The Danger Line

Let's do two minutes on thresholds.

I put it to you that there is a spectrum of thought, intent and deed.

A little wavy line bubbles along your life. It peaks at 'deeds' - decisions that you actually turned into reality. The things you do.

I have just been listening to people talk about this morality on the radio. One so-called expert claimed that an immoral thought was immoral  "in and of" itself (as they put it).

When you get your head around what they mean by "in and of" (it's very sniffy Radio 4), you realise that they are talking about thought crime. So if you have ever thought of pushing somebody over a cliff or suchlike then as far as this chap is concerned you should be in jail for the rest of your life.

Many of the rest of us would argue that such a thought merely involves looking at your options and, in that example, usually declining them on either moral grounds, or grounds of the potential for future inconvenience to yourself (being banged up). To push or not to push?...... Not to push.

Then somebody mention videogames (don't they always?)

Do the shootemups make people into murderers? (Usually somebody mentions Tom and Jerry at this point but we had enough of that nonsense in the seventies).

My understanding is yes. That's why American soldiers play them and continue to play the soundtracks in their head as they go into battle. The visual sense is a very powerful rehearsal machine. If that game is portrayed fairly realistically and you see yourself shoot a gun and somebody who looks like a 'person' appear to die then you are becoming desensitised to it if or when it happens again. After all, it's not the first time you have seen it.

So will this exposure make us all into killers? No.

Will exposure make some of us into killers? Yes.

Would it make me into a killer? No. But even I am willing to accept that if I had 1% ability to kill, it might increase it to say 2% but I would still be 98 % short so I think I would be safe from its consequences.

But if somebody, who would otherwise stay this side of the law forever, is already at 99%, that extra 1% will push them over into being a killer. (I'd also argue that what would cause a 1% increase in me perhaps might cause a 30 percent increase in somebody more susceptible).

So, it's about thresholds.

So do videogames make people murder? Yes, susceptible people. We might even call them vulnerable people. 

So how much do we target our society towards vulnerable people?

Sometimes it seems to be quite a bit.

Sometimes not at all.

There is a spectrum of possibility in each of us that is grey, that flows and rolls and rocks and sways as background noise.

It is only converted into an act, into a one or zero, when it reaches the threshold.

That's probably the last word on whether X causes Y in human behaviour, even though it will continue to be debated.

But there's more to it than that.

Thresholds just aren't reached. They are breached. And when they are breached, they can't be repaired. 

It's not quite a one-way valve. The committed murderer does do things other than murder. 

It's quite likely he watches Jeremy Kyle. But he might also play baccarat. Or knit.

Maybe he's mastered his valve, and can drop in and out at will. Or at insanity, depending on the fees of his eventual defence lawyer. 

Those who have control over their threshold - their danger line - are the bogeymen. The monsters. The ones that really scare us.

Those who have less control over their danger line are a bit easier to spot. Perhaps a lower social class. Known to the authorities. Hundreds of arrests. An addiction or three.
Those with control over their valve might be high functioning sociopaths. The story might be one of charity donations, and a wife who was rarely seen in public without covering her face. They might be a well-loved person in the community. A doctor even. A successful business or career hiding the serial killer before inevitable capture.

You can continue smoking for the rest of your life, until you find something (perhaps external props but usually internal resources) that delivers you to the threshold and asks you to smash through it so that you never smoke again.

You can be afraid of heights or spiders or snakes, but push through that threshold and you might look back on it as a silly irrelevance.

Things change forever at thresholds. 

You can only smash plate glass once.

Change begats change begats change.

A threshold is just where it lives.