance to sink their teeth into their tormentors?