Ban or Censor Video Games, Not Guns?

[peach174]

It doesn't help either when our Government becomes our parent.
Taking care of us from cradle to grave does not help us at all to become responsible adults.

I had a friend from my church say that she was not raised to believe in God.
She was exposed to God in our public schools.
Later as she became an adult and could think about philosophical things like life and death and the meaning of life she decided to turn to God and believe.
She said she would have never done it if she had never been exposed to it. at school/
Being exposed to what is good while we are children, is what helps them to become good adults.

Parents back then who raised their children not to believe in God, had no problem with them being exposed to it in our public schools.

 

[Missourian]

Foxfyre, you are trying to find a reason for an unreasonable act. Crazy people (tired of the PC thing) don't have reason - they are crazy. Their motive might be anything but it won't be reasonable to us. It wouldn't even sound like a motive to us. If someone sneaks up behind you and screams - you jump. You don't have a logical reason, you are reacting to a stimulus that is autonomic. Crazy people react to imaginary stimulii and wild swings in emotional and behavioral patterns that even they don't recognize.
BTW if someone sneaks up behind me and screams they are likely to pick themselves up off the ground because I don't jump - I turn around swinging. Lessons learned while going to high school in the 60s.

Excellent post Paul, I must spread some reputation around...

It's also human nature to strive to find order in chaos...to find logic in the actions of others so we can 'Oh, here it is, a motivation' and we can put it in a box and study it, analyze it, formulate a solution, solve the problem, construct a defense.

It allows us to feel a measure of control...whether real or illusionary.

When the answer is impossible to devine, it shatters that sense the universe is ordered, and that all it's variables can be cataloged, examined and managed.

However, should we not take notice of changing patterns? Of destructive trends? Or do we allow the slow drip, drip, drip of a negative thing become common place and shrugged off as the way it is; the way it has always been?

Nobody drugged ADD kids when I was a kid. I probably had the syndrome as sitting quietly with my hands folded and paying attention in class was not my best thing. But whatever that was, I learned quite well, made reasonably good grades, and got a pretty decent education. So why is there so much more ADD and similar syndromes in kids now?

I had never heard of autism until the movie "Rainman" came out. I did know there were mentally challenged folks but certainly the number of kids diagnosed with Asperger's and Autism was extremely rare in the previous generation and seems to be so common now. Why is that?

You went to the Principal's office or detention for using certain words and behavior back then. No biggie. We could have a pen knife on a key chain or a jackknife in our pocket or a shotgun in the rack in our pickup trucks and nobody thought anything about it. Such could result in immediate expulsion or put a school into lockdown now. So what has changed?

Shouldn't we at least pay some attention to this?

My remark was specifically targeted, while yours is more generalized.

Of course I agree, question everything.

But I wrestle with the question specifically...what motivates a young man to go to an elementary school and shoot defenseless children...and IMO, it cannot be divined...it is impossible for a logical, rational person to ascertain using only logic and reason.

And how do you solve a problem without knowing it's cause.

We can speculate...maybe it's drugs, or contaminated water, or high fructose corn syrup or GMO vegetables or antibiotics in meat, or violent movies , or cosmic rays from outer space...the number of variables are enormous and the unknowns ubiquitous, without solid proof, or at a minimum accurate raw data, we are guessing at best.

For all we know, violent movies and video games are a healthy outlet for pent up aggression and removing them would have a deleterious effect on our society.

IOW, sometimes, in the absence of proven unbiased data, we simply have to admit...we don't know what we don't know.

 

[Foxfyre]

Excellent post Paul, I must spread some reputation around...

It's also human nature to strive to find order in chaos...to find logic in the actions of others so we can 'Oh, here it is, a motivation' and we can put it in a box and study it, analyze it, formulate a solution, solve the problem, construct a defense.

It allows us to feel a measure of control...whether real or illusionary.

When the answer is impossible to devine, it shatters that sense the universe is ordered, and that all it's variables can be cataloged, examined and managed.

However, should we not take notice of changing patterns? Of destructive trends? Or do we allow the slow drip, drip, drip of a negative thing become common place and shrugged off as the way it is; the way it has always been?

Nobody drugged ADD kids when I was a kid. I probably had the syndrome as sitting quietly with my hands folded and paying attention in class was not my best thing. But whatever that was, I learned quite well, made reasonably good grades, and got a pretty decent education. So why is there so much more ADD and similar syndromes in kids now?

