It's Only a Dish...

Photo by Steven Thompson on Unsplash

SMASH!

Implicit threats are usually not subtle: a dish thrown across the room, a hole punched into a wall, a balled-up fist pulled back and just hovering.

The problem usually isn’t spotting the implicit threat. The problem is these threats are often minimized or ignored.

Lonnie Athens’ research into what he called “the violentization process” - as opposed to the socialization process - suggested that seeing violence was one critical component of becoming a violent criminal through “personal horrorification” in witnessing it. Dr. Lonnie Athens described a four step process to becoming a violent criminal, and it is no surprise that witnessing violence is present in both victimization and violentization.

Witnessing violence against things prepares and desensitizes someone for violence to happen to them. You know they are capable of it. You know how unpredictably it can erupt. And when the plate eventually hits your head, it can be dismissed as an accident for the first few times.

POW!

Verbal threats of violence are taken more seriously, depending on who is being threatened. For one person in particular, no verbal threats are tolerated at all, and in fact are Federal crimes.