Ban or Censor Video Games, Not Guns?

Foxfyre

Eternal optimist
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Oct 11, 2007
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NOTE: Clean debate zone thread here. . . .

This morning I was listening to a concept put out by a military psychologist who suggests that it is not guns that are the problem in a 'violent America', but rather the changed American culture. Violent concepts are prevalent in our television programs, movies, comic books, music, and most especially in video games that are available in large quantities to very young children.

His theory is that this is desensitizing young people to violence and even exalting and promoting it.

Are video games conditioning kids to accept violence as virtue? As the way to get things accomplished? To win? To reach the pinnacle of success? In many/most of video games out there, it is necessary to be ruthless in order to win the game. Does this change the way people view their world in an unhealthy way?

If you do see this as a problem, how do you get around censorship as being somehow better than gun control? Do you want the government to have power in that area?

Or is there a way for the public/radio/Hollywood to self censor itself as it once did? And should we push for that?

Or maybe you don't see it as a problem at all?
 
He's right, it's a changed American culture. It just doesn't have anything to do with video games. It's a culture of entitlement and imagined rights. It's the transformation of freedom into license. Sadism is now just another form of having fun. There is now a form of crime that includes dousing the victim with flammable liquid and setting them on fire. The perpetrators didn't learn this in video games. They learned this by doing the same thing to dogs and cats as "fun" and getting away with it.

In the past, it used to be comic books, television cowboy shows, it was kids playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. It was flag football and games of tag. None of it was ever true. When you have a population raised from infancy without morals, without a sense of right and wrong, where good and evil are equal and completely without the ability to make judgments, you will get the culture we have with or without video games.
 
Personally speaking, I don't that computer games are as much to blame as is commonly made out. I think these children and young adults crave something that's being systematically stripped away from Western society: traditionalism.

It’s interesting to me, and keep in mind I am largely unfamiliar with the gaming world being from the Pong and Space Invaders generation, that the games I seem to hear about most are either first-person shoot 'em up games, representing a chance to vent against dehumanized humans, or fantasy worlds decorated generously with traditionalist themes – hierarchy, rites of passage, heroism, monarchy, holy or elite orders, priest and warrior castes, and the existence of extra-material worlds and beings. Some of the biggest franchises in the video gaming industry, HALO and The Elder Scrolls being two that I am aware of, are overflowing with the traditional.

Video games companies aren't transforming these avid young gamers into throne and alter types, they're simply exposing them for the throne and alter types they already are (without any real world thrones or altars to kneel before).

Am I making sense here?
 
Not only did that pyschiatrist make me ponder this topic, but also a contentuous exchange between Piers Morgan and Alex Jones the other night on CNN, followed by an analysis in this video:

[Video] Local News Investigates Piers Morgan's Claims - Thoughtful Women

The video was to fact check some of the numbers being thrown around in that exchange but it offered some interesting statistics summarized as follows:

The USA has the most guns per capita of any country in the world with 88 guns per 100 people. We're No. 1 in that category.

The U.K. has some of the strongest gun controls of any developed country.

In 2011, the U.K. had 59 gun related homicides within a population of about 63 million.
.
The USA had 853 gun related homicides; however 400 of those are documented as justifiable homicide by law enforcement and 260 of those as justifiable homicide by private citizens leaving 193 criminal homicides in a nation of more than 300 million people.

Despite being #1 in gun ownership, the USA is 28th in the world in gun violence. and well below the U.K. in violent crime in general.

The U.K. has the 2nd highest crime rate in the E.U. and is rated the most violent country in the E.U. with 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2011.

By comparison the USA documented 466 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2011.

*****************************

All this suggests to me that guns are not the problem. As given in the video, the hearts and minds of the people themselves are the problem.

Perhaps we--all of us everywhere, not just in the USA--need to look again at the overall affect of gratuitous violence promoted in our music, our television programming, our movies, our video games, and even the most popular comic books.
 
To Amy, Katz, and Swagger, all pertinent observations.

But don't you think people can be desensitized to what they would otherwise deem unacceptable. You see it in boxers--they have no problem inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible upon their opponent when most of us would recoil at the idea of striking somebody. Military types become unaffected by the mayhem they inflict on the enemy or even some of the collateral damage done in the heat of battle.

Wouldn't it follow that constant exposure to people doing violence to other people necessary to win a game could change the psyche of the most vulnerable to the point they would use violence in order to feel like the hero in the game?
 
Personally speaking, I don't that computer games are as much to blame as is commonly made out. I think these children and young adults crave something that's being systematically stripped away from Western society: traditionalism.

