It's worse than that.
Breaking out of the circle requires taking a risk. It requires bringing in evidence and viewpoints, considering and weighing your options, making a decision based on the available information... taking responsibility for that decision, seeing it through, and dealing with the consequences of it.
If that's activating neurons, let me say it a different way:
It requires LEADERSHIP.
All of the tinpot dictators, all of the karens screaming for you to just take your 9th jab and accept the 2 decades to flatten the curve and why do you want FREEDOM so much anyway, you NAZI FASCIST CAPITALIST, all of them are so conditioned against the idea of leadership that they literally cannot grasp the idea. The idea of making a decision, the idea of taking a risk, or having any real responsibility, is not only alien to them, the pressure of it is literally causing them to melt down. They'd literally lock you in a cage someplace forever if that would mean they didn't have to take any of this risk, to make a decision.
And these are elected officials in the US. Lots of them. We have an entire leadership caste that cannot deal with the most fundamental aspects of leadership. Somehow our system has broken down to the point that it's electing not only bad leaders, but AntiLeaders.