Gilhelmi said:
I enjoy the "LOL WATS?" Like I enjoy a root canal.
I read a book that was written before video games (originally). It is called "On Killing: the psychological impact of killing" (name might be off). Written in the early 90s though updated a year or two ago, with a section on video games. It agrees with this study. The techniques used during WW2 evolved too the modern techniques that almost mirror what video games do now.
In WW2 and before, firing rates among soldiers were 15%-20%. Training implemented in Korea, 55%. Training in Vietnam too present 95%.
I know none of you want too hear this, but tough biscuits. Video games do tear down mental barriers to killing. They do not make us kill, they just teach us how too kill. Amazingly, that is not something most humans do naturally, we have too be trained.
You can dismiss this research, but can you dismiss research that did not originally involve video games that concurs with this study? I am NOT saying we should ban or strongly regulate video games, but this is going to be a LEGITIMATE conversation.
Yes, and no.
The basic issue is that as people become more civilized and passive they tend to become increasingly less interested in violence, as they need less, and become more interested in maintaining what they have. In the US, our big problem has largely been our morality, and relative safety due to being separated from most of the powers that could do us harm by the oceans. We're pretty much the most moral, and self-judgmental people on earth.
During World War II, it's important to note that it took a while for propaganda to kick in. Hitler was quite popular to begin with (International Man Of The Year), and a lot of Americans, even after Pearl Harbor, wanted to maintain an isolationist attitude and not get involved. We went to war, instituted war powers, cranked propaganda into overdrive, and we gradually saw a transition from reluctant soldiers, to extremely motivated ones. Our war department was particularly infamous for actually lying to demonize the Nazis, for everything that was true, we took it a couple of steps further, like say the "human flesh lampshades" which were proven to be fakes (when tested they were goat skin).
The later wars saw increased training and condition of soldiers (being ready for it) but also a bit more in the way of omnipresent propaganda about communism. Our guys sent to Korean and Vietnam went in fairly motivated, which is why things like 'Nam were so messed up as we weren't involved fighting for what we were supposed to be down there for (which much has been said about).
The simple truth is people are extremely violent and murderous, and will slaughter each other given a halfway decent region. You see it all through the second and third world where murder, warfare, and slaughter are all ways of life, and you have kids barely able to walk toting guns as shock troopers (photographs from the camps of African Warlords and such are all over the place). The major difference is that the people throughout most of the world are realists, where in the US, especially currently, we're dominated by left wing Idealists who for all their claims of military and war worship, actually preach and condition people with humanitarian beliefs and anti-violence messages. Your typical American might play violent video games or watch action programming, but when presented with the reality of violence or the need for it, will rail against it... you see it in these forums all the time. For all of our promotion of personal armament, your typical American is probably far less likely to pull the trigger than say your average African, who might have already killed multiple people in order to survive by the time an American would graduate from high school.... depending of course where in Africa he's from of course. The same could be said of most second and third world countries where life is cheap, and people are raised with that mentality out of necessity, and where competition for resources and simple survival can be brutal. Things like clean water, food, etc... that most Americans take for granted (even the poor ones) aren't anywhere near as accessible. In many cases it might not be a matter of not being able to buy food, but there simply not being any for sale at any price because there is too little of it to go around, so either you starve, or kill that guy and take his. That's more or less how people are wired, when we're not conditioned otherwise, in relatively safe and stable environments.
While a video game could be used as part of military training and conditioning, I do not think video game violence inherently conditions people for real violence, after all there is a clear divide between fantasy and reality inherent simply in the identification as a "game". Your typical person on these forums for example (which is heavily left wing) might gleefully slaughter and torture their way through video games, but is going to get incredibly upset when you start talking about real violence, even when arguably necessary, never mind become eager to involve themselves in it at all.
Even I, the militant, only believe in violence when I feel there is a purpose to it, and I'm probably a lot better conditioned (in a real world, practical sense).
In short, I do not think it's the video games, I think it's the society. Video games are under fire in the US, because we have become so moral, and detached from the realities of humanity and the world, a lot of our society wants to remove anything violent from existence.
If the US collapsed, post apocalyptic style, people would become extremely violent and barbaric as a matter of survival, because it's how we're wired. We don't need to be "taught" those things, rather we teach ourselves to not be like that.
Speaking for myself, a recurring message of a lot of my posts is actually that I think we need a middle ground. I don't think barbarity is a good thing, but I don't think the demonetization of violence is a good thing either. I think people need to control those impulses, but should not try and shy away from anything violent or try and pretend they don't exist, because as odd as it might sound, our capacity for violence is one of the things that allows us to survive against both other humans, and in dominated our environment. If humans weren't violent and aggressive we never would have tamed the planet and come to dominated it the way we have. In the final equation, humans are simply put the penultimate predators on planet earth. Even creatures that are inherently stronger than we are, like say sharks in their environment, are nothing compared to us because of our intelligence and the ability to make tools, and perhaps the ultimate natural weapon... the opposable thumb, which allows us to use tools. An opposable thumb combined with a brain is a lot more dangerous than the nastiest claws, or the sharpest teeth... and well, our domination of the planet shows that. We've made things like guns which pretty much trivialize pretty much every animal we know of. That's not something that occurred because we're inherently peaceful, and can't bring ourselves to kill without special consideration or training.