I had never heard of autism until the movie "Rainman" came out. I did know there were mentally challenged folks but certainly the number of kids diagnosed with Asperger's and Autism was extremely rare in the previous generation and seems to be so common now. Why is that?

You went to the Principal's office or detention for using certain words and behavior back then. No biggie. We could have a pen knife on a key chain or a jackknife in our pocket or a shotgun in the rack in our pickup trucks and nobody thought anything about it. Such could result in immediate expulsion or put a school into lockdown now. So what has changed?

Shouldn't we at least pay some attention to this?

My remark was specifically targeted, while yours is more generalized.

Of course I agree, question everything.

But I wrestle with the question specifically...what motivates a young man to go to an elementary school and shoot defenseless children...and IMO, it cannot be divined...it is impossible for a logical, rational person to ascertain using only logic and reason.

And how do you solve a problem without knowing it's cause.

We can speculate...maybe it's drugs, or contaminated water, or high fructose corn syrup or GMO vegetables or antibiotics in meat, or violent movies , or cosmic rays from outer space...the number of variables are enormous and the unknowns ubiquitous, without solid proof, or at a minimum accurate raw data, we are guessing at best.

For all we know, violent movies and video games are a healthy outlet for pent up aggression and removing them would have a deleterious effect on our society.

IOW, sometimes, in the absence of proven unbiased data, we simply have to admit...we don't know what we don't know.

And I can't argue with that. We live in a society in which bad people do bad things. The primary difference is that in the past we blamed the person who did the bad things even if we deemed him insane or demon possessed or whatever. But we looked no further than the person for the motive for the killing.

And now--and I have absolutely been guilty in some of my posts on this thread--we aren't content to blame the person who does the bad act. We look for something or somebody to blame. Religious fanaticism. Political extremist views. Diet. Environment. Drugs. Bad parenting. Or media and video games. Whatever is the politically correct target of the day.

Perhaps it is a shift to a collective mentality that simply will not hold the individual accountable for his/her acxtions and let it go at that?

But at the same time, it does raise other questions of how we became this sort of society. So I suppose the thread topic can easily point to both things.

 

[Circe]

I was thinking today about how everything runs downhill, absolutely everything including discussion forums, movies, schools, novels, movies, games, airplane travel --- everything runs downhill to the lowest common denominator as it all becomes democratized. And then coarsened and made violent and crude.

There is a terrible cost to the out-of-control democratization of society to a very low common denominator indeed. We see it in the news: anything based on how many people click something will inevitably focus on two-headed babies, atrocities to children, and the sex acts of singing stars, because that's what the lowest common denominator most like, and there are more of them than anyone else. Same deal with games. MOST people are turned on by violence, and in a world where everyone (American) is rich, most games will be very violent to appeal to most people and soak up their money.

Some people want me to expand on what I said above, okay, though I'm not sure why.

In this richest of all rich countries, even the poor can pay out lots of money to commercial interests, and for that reason, everything in the culture panders to the lowest common denominator because there are always more stupid people than smart people. In the 50s only the smartest and richest went to college and so colleges were elite: now they are makeup classes for learning basic reading that was never learned in grade school or high school. The lowest common denominator is the largest part of society -- and they like lurid violence because it's easy and exciting, so we get lurid, violent games and movies and hip-hop "music" with heavy drumbeats, not real music at all. Air travel used to be a luxury for an elite and everyone wore suits and dresses and women wore high heels --- now people dress in sweats at best and disgusting obscenity clothes at worst. Voting since the first Greek democracy until quite lately used to be only by full citizens with property and something to lose: but now voting is supposed to follow this terrible pattern of everything going to the lowest common denominator, so felons and retarded persons and homeless men and drunks and people on welfare are encouraged to vote, vote, vote.

I don't think most of this excessive democratization is about or by the government: I think it's mostly commerce, trying to sell to the biggest bloc of buyers, the lowest common denominator. The government and commerce teamed up to promote homeowning to people with No Income, No Jobs and crashed the world economy for years.

Our culture has gone down into the gutter and the violent movies and games and huge collections of guns people have, even people of quite modest incomes, reflect the trashing of the values we used to have. The least educated, the least smart, the least employed, the least able people are the ones who have the biggest numbers, and because of the new, excessive democratization of this society, they now set the standards for everything: for clothes, for TV, for discussion forums, for elected officials, for games, for movies, for gun-owning and stocking up, and given how Mexico has gone ahead of us, I see us going the same way right behind them: more and more violence in a more and more degraded culture.

