It’s a mirror image of life as we have come to know it in recent decades; a montage of years of unscrupulous dealings. Feel free to include former governments, and all those once-upon-a-time politicians, who have contributed their forgotten tuppence worth to a devastated social landscape.

Life in recent years has been a disaster, and every disaster is followed by a crisis — a time of intense difficulty or danger. That’s where I believe we are at right now. Society is on a knife-edge. We have arrived at the tipping point.

A tipping point is what happens after a society’s boiling point, or threshold, has been reached. Annoyance turns into outrage for a period, and then the outrage converts to uncontrollable anger.

Inevitably, people take to the streets. Often the scenes that are flashed across our screens are unpleasant.

Conversationally, a threshold might be, “We refuse to be treated this way any longer,” or “We’ve had enough, no more.” 

The tipping point follows. 

When it occurs, the reaction is both destabilising and historic in its outcome. Once the threshold is crossed, the tipping point is unstoppable. It’s outcome, unlike its cause, is rarely predictable; but it is non-reversible without exception.

Tipping points in society occur usually every decade, when the year’s final digit is xxx1, give or take two years either side. It’s as though a social volcano that’s been restlessly dormant for a number of years prior to the tipping point erupts, mostly when our collective patience can’t take the strain of oppression any longer. 

Many tipping points benefit the greater good; others don’t.

Major tipping points in history include September 11.

The attacks on the twin towers became the threshold that led the US government to invade Iraq. War was the tipping point. 

November 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall. The threshold was the wall’s destruction, the tipping point was the reunification of west and east Germany, and the decline of communism.

This 10-yearly tipping point is caused by a process called bifurcation, which is the consequence of a series of events within society that has an eruptive effect on that society, splitting it into two parts, or sides. The events are what’s called the threshold, while the tipping point is what happens after the events.

In November 1982, the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government collapsed due to its controversial budget which proposed to introduce a tax on children’s shoes. 

Anything that adversely affects children is an instant tipping point. 

This had been Ireland’s third government in less than two years. 

The threshold was the nation’s anger at a tax on children’s shoes. The tipping point was the government’s downfall.

Ireland’s water meter protests became another major tipping point. 

In March 2011, environment minister Phil Hogan began setting up Irish Water. This was the threshold — the moment people started to rally against a price tag on water.

Two years later, hundreds of protestors patrolled neighbourhoods, preventing the installations. 

The more forceful the reaction from those in authority, the more persistent the protestors became. 

Right2Water Ireland organised almost 100 protests across Ireland on November 1, 2014. Politicians were forced into making major concessions. 

The tipping point came when the government was forced out of office, and the water meters went to the museum.

In November 2010, the Irish government’s statement of its bank bailout was announced. 

The threshold, the point of no return, was the €85bn of taxpayers money that was used for the bailout. 

The tipping point came just three months later when, in the February 2011 general election, Fianna Fáil paid a shocking price as a result of the financial collapse. 

The party won fewer seats than Fine Gael and Labour. Such a defeat was unheard of in the party’s history. It was another historic tipping point, which created a hunger for more change.

Undoubtedly the most devastating tipping point in our lifetime has been the pandemic. 

Just as one decade ended and a new one began, we were suddenly faced with a virus that would wipe out huge sections of the population. 

Just like all bifurcations, covid split society in two. 

The threshold was reached when the fake news side turned on those who chose to believe what the scientists were telling them. 

The tipping point was a breakdown in society. 

As of now, scientists are still at a loss to measure the full effect of the covid tipping point. To that extent, we most likely will never know.

Here at home, on a smaller but no less absorbing scale, we are witnessing the latest tipping point as it moves towards its inevitable conclusion.

The Government announced last week that it is considering the introduction of a universal media charge that would replace the television licence.

Over 100,000 households are now refusing to pay the licence, not just as a rejection of RTÉ’s old-boys’ network, but as refusal to buy into a television format they are no longer interested in watching.

France’s president Emmanuel Maçron scrapped his country’s television licence fee shortly after he was elected to his second term of office last year. 

He believed it was more important for householders to have extra spending power for more important items. His government is now supporting the public broadcaster by allocating a “fraction of Vat” diverted from revenue income to maintain its output and its quality.

The BBC is considering a Netflix-style of subscription service, or a cumulative television tax based on a combined household income. Their television licence fee will most likely be scrapped by 2027. 

If you watch subscription services only Britain, you are exempt from having to purchase an annual licence — unlike here.

A universal media tax would be unfair and, most likely, unlawful. It means that anyone who uses a device, any device, that can access any form of media would be obliged by law to pay an annual tax. 

Proposals suggest that the Revenue Commissioners would be tasked with collecting the tax. 

So if you own a smartphone or a laptop, but you don’t have a television, you would still be required to pay the media tax. 

Owners of any forms of devices needed to watch any type of media would have to pay. If you never watch RTÉ for the rest of your life, you could still be required to pay. 

The question many people are asking is, would the tax collected go towards keeping RTÉ in the style it’s accustomed to? 

Irish people are at the threshold now, the boiling point of no return; no longer reluctant to show their intolerance of RTÉ’s ongoing financial wrangling. 

Until RTÉ accepts that forcing the public to pay for a service it might no longer want doesn’t work anymore, the tipping point will be its downfall.

It’s only a matter of time.