It’s interesting to me, and keep in mind I am largely unfamiliar with the gaming world being from the Pong and Space Invaders generation, that the games I seem to hear about most are either first-person shoot 'em up games, representing a chance to vent against dehumanized humans, or fantasy worlds decorated generously with traditionalist themes – hierarchy, rites of passage, heroism, monarchy, holy or elite orders, priest and warrior castes, and the existence of extra-material worlds and beings. Some of the biggest franchises in the video gaming industry, HALO and The Elder Scrolls being two that I am aware of, are overflowing with the traditional.

Video games companies aren't transforming these avid young gamers into throne and alter types, they're simply exposing them for the throne and alter types they already are (without any real world thrones or altars to kneel before).

Am I making sense here?

I like to play video games, although they are a little to sophisticated for me today. I've played some of the older Elder Scrolls games. Even the most shoot em up of shoot em up games are really games of strategy. The end is always the triumph of good over evil. Like Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. They have a definite story line and goal. It's more like being an interactive character in a good movie than simply a game.
 
Personally speaking, I don't that computer games are as much to blame as is commonly made out. I think these children and young adults crave something that's being systematically stripped away from Western society: traditionalism.

It’s interesting to me, and keep in mind I am largely unfamiliar with the gaming world being from the Pong and Space Invaders generation, that the games I seem to hear about most are either first-person shoot 'em up games, representing a chance to vent against dehumanized humans, or fantasy worlds decorated generously with traditionalist themes – hierarchy, rites of passage, heroism, monarchy, holy or elite orders, priest and warrior castes, and the existence of extra-material worlds and beings. Some of the biggest franchises in the video gaming industry, HALO and The Elder Scrolls being two that I am aware of, are overflowing with the traditional.

Video games companies aren't transforming these avid young gamers into throne and alter types, they're simply exposing them for the throne and alter types they already are (without any real world thrones or altars to kneel before).

Am I making sense here?

I like to play video games, although they are a little to sophisticated for me today. I've played some of the older Elder Scrolls games. Even the most shoot em up of shoot em up games are really games of strategy. The end is always the triumph of good over evil. Like Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. They have a definite story line and goal. It's more like being an interactive character in a good movie than simply a game.

I LOVE video games. One of my favorites is a Microsoft Big and Huge games called "Rise of Nations". Though there is one format that allows you to take a purely defensive posture, the most fun goal is to bring your country forward from a very primitive time to the modern age and conquer enough or all of the rest of the world to win.

So first rattle out of the box you have to attack other countries though you do focus on their military installations and armies. But your defenses automatically attack any non military citizens they see too if those citizens aren't our own.

The thing in the game that most bothers me is a limitation on the population each country is allowed to acquire. So when I get to the point that I am at the population max and need more military types, I can identify my 'idle' citizens and eliminate them. Hit the zap button and they scream and die.

And that bothers me though not enough to not play the game. You do wonder if it somehow programs a vulnerable and perhaps unstable young mind though. And my game is way WAY less violent and graphic than most of them out there now.
 
To Amy, Katz, and Swagger, all pertinent observations.

But don't you think people can be desensitized to what they would otherwise deem unacceptable. You see it in boxers--they have no problem inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible upon their opponent when most of us would recoil at the idea of striking somebody. Military types become unaffected by the mayhem they inflict on the enemy or even some of the collateral damage done in the heat of battle.

Wouldn't it follow that constant exposure to people doing violence to other people necessary to win a game could change the psyche of the most vulnerable to the point they would use violence in order to feel like the hero in the game?

I certainly don't think that a game can desensitize anyone to violence. Getting away with acts of violence is worse than video games. It was the "desensitization" to violence that stopped games of tag and dodgeball. It didn't help. Young people still got away with sadistic acts in the name of having fun. Boxers have no problem inflicting pain on another boxer because it is a sport with definite rules. They are not enemy combatants. Outside of the ring, they are usually friends.

In times past when men went to war it wasn't nice and neat like it is now. It was swords and axes, spears and battlefield gutting. It didn't turn the men who went to war into murderous madmen intent on repeating their acts against their neighbors and families. Such insanity wouldn't be permitted, someone who did that would soon find themselves at the end of a rope or drawn and quartered without endless appeals.
 
Personally speaking, I don't that computer games are as much to blame as is commonly made out. I think these children and young adults crave something that's being systematically stripped away from Western society: traditionalism.