 

[Foxfyre]

I was thinking today about how everything runs downhill, absolutely everything including discussion forums, movies, schools, novels, movies, games, airplane travel --- everything runs downhill to the lowest common denominator as it all becomes democratized. And then coarsened and made violent and crude.

There is a terrible cost to the out-of-control democratization of society to a very low common denominator indeed. We see it in the news: anything based on how many people click something will inevitably focus on two-headed babies, atrocities to children, and the sex acts of singing stars, because that's what the lowest common denominator most like, and there are more of them than anyone else. Same deal with games. MOST people are turned on by violence, and in a world where everyone (American) is rich, most games will be very violent to appeal to most people and soak up their money.

Some people want me to expand on what I said above, okay, though I'm not sure why.

In this richest of all rich countries, even the poor can pay out lots of money to commercial interests, and for that reason, everything in the culture panders to the lowest common denominator because there are always more stupid people than smart people. In the 50s only the smartest and richest went to college and so colleges were elite: now they are makeup classes for learning basic reading that was never learned in grade school or high school. The lowest common denominator is the largest part of society -- and they like lurid violence because it's easy and exciting, so we get lurid, violent games and movies and hip-hop "music" with heavy drumbeats, not real music at all. Air travel used to be a luxury for an elite and everyone wore suits and dresses and women wore high heels --- now people dress in sweats at best and disgusting obscenity clothes at worst. Voting since the first Greek democracy until quite lately used to be only by full citizens with property and something to lose: but now voting is supposed to follow this terrible pattern of everything going to the lowest common denominator, so felons and retarded persons and homeless men and drunks and people on welfare are encouraged to vote, vote, vote.

I don't think most of this excessive democratization is about or by the government: I think it's mostly commerce, trying to sell to the biggest bloc of buyers, the lowest common denominator. The government and commerce teamed up to promote homeowning to people with No Income, No Jobs and crashed the world economy for years.

Our culture has gone down into the gutter and the violent movies and games and huge collections of guns people have, even people of quite modest incomes, reflect the trashing of the values we used to have. The least educated, the least smart, the least employed, the least able people are the ones who have the biggest numbers, and because of the new, excessive democratization of this society, they now set the standards for everything: for clothes, for TV, for discussion forums, for elected officials, for games, for movies, for gun-owning and stocking up, and given how Mexico has gone ahead of us, I see us going the same way right behind them: more and more violence in a more and more degraded culture.

Thanks for the clarification Circe. I think that is where I instinctively suspected you were coming from. Had your mini essay been written by somebody with a well known name, it would be probably copied, posted, and linked all over the internet by now. Very well stated.

I would just suggest that you choose a word other than 'democratization' for the phenomenon you express here. Maybe 'equalization' would be a better word so that you don't appear to be condemning Democracy or such.

Other than that, I have absolutely no quarrel with your point of view on this. Well done.

 

[peach174]

Excellent post Paul, I must spread some reputation around...

It's also human nature to strive to find order in chaos...to find logic in the actions of others so we can 'Oh, here it is, a motivation' and we can put it in a box and study it, analyze it, formulate a solution, solve the problem, construct a defense.

It allows us to feel a measure of control...whether real or illusionary.

When the answer is impossible to devine, it shatters that sense the universe is ordered, and that all it's variables can be cataloged, examined and managed.

However, should we not take notice of changing patterns? Of destructive trends? Or do we allow the slow drip, drip, drip of a negative thing become common place and shrugged off as the way it is; the way it has always been?

Nobody drugged ADD kids when I was a kid. I probably had the syndrome as sitting quietly with my hands folded and paying attention in class was not my best thing. But whatever that was, I learned quite well, made reasonably good grades, and got a pretty decent education. So why is there so much more ADD and similar syndromes in kids now?

I had never heard of autism until the movie "Rainman" came out. I did know there were mentally challenged folks but certainly the number of kids diagnosed with Asperger's and Autism was extremely rare in the previous generation and seems to be so common now. Why is that?

You went to the Principal's office or detention for using certain words and behavior back then. No biggie. We could have a pen knife on a key chain or a jackknife in our pocket or a shotgun in the rack in our pickup trucks and nobody thought anything about it. Such could result in immediate expulsion or put a school into lockdown now. So what has changed?

Shouldn't we at least pay some attention to this?

My remark was specifically targeted, while yours is more generalized.

Of course I agree, question everything.

