Unknown Risk

Often people will look at risk as existing on a spectrum, of low to high e.g. sitting in your living room watching TV is a low risk situation/environment, whilst going for a walk in a bad neighborhood late at night is a high risk activity, etc. There is some logic to this, however the danger of categorizing people and situations as being “low” risk, is that we can let predatory individuals fly under our radar and/or we fail to take seriously potential threats that may be in our environment. If I’m walking through a dodgy neighborhood, late at night – and there may be unavoidable, legitimate reasons for this e.g. I have lived in dodgy neighborhoods; I’ve picked up towed vehicles from lots that were in bad neighborhoods, etc. – and somebody who has been leaning against a wall watching me, gets up and crosses the road towards me, I would see the situation as being a “high risk” one. However, if they didn’t get up and cross the road, I wouldn’t classify my situation as being “low risk”. The only way I can categorize my situation, is as one that contains “unknown risks”. I don’t have enough information to know the level of risk, concerning the person who is observing me. I know risk exists, but that risk is unknown, rather than low. In this article I want to look at how we often dismiss or discount things because we don’t see them as being as important as they should be; because we tend to see things on a spectrum of importance, the things that we put on the left of it tend to get overlooked and forgotten.

How much do we really know about people? This is not a question that is intended to make you paranoid, or to start suspecting everybody you know of having committed or wanting to commit heinous crimes, etc. What we know of people, is what they present to us. Many people are unaware that Ted Bundy worked voluntarily on a suicide prevention hotline; and apparently, he was very skilled at talking people out of committing suicide. Who knows what his actual motive and motivations for doing so were e.g. was it to have control over somebody’s life and death for a period of time, was it an academic interest he’d developed when studying for his Psychology Degree, or was he was genuinely interested in helping people who’d reached this point in their lives? We’ll never know. However, the man who killed at least 30 women in the 1970’s, appeared to all as a conscious, hard-working and caring individual. Co-workers were shocked at, and many initially disbelieved, the accusations against Bundy. Now, I’m not saying that your co-workers are serial killers. Such individuals are so statistically rare that your chances of coming across/interacting with one are slim to zero; and you don’t need to put any specific security precautions and protocols in place to protect yourself from them i.e. your general safety measures are sufficient to keep you safe. The point is, we aren’t aware of the dark fantasies of others. I am sure that Brock Turner’s father couldn’t equate his son’s sexual assault of an unconscious student, with the person who he used to have breakfast with; his actions must have been an uncharacteristic “mistake” rather than the expression of a dark fantasy. For many people, both Bundy and Turner would have been categorized as being “low risk” individuals. Although there was nothing to identify them in their daily lives as being “high risk” predators, it would have been safer to interact with them as having an “unknown risk”.

Our standard definition of “Stranger” is a little too loose to be useful from a self-protection/safety standpoint. We tend to view strangers as people we don’t know, however people can be familiar to us in one aspect of our lives, yet strangers to us in others. People who worked with Ted Bundy, took classes with Brock Turner, etc., knew how those individuals behaved and acted in particular settings, but they didn’t know how either would respond in others. A co-worker might have thought it would be safe to take a ride with Ted Bundy, or a classmate to have Brock Turner walk them home after a party, however these were situations and contexts they’d never experienced these individuals in before. Neither person would immediately have been thought of as being strangers to the people who “knew” them. If Ted Bundy had ever offered a co-worker a ride in his car, I’m pretty sure they would have seen it as a “low risk” event/affair, when really the situation should have been seen as containing “unknown risks”. Predatory Catholic priests traded on their respect and trust in one context to be translated to another i.e. being left alone with children/teenagers. They weren’t seen as strangers, and I’m sure parents viewed situations when their kids were alone with them as being “low risk” situations. The term “stranger” needs to be contextualized, and be a role that somebody can have ascribed to them in different situations i.e. it’s somebody who you haven’t experienced in a specific situation before e.g. an individual may not be a stranger in a work setting, but if you’ve never been alone with them in a bar (they’ve asked you on a date), then in that setting they are i.e. that is a situation that contains unknown risks.

This is the problem with using spectrums to calculate risk, especially where people are concerned. You’d probably be perfectly safe with Ted Bundy in a public gathering or event, but you’d certainly not want to let yourself be isolated with him – such as going for a drive – however nice you thought he was through your interactions with him at work, or because he seemed to have a heart for worthwhile causes, etc. Thinking that being alone with him would be a low risk affair, is to fail to recognize that high and low risk don’t actually exist, and there are only high risk incidents where the threats are evident, and situations where the risk(s) are unknown.