It’s interesting to me, and keep in mind I am largely unfamiliar with the gaming world being from the Pong and Space Invaders generation, that the games I seem to hear about most are either first-person shoot 'em up games, representing a chance to vent against dehumanized humans, or fantasy worlds decorated generously with traditionalist themes – hierarchy, rites of passage, heroism, monarchy, holy or elite orders, priest and warrior castes, and the existence of extra-material worlds and beings. Some of the biggest franchises in the video gaming industry, HALO and The Elder Scrolls being two that I am aware of, are overflowing with the traditional.

Video games companies aren't transforming these avid young gamers into throne and alter types, they're simply exposing them for the throne and alter types they already are (without any real world thrones or altars to kneel before).

Am I making sense here?

I like the Elder Scrolls games but Fallout is my favorite.

Perhaps I subconsciously desire a primitive post apocalyptic world with no law and order.
 
To Amy, Katz, and Swagger, all pertinent observations.

But don't you think people can be desensitized to what they would otherwise deem unacceptable.

Yes, I believe that people can be deliberately desensitised to violence through violent imagery. For instance, if someone told me twenty years ago that there were internet sites that hosted footage of people being killed or maimed, I'd consider contacting the authorities. Now the internet is awash with sites that host beheadings etc., and they operate with impunity. I no longer feel compelled to contact the authorities for two reasons. 1. I've come to terms with the fact that there are truly sick people out there whose activities weren't deemed acceptable reading material by the editors of the mainstream media, because they knew that the truth would terrify their readers/viewers. 2. I've become desensitised.

Wouldn't it follow that constant exposure to people doing violence to other people necessary to win a game could change the psyche of the most vulnerable to the point they would use violence in order to feel like the hero in the game?

Only to a degree. I'm of the opinion that there's already something deeply wrong with someone who goes on to do what Adam Lanza did. Video games simply offer a visualisation of the likely scenario of a killing spree.I don't believe that visualisations of that nature can completely strip away the sense of remorse and compassion that for most people stand in the way of doing what Lanza did. I mean, fighter pilots and drone operators know, deep down, that their actions have resulted in great suffering, however deserved, despite being so detached from the battlefield. And they're offered councelling to help them deal with the mental torture their actions have brought upon them.
 
Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?


Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

That's what I would like for us all to have a conversation about.

Back in the days of the Saturday afternoon matinee featuring Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, the Durango Kid, etc., the good guys wore white hats and there was absolutely no question who were the good guys, who were the villains, and all necessary killing was done in self defense with a minimum of gratuitous violence.

In fact gratuitous violence was pretty much non existence in the movies or on television when I was growing up. The industry policed itself as to what language was acceptable and what should be shown on the screen.

Now the most horrible graphic violence, torture, the most hateful inhumanity that humans inflict on others, and the villain being the star is too often the norm. We have rap music broadcast over the radio describing the worst kinds of violence and mutilation and scenes that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

We the people police determine what is socially acceptable in this country. Do we need to rethink how our culture is affecting the minds of the young?
 
To Amy, Katz, and Swagger, all pertinent observations.

But don't you think people can be desensitized to what they would otherwise deem unacceptable. You see it in boxers--they have no problem inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible upon their opponent when most of us would recoil at the idea of striking somebody. Military types become unaffected by the mayhem they inflict on the enemy or even some of the collateral damage done in the heat of battle.

Wouldn't it follow that constant exposure to people doing violence to other people necessary to win a game could change the psyche of the most vulnerable to the point they would use violence in order to feel like the hero in the game?

I certainly don't think that a game can desensitize anyone to violence. Getting away with acts of violence is worse than video games. It was the "desensitization" to violence that stopped games of tag and dodgeball. It didn't help. Young people still got away with sadistic acts in the name of having fun. Boxers have no problem inflicting pain on another boxer because it is a sport with definite rules. They are not enemy combatants. Outside of the ring, they are usually friends.

In times past when men went to war it wasn't nice and neat like it is now. It was swords and axes, spears and battlefield gutting. It didn't turn the men who went to war into murderous madmen intent on repeating their acts against their neighbors and families. Such insanity wouldn't be permitted, someone who did that would soon find themselves at the end of a rope or drawn and quartered without endless appeals.

Using boxing as an example was just to illustrate how one can come to see doing violence to another as a sport and not feel any remorse or discomfort in doing that. It isn't that there is anything wrong with boxing. But I would be extremely uncomfortble striking another person with the intention of injuring him/her if I could. The boxer learns to have no such feelings when striking his/her sparring partner or opponent. It IS a kind of conditioning.