But I wrestle with the question specifically...what motivates a young man to go to an elementary school and shoot defenseless children...and IMO, it cannot be divined...it is impossible for a logical, rational person to ascertain using only logic and reason.

And how do you solve a problem without knowing it's cause.

We can speculate...maybe it's drugs, or contaminated water, or high fructose corn syrup or GMO vegetables or antibiotics in meat, or violent movies , or cosmic rays from outer space...the number of variables are enormous and the unknowns ubiquitous, without solid proof, or at a minimum accurate raw data, we are guessing at best.

For all we know, violent movies and video games are a healthy outlet for pent up aggression and removing them would have a deleterious effect on our society.

IOW, sometimes, in the absence of proven unbiased data, we simply have to admit...we don't know what we don't know.

What seemed to motivate the kid at Sandy Hook was when he found out that his Mom was going to put him in a mental facility.
What kind of rage did he have in him that wanted to kill his Mom and all those kids and teacher's.
A note that they found said that he just wanted to feel. To feel something, anything.
How many other of our children feel that way. That they can not feel anything.
Perhaps it is a combination of all of it.
Our food with all the junk added to it.
All of the vaccinations we start giving them from sometimes birth to 6 months and then each and every year. They are way to many that are being given.
The genetically altered foods.
None of this can be very good for any of us , but especially our kids.

 

[Foxfyre]

However, should we not take notice of changing patterns? Of destructive trends? Or do we allow the slow drip, drip, drip of a negative thing become common place and shrugged off as the way it is; the way it has always been?

Nobody drugged ADD kids when I was a kid. I probably had the syndrome as sitting quietly with my hands folded and paying attention in class was not my best thing. But whatever that was, I learned quite well, made reasonably good grades, and got a pretty decent education. So why is there so much more ADD and similar syndromes in kids now?

I had never heard of autism until the movie "Rainman" came out. I did know there were mentally challenged folks but certainly the number of kids diagnosed with Asperger's and Autism was extremely rare in the previous generation and seems to be so common now. Why is that?

You went to the Principal's office or detention for using certain words and behavior back then. No biggie. We could have a pen knife on a key chain or a jackknife in our pocket or a shotgun in the rack in our pickup trucks and nobody thought anything about it. Such could result in immediate expulsion or put a school into lockdown now. So what has changed?

Shouldn't we at least pay some attention to this?

My remark was specifically targeted, while yours is more generalized.

Of course I agree, question everything.

But I wrestle with the question specifically...what motivates a young man to go to an elementary school and shoot defenseless children...and IMO, it cannot be divined...it is impossible for a logical, rational person to ascertain using only logic and reason.

And how do you solve a problem without knowing it's cause.

We can speculate...maybe it's drugs, or contaminated water, or high fructose corn syrup or GMO vegetables or antibiotics in meat, or violent movies , or cosmic rays from outer space...the number of variables are enormous and the unknowns ubiquitous, without solid proof, or at a minimum accurate raw data, we are guessing at best.

For all we know, violent movies and video games are a healthy outlet for pent up aggression and removing them would have a deleterious effect on our society.

IOW, sometimes, in the absence of proven unbiased data, we simply have to admit...we don't know what we don't know.

What seemed to motivate the kid at Sandy Hook was when he found out that his Mom was going to put him in a mental facility.
What kind of rage did he have in him that wanted to kill his Mom and all those kids and teacher's.
A note that they found said that he just wanted to feel. To feel something, anything.
How many other of our children feel that way. That they can not feel anything.
Perhaps it is a combination of all of it.
Our food with all the junk added to it.
All of the vaccinations we start giving them from sometimes birth to 6 months and then each and every year. They are way to many that are being given.
The genetically altered foods.
None of this can be very good for any of us , but especially our kids.

I agree with all of this too. I think all of it should be looked at and we should consider what we are doing to our health, our mental state, etc. based on what we put into our bodies or the environment in which we live. But also, we need to be careful not to use that to excuse bad choices or bad behavior.

Somehow, we need to return to a culture with mostly shared values of right and wrong, good and bad, hero and villain, etc. etc. I think as Circe suggested, we look to the lowest common denominator instead of the best that we have as the target to shoot for.

 

[Missourian]

However, should we not take notice of changing patterns? Of destructive trends? Or do we allow the slow drip, drip, drip of a negative thing become common place and shrugged off as the way it is; the way it has always been?

