Callouses.

When soft fingertips and steel strings meet, there's pain. Persist, the pain lessens. Then, over time, you don't feel any discomfort at all.

When I was younger, I could remember when I was growing up, there where whispers of a certain category of film that existed called a snuff movie. A snuff film. A film where someone was actually killed on screen. Not enacted, but the real thing.

“A snuff movie is a film that depicts or claims to depict the murder of a person or group of people for the audience's entertainment, and is often produced for financial gain. The concept of snuff films became well known in the 1970s, when a conspiracy theory was spread that a secret industry was producing such films. However, there is no verified evidence of a genuine, commercially produced snuff film.”

I’m pretty sure the ownership and/or distribution of something like that would have been illegal. They were promoting or propagating events of death and destruction and carnage. Now, the things that would have been illegal many years ago and almost impossible to find had you been looking for such things, are available at our fingertips. And anybody can access them. Including young people.

Through constant exposure, some people have become so desensitised to horror and so desensitised to graphic scenes of murder, dismemberment and carnage that it takes more progressively more extreme content to shock them. With the advent of modern technology and the availability of the internet (specifically things that can be shared on the internet), the argument is made that this has opened up a doorway to access the worst things that the world can throw at us, or that we would have thrown at us.

One example of this is a video that surfaced online this week (that I have not watched) of a hand to hand combat duel to the death, between a Russian soldier and a Ukrainian soldier.

The Russian managed to reach for his knife and he survived, the Ukrainian did not. It was made even more disturbing by virtue of them speaking respectfully to each other in the final moments of the altercation that resulted in one of these men dying. This was videoed; someone had to sit back and video this. A murder or killing taking place on camera, the interaction between the two men, the cameraman then made that video available, to the extent that it went “viral.”

It went on to various file sharing sites, some social media outlets picked up on it, then users posted it. Sensibly, many of these sites didn't show the actual video. However, if you look at the comments for the people that are flocking to these posts, so many people are crying out "Where is the video?" “I watched that video and it proved that war is hell. It is extremely hard to watch.”

People are crying out for the video and asking "Why haven't you posted the link to the video?" Like it’s a dissapointment that they can’t watch this immediately from the comfort of their own home. Those that have viewed it are talking about how terrible it is and then they go into graphic details outlining the contents of the video.

Their justification for doing so is that people need to see the horrors of war, what is going on in the world; but do they really have to see it, do they have to hear the screams, do they have to see the blood? Do people really need to see that? What is actually achieved by that? If you were to sit and look at that today, if you were to put yourself through that, how would it affect you in any way for the better?

Would it make you an anti-war campaigner? Would it make you take to the streets with placards screaming that war is bad? That is a message that has been sent out by millions of people in the past and guess what? War has not stopped and war has not ceased. Wars have multiplied, casualties have multiplied, carnage and death has multiplied.

Knowing about it, speaking out against it doesn't stop it. War is started by old rich men and women in ivory towers and it is young men and women that are sent out into the fields as cannon fodder and that end up in videos like the one I am describing.

So in sharing something like that, what are your actual motives for doing so? Many people share content these days for clickbait. They believe it will get people to visit their page, to subscribe to their account, maybe even monetize what they are doing. But you have to ask the question, is monetising death something you are comfortable with? Is putting content like that out there something you are can live with?

Watching the actual death of a man or a woman or a child on a social media platform, putting it out there for the world to see, is that something you believe in? Is it worthwhile use of your time and that will edify or educate people that happen to come upon it?

I believe the answer to that is no. Because when someone sees or witnesses a scene such as that, or someone is exposed to material such as that, it never makes a positive impact. It will deposit images and sounds in that person's head that will never leave them, even if they are only exposed to it very briefly. It can be extremely traumatic. It can cause people a lot of mental distress. They will never un-see or they will never un-hear those things that they have seen and heard.

I believe that anyone pushing and promoting material such as this is sick. Maybe they don't realise what they are doing; or maybe they are overriding their natural impulse to recoil from repugnant acts like this simply for click bait or because they have got caught up in the social media circus and they believe that they are doing humanity a service by spreading stuff like this around.

Every type of atrocity and death is there at the click of a button. Every type of perversion. Anything can be sought out and located with ease. You don't have to leave your home to get access to the most graphic atrocities or the most perverse actions. You can do it with the device that is in your hand.

If you've ever played a stringed instrument, you'll know about callouses. Callouses on your fingertips. So when your soft fingertips come into contact with tense strings, whether they be nylon strings, steel strings, whatever those strings are made of, your soft fingertips are not used to coming into contact with a hard, unforgiving material like nylon or steel.

So as you move your fingers up and down those strings, as you learn to play chords, as you learn to play scales, your fingertips will become sore. It will feel very uncomfortable. But in order to progress and master your instrument, you need to practice. You need to push through that discomfort. You need to push through your body telling you to stop exposing yourself to that painful stimuli. And you need to practice.

And when practicing, over time, your fingertips will build up callouses. Hard skin. The soft skin will become hard. It will become tough. It will become durable. You will no longer feel pain where you once felt pain. You will have endurance to that uncomfortable fingertip stimuli. Endurance that did not exist when you first picked up that instrument.

Our mind can also develop calluses. On exposure to bad things, evil things, wicked things, negative things, perverse things, our mind should be in a state of revulsion. But we can override that revulsion and we can expose ourselves to the things that we should not be exposed to. And if that is done frequently enough, or that is done over a period of time, in the same way as our fingertips build up callouses when we are learning to play an instrument, our mind can build up calluses when it comes to exposure to very negative or harmful stimuli.

And that is what is happening in our society at this time. And not just with adults, but tragically it is also happening with children. Children are developing callouses from a very early age. Young people, teenagers, people in their 20’s, 30’s and older. The age is not especially relevant. It is the development of the callous that matters. But these callouses are developing and developing at a alarming rate.

So much so that when horrific stimuli like the type I am describing in this particular piece is set before many people instead of recoiling in horror, which some people do, others are questioning “where is the video, where can I see this, why haven't you put this up here, I want to see this for myself.”

Anyone that is in that position, if you are one of those people in that position, then I say you are in a dangerous place because you have become calloused. And that is not a good thing. So avoid the development of callouses, avoid mental callouses, avoid emotional callouses. It should seem obvious but sadly, it’s not. Some folk need a reminder.

Including the writer.