Nor do I think police officers or soldiers or any others who are trained and drilled in using force, lethal or otherwise, then more likely to become more violent in their personal lives. If they ARE prone to violence, they may know how to be more lethal or effective, but I don't see that becoming a part of their psyche. Nevethless, they do become desensitized to the effects of the job they are called on to do.

So back to that young person playing endless video games, reading those violent comic books, seeing the violence on television and in the movies. If he or she isn't wired exactly 'normally', could this gradually condition him to see violence as the way to achieve, to succeed, to be glorified or important, to be a success? And evenmoreso if he is successful in accomplishing large scale mayhem?
 
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Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?

Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

It's not just a premise or a theory, there's established proven evidence of it...

Video Games Desensitize to Real Violence | Psych Central News

... and that's only one example.

What our society is becoming is where all this new insane kids with guns going on mass killing rampages is coming from.

I think to myself, I never grew up playing high definition video games on a massive TV that were so real they almost appeared alive, and there's no way I could ever go out and shoot up a crowd. So how is it these young kids can do it? A common link to them all is violent, bloody video games where they can indiscriminately kill, rape, rob and maim other people, even kids and infants in these games. I think to deny that they have an effect, coupled with the constant blood lust and violent movies full of guns, bombs and whatever else can kill you coming out of hollywood is completely dishonest. What's the latest Stalone movie? Well, "BULLET TO THE HEAD" of course. And they called Wayne LaPierre insensitive.
 
Last edited:
NOTE: Clean debate zone thread here. . . .

This morning I was listening to a concept put out by a military psychologist who suggests that it is not guns that are the problem in a 'violent America', but rather the changed American culture. Violent concepts are prevalent in our television programs, movies, comic books, music, and most especially in video games that are available in large quantities to very young children.

His theory is that this is desensitizing young people to violence and even exalting and promoting it.

Are video games conditioning kids to accept violence as virtue? As the way to get things accomplished? To win? To reach the pinnacle of success? In many/most of video games out there, it is necessary to be ruthless in order to win the game. Does this change the way people view their world in an unhealthy way?

If you do see this as a problem, how do you get around censorship as being somehow better than gun control? Do you want the government to have power in that area?

Or is there a way for the public/radio/Hollywood to self censor itself as it once did? And should we push for that?

Or maybe you don't see it as a problem at all?



"Available in large quantities to very young children". Who is allowing these kids to play these violent games? Parents. It starts with them. Our neighbor has allowed his two boys to play Call of Duty since they were around 6 years old, has taken them to PG-13 movies (GI Joe and the like) from early ages. The kids are now 6th and 4th grade. If parents can't say 'no, that is not appropriate for you right now' to their kids, then we will continue on this destructive path. I agree that continual exposure to anything can desensitize a person ... but who is allowing them access in the first place?

Should gov't butt in and ban them? No. Should Hollywood tighten up ratings? Well, since Hollywood lowered the bar to allow PG-13 rating (and has done nothing but lower it further and further with each passing year, allowing more and more into that rating) it's doubtful they will do anything. Maybe with Sandy Hook they will but I won't hold my breath.

Parents need to stop being their kid's friend and start parenting their kids. They need to say 'no' and deal with the tantrum that their kids will surely throw. And they need to stop giving kids too much freedom at too early an age ... cell phones (esp with internet access), tvs/computers/gaming systems in bedrooms, etc.
 
Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?


Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

That's what I would like for us all to have a conversation about.

Back in the days of the Saturday afternoon matinee featuring Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, the Durango Kid, etc., the good guys wore white hats and there was absolutely no question who were the good guys, who were the villains, and all necessary killing was done in self defense with a minimum of gratuitous violence.

In fact gratuitous violence was pretty much non existence in the movies or on television when I was growing up. The industry policed itself as to what language was acceptable and what should be shown on the screen.

Now the most horrible graphic violence, torture, the most hateful inhumanity that humans inflict on others, and the villain being the star is too often the norm. We have rap music broadcast over the radio describing the worst kinds of violence and mutilation and scenes that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

We the people police determine what is socially acceptable in this country. Do we need to rethink how our culture is affecting the minds of the young?

Your complaint isn't about violence! Your complaint is about debasing the culture and eliminating the concept of right and wrong. It's the same complaint I have. In video games violence occurs, the good prevail over the bad but in the culture, the movies, the videos, the rap music the most cruel and the most sadistic are glorified. It's not the violence, it's the glorification of the violence. It isn't in video games that the most cruel and violent get rewarded, it's in the culture. It's giving Michael Vick his job back, it's excusing the worst kind of behavior.
 
Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?

Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

It's not just a premise or a theory, there's established proven evidence of it...

Video Games Desensitize to Real Violence | Psych Central News

... and that's only one example.

What our society is becoming is where all this new insane kids with guns going on mass killing rampages is coming from.

I think to myself, I never grew up playing high definition video games on a massive TV that were so real they almost appeared alive, and there's no way I could ever go out and shoot up a crowd. So how is it these young kids can do it? A common link to them all is violent, bloody video games where they can indiscriminately kill, rape, rob and maim other people, even kids and infants in these games. I think to deny that they have an effect, coupled with the constant blood lust and violent movies full of guns, bombs and whatever else can kill you coming out of hollywood is completely dishonest. What's the latest Stalone movie? Well, "BULLET TO THE HEAD" of course. And they called Wayne LaPierre insensitive.



Your solution to the problem is to ban video games?
 
Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?


Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

That's what I would like for us all to have a conversation about.

Back in the days of the Saturday afternoon matinee featuring Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, the Durango Kid, etc., the good guys wore white hats and there was absolutely no question who were the good guys, who were the villains, and all necessary killing was done in self defense with a minimum of gratuitous violence.

In fact gratuitous violence was pretty much non existence in the movies or on television when I was growing up. The industry policed itself as to what language was acceptable and what should be shown on the screen.

Now the most horrible graphic violence, torture, the most hateful inhumanity that humans inflict on others, and the villain being the star is too often the norm. We have rap music broadcast over the radio describing the worst kinds of violence and mutilation and scenes that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

We the people police determine what is socially acceptable in this country. Do we need to rethink how our culture is affecting the minds of the young?

Your complaint isn't about violence! Your complaint is about debasing the culture and eliminating the concept of right and wrong. It's the same complaint I have. In video games violence occurs, the good prevail over the bad but in the culture, the movies, the videos, the rap music the most cruel and the most sadistic are glorified. It's not the violence, it's the glorification of the violence. It isn't in video games that the most cruel and violent get rewarded, it's in the culture. It's giving Michael Vick his job back, it's excusing the worst kind of behavior.

And what's the absent component? Traditional values. Strong and responsible parents would almost eliminate this glorification. But nowadays we see children raising children.

My uncle brought a revolver back from the war in Korea. For whatever reason, he gave it to my father. It sat in the second to last drawer in my parents' bedside table with the ammunition kept separately. We knew it was there, and being curious children we broke into the draw to look at it. It was empty, and there was no chance of us hurting anyone with it. My mother caught us, and my father thrashed us so hard we had to sit in a hot bath mixed with anticeptic formula. They used traditional means to discipline us. It worked as we no longer took an interest in the second drawer from the bottom and what lied inside it. Parents can now be prosecuted for striking their children. Traditionalism is being deliberately stigmatised and the people who adhere to it are mocked.
 
Let's say I agree with the premise that video games desensitize the young and promote violence.

Now what?

Now that we've all agreed "what's bad" you move to ban them for the good of the public?

It's not just a premise or a theory, there's established proven evidence of it...

Video Games Desensitize to Real Violence | Psych Central News

... and that's only one example.

What our society is becoming is where all this new insane kids with guns going on mass killing rampages is coming from.

I think to myself, I never grew up playing high definition video games on a massive TV that were so real they almost appeared alive, and there's no way I could ever go out and shoot up a crowd. So how is it these young kids can do it? A common link to them all is violent, bloody video games where they can indiscriminately kill, rape, rob and maim other people, even kids and infants in these games. I think to deny that they have an effect, coupled with the constant blood lust and violent movies full of guns, bombs and whatever else can kill you coming out of hollywood is completely dishonest. What's the latest Stalone movie? Well, "BULLET TO THE HEAD" of course. And they called Wayne LaPierre insensitive.

This is what I have intuitively been pondering and instinctively suspect is all true. I am guessing there are more studies out there than the one cited here too.

And while I concur with Katz and others that a large part of the problem is poor parenting, etc., I also see that the poor parenting, permissiveness in media etc. is all a reflection of our changing culture. A change that is not in a good way.

But you don't see the President or members of Congress or the Hollywood set or Piers Morgan, etc. railing against the glorification and acceptance of violence in our day to day images and language. You see them focused on banning certain kinds of guns and enforcing much stronger gun control.

But as cited in the OP, stringent gun control has not reduced the violence in the U.K. It just shifts it to other forms.

I think the problem is a culture of violence, not a culture of guns.
 

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