Nobody drugged ADD kids when I was a kid. I probably had the syndrome as sitting quietly with my hands folded and paying attention in class was not my best thing. But whatever that was, I learned quite well, made reasonably good grades, and got a pretty decent education. So why is there so much more ADD and similar syndromes in kids now?

I had never heard of autism until the movie "Rainman" came out. I did know there were mentally challenged folks but certainly the number of kids diagnosed with Asperger's and Autism was extremely rare in the previous generation and seems to be so common now. Why is that?

You went to the Principal's office or detention for using certain words and behavior back then. No biggie. We could have a pen knife on a key chain or a jackknife in our pocket or a shotgun in the rack in our pickup trucks and nobody thought anything about it. Such could result in immediate expulsion or put a school into lockdown now. So what has changed?

Shouldn't we at least pay some attention to this?

My remark was specifically targeted, while yours is more generalized.

Of course I agree, question everything.

But I wrestle with the question specifically...what motivates a young man to go to an elementary school and shoot defenseless children...and IMO, it cannot be divined...it is impossible for a logical, rational person to ascertain using only logic and reason.

And how do you solve a problem without knowing it's cause.

We can speculate...maybe it's drugs, or contaminated water, or high fructose corn syrup or GMO vegetables or antibiotics in meat, or violent movies , or cosmic rays from outer space...the number of variables are enormous and the unknowns ubiquitous, without solid proof, or at a minimum accurate raw data, we are guessing at best.

For all we know, violent movies and video games are a healthy outlet for pent up aggression and removing them would have a deleterious effect on our society.

IOW, sometimes, in the absence of proven unbiased data, we simply have to admit...we don't know what we don't know.

And I can't argue with that. We live in a society in which bad people do bad things. The primary difference is that in the past we blamed the person who did the bad things even if we deemed him insane or demon possessed or whatever. But we looked no further than the person for the motive for the killing.

And now--and I have absolutely been guilty in some of my posts on this thread--we aren't content to blame the person who does the bad act. We look for something or somebody to blame. Religious fanaticism. Political extremist views. Diet. Environment. Drugs. Bad parenting. Or media and video games. Whatever is the politically correct target of the day.

Perhaps it is a shift to a collective mentality that simply will not hold the individual accountable for his/her acxtions and let it go at that?

But at the same time, it does raise other questions of how we became this sort of society. So I suppose the thread topic can easily point to both things.

My answer could only be my own speculation.

We are an enlightened society, and even at an individual level, we are all on a quest to understand the world around us.

When we are presented with an anomaly, we want to quantify it, polish the edges and force it to fit our view of reality.

And when the unexplained anomaly is a behavior that is so unconscionable that it is impossible to understand, it leaves a vacuum that we feel must be filled...that the equation must be balanced. So we theorize, using our own opinions of what is wrong with society as a substitution solution.

Likeminded people advance similar theories, a consensus evolves...and that conclusion supplants the truism that individuals are responsible for their own actions.

Again, this is just my observation, polishing an anomaly to fit my view of reality.

 

[Uncensored2008]

I agree with all of this too. I think all of it should be looked at and we should consider what we are doing to our health, our mental state, etc. based on what we put into our bodies or the environment in which we live. But also, we need to be careful not to use that to excuse bad choices or bad behavior.

Somehow, we need to return to a culture with mostly shared values of right and wrong, good and bad, hero and villain, etc. etc. I think as Circe suggested, we look to the lowest common denominator instead of the best that we have as the target to shoot for.

What's hard, and I think we are all parents here, so most know what I mean; what's hard is that we are not really objective about our children. I strongly suspect that even though Nancy Lanza was ready to have Adam committed, that notion that he would hurt her never gelled in her mind. I lock my guns up, but because they are a huge investment and I fear being robbed, not because I ever thought my kids would use them against me or someone else. My son, the only child still at home, knows the combination to the gun safe.

It's easy to cast aspersions, but the reality of my own life suggests that a psychotic break is all it would take in a child. As parents, we trust our children, even at times when we shouldn't.

 

[Circe]

[I would just suggest that you choose a word other than 'democratization' for the phenomenon you express here. Maybe 'equalization' would be a better word so that you don't appear to be condemning Democracy or such.

The Lollards used to use the word "leveling." Everyone was supposed to be "level." That was in the 15th century, but it might still work ----

 

[Foxfyre]

I agree with all of this too. I think all of it should be looked at and we should consider what we are doing to our health, our mental state, etc. based on what we put into our bodies or the environment in which we live. But also, we need to be careful not to use that to excuse bad choices or bad behavior.

