Threshold is a Double-sided Battery

 Mr. Garrioch gave V1 students homework to post comments below the link, Revisionist History Podcast 1. Days went by, and students became anxious, but no one dared to leave a comment. Atmosphere became tense, and everyone, although no voice came out, was peering into others whether who would break the silence. I, under the invisible pressure, finally left the first comment, and later comments of my peers followed. Thresholds of my peers to post comments were one person, or even more. Threshold, introduced in this podcast, is a number of people required to do something. In this essay, I want to talk more about the concept of threshold, suggest some examples, and finally the double meaning of ‘low threshold’ and how we can achieve it.

Threshold is like a battery icon in electronic device-it needs to recharged by others to reach the maximum. As the time for battery to reach 100% is different for every electronic device, it can take long or short for people to activate their threshold and take action. Also, Malcolm Gladwell said unlike belief, which is internal, threshold is external. But I don’t agree with his view. Threshold is affected by belief, as they interact between each other. Your internal ego tells you not to go out with friends to drive, while your external ego-social ego-assures and compels you that you should go out with them since they are doing the actions. Threshold is the battle between internal ego and external ego, and if the external ego is so capacious that it cannot be satisfied with few friends, internal ego, your belief wins. However, if your external ego is a small tank, it would be easily become full. Besides threshold, your belief is also important in making judgment. If your belief isn’t strong enough to suppress the threshold, you would succumb to the crowd. For example, if you saw a video clip of a teenager who died because of car accident, your belief would become firm and unyielding.

There are many times when people resort to thresholds and do something completely irrelevant and irrational. I think Nazi is one of the cases. People knew Nazism was morally wrong. But the continuous allurement from Nazi, shouting for prosperity of Germans, was more powerful than their thoughts. And once the majority of Germans was engulfed by Nazi, people were under high thresholds to speak out that Nazi was wrong. They became grandmothers, talking to themselves, but quiet in front of the public. The present is no different, even sneakier. Public opinion in SNS is often shifted to one side, which seems to represent the public opinion, but not. When people chase the view of the majority, minorities’ thoughts are ignored. Furthermore, I often see my friends hesitating to leave comment or press the ‘like’ button because not many people had done them. Especially in SNS, quite open area where diverse people share their thoughts, people become to have high thresholds and ironically don’t easily confess their true opinions, because they are afraid that others would throw rocks at them.

So, it seems like people should have low threshold-a smaller tank that can be easily filled to do something. But be careful that low threshold has double meanings. One, it means you can do something you pursue even without others stepping first. But it also means you can do something that you believe it’s wrong even by slightest encouragement of others. Threshold has double sides. But for people who can’t easily express their opinions because of high threshold, low threshold would be recommended. To lower threshold, you should believe in yourself more. Suspicions on beliefs would be a number-one reason to lose against threshold. Try to be right, than liked. On the other hand, for people who easily fall in for mob mentality, high threshold is necessary. Pay more attention and act only when more people get involved in the activity.

So far, I talked about how threshold is similar to a battery icon, and how it conflicts with our inner beliefs. There were examples of Nazi and SNS that show problems regarding high thresholds. But low threshold can also have negative backlashes, for people who are easily convinced to do something that their peers do. Therefore, I think it is important to know how high my threshold is. Then I can be given the right treatment. Since my threshold is relatively high, I shouldn’t get obsessed with peer pressure and let myself do what I want. But remind that low threshold has drawbacks too, and I can be easily swayed by others. After all, the right to make a decision is solely on me, not the threshold.