Somehow, we need to return to a culture with mostly shared values of right and wrong, good and bad, hero and villain, etc. etc. I think as Circe suggested, we look to the lowest common denominator instead of the best that we have as the target to shoot for.

What's hard, and I think we are all parents here, so most know what I mean; what's hard is that we are not really objective about our children. I strongly suspect that even though Nancy Lanza was ready to have Adam committed, that notion that he would hurt her never gelled in her mind. I lock my guns up, but because they are a huge investment and I fear being robbed, not because I ever thought my kids would use them against me or someone else. My son, the only child still at home, knows the combination to the gun safe.

It's easy to cast aspersions, but the reality of my own life suggests that a psychotic break is all it would take in a child. As parents, we trust our children, even at times when we shouldn't.

We have a family member who has just been paroled for the third time. Each time he has gone to prison, it has been his parents who blew the whistle and reported him. Hooked on bad drugs, a thief, and occasionally violent, he had robbed his parents blind. And yet they kept taking him back after each imprisonment. They DID believe he was capable of hurting them and they slept with a chair jammed under their bedroom door knob. And evenso, his mom inexplicably wanted him to come home when he got out this last time because she didn't think he could make it on his own. (The rest of the family made sure that didn't happen.)

This nephew has siblings who are salt of the Earth, never got in trouble with the law, and have been exemplary people, as are the parents. But a mother's love can be a force more powerful than any amount of fear and violence and it often is not objective or even rational.

Nevertheless, when you have so much evidence of so much anti social behavior from so many of the young, and an increase in the volence produced from that, there must be some underlying reasons for that. This does not excuse the person who makes a wrong choice, most especially a destructive violent one that hurts people in the worst ways. But I can't see how an awareness of how our modern culture contributes is a bad thing.

 

[Uncensored2008]

We have a family member who has just been paroled for the third time. Each time he has gone to prison, it has been his parents who blew the whistle and reported him. Hooked on bad drugs, a thief, and occasionally violent, he had robbed his parents blind. And yet they kept taking him back after each imprisonment. They DID believe he was capable of hurting them and they slept with a chair jammed under their bedroom door knob. And evenso, his mom inexplicably wanted him to come home when he got out this last time because she didn't think he could make it on his own. (The rest of the family made sure that didn't happen.)

This nephew has siblings who are salt of the Earth, never got in trouble with the law, and have been exemplary people, as are the parents. But a mother's love can be a force more powerful than any amount of fear and violence and it often is not objective or even rational.

Nevertheless, when you have so much evidence of so much anti social behavior from so many of the young, and an increase in the volence produced from that, there must be some underlying reasons for that. This does not excuse the person who makes a wrong choice, most especially a destructive violent one that hurts people in the worst ways. But I can't see how an awareness of how our modern culture contributes is a bad thing.

I just call it "bad wiring." No one knows what goes wrong, but something just doesn't complete the circuit in some people.

And I agree about our culture, I believe that it is designed to destroy our society.

 

[PaulS1950]

There are those individuals who are "wired wrongly" from birth but they are rare. Most criminal behavior can be attributed to poor choices from a young age. Choices that are most often supported through poor parenting skills or peer involvement. It is only "the culture" because so many parents don't realize that children need to have restrictions put on them to be secure. They have to know what is right and wrong from a very early age and have those concepts rigidly applied throughout their lives.

If it is OK for mom and dad to speed (break the law) and its ok to cheat on their taxes and drink a bit and then drive - the kids learn that the law doesn't always apply. If it is ok to keep a "teddy bear" that you find on the street then it must be ok to keep anything that you find...
I took my grandson around the block to find out who lost the stuffed animal he found and they were extatic to get it back. It showed him that when someone loses something it is better to return it than it is to just keep it. When I found $80 in my driveway we went down the block asking if someone had lost it - nobody claimed it so we put it in a drawer for safe-keeping and two days later a friend of my daughter called our neighbor to see if they found it. They got the money back and they don't have enough to make the loss an affordable event.
The best way to behave as an adult is to try to be the kind of person your dog thinks you are.
The best way to act as a parent is to be the example that you want your kids to have. It is all too easy to say, "oh, he is just going through a phase" or that' "he is just being a boy" when you should be using discipline to correct bad behavior and love and acceptance when he is following the rules. Kids need love but they also need the discipline.