One look at the recent killers and you can see that they were lost in a culture of death and meaninglessness. We need to fight that culture. May the God of the Desert and King of the Universe guide us!
How do the addictive nature of violent video games and their pervasive popularity relate to these violent episodes and tendencies in the younger generation today? Causes? Symptoms? Or do they just provide an unrelated cultural escape?
Is creating violence a natural human reaction to desperate situations, made all the easier here, in a society founded on principles of less authoritarian rule?
Thanks for the great questions, Barbara! I think I'll answer in depth in a new post about it! In brief, though:
1. I do think there is a potential relationship between the rise of hyper-realistic, hyper-violent video games and how mass shooters choose to treat their victims as video game characters. However, for the majority of people who engage with them they are fairly harmless and can provide an "escape." That's probably not the answer most people are looking for - "both"! That they can be both a deeply negative influence on a few people and a largely benign one for the majority. Perhaps sort of like alcohol and many other drugs - most can handle responsible usage, but for some people they simply cannot.
2. I do think that creating violence is simply our "natural" human nature. It says something about us as boys that our "natural" urge when going out to play on the playground is to play war. Think about how naturally it comes to a little boy to turn his thumb and index finger into an imaginary gun. Why is this? I don't think it's necessarily "society" or "media" that trains an otherwise blank slate to want to be an imaginary soldier. I think that's just who we are as males. That we are descended from generations of warriors, killers, criminals, and hunters. We are the end result of the killers who survived.
Perhaps we can also look at it in a biblical context. Cain and Abel is a much more foundational narrative than we tend to give it credit for. Doesn't it say something about humanity that the first child born on earth grew up to murder his own brother? That is who we are as humans.
Years ago, my preschool- aged boys who had not watched much tv or seen “violent movies” and had certainly never played with toy guns delighted in turning the toy chicken thighs from their older sister’s kitchen set into guns to aim and shoot at each other. Nature is a factor.
One look at the recent killers and you can see that they were lost in a culture of death and meaninglessness. We need to fight that culture. May the God of the Desert and King of the Universe guide us!
Oh thanks so much for your endless encouragement, Alec! Yes, it's time to fight the death-worshipping idol culture and WIN!
How do the addictive nature of violent video games and their pervasive popularity relate to these violent episodes and tendencies in the younger generation today? Causes? Symptoms? Or do they just provide an unrelated cultural escape?
Is creating violence a natural human reaction to desperate situations, made all the easier here, in a society founded on principles of less authoritarian rule?
Thanks for the great questions, Barbara! I think I'll answer in depth in a new post about it! In brief, though:
1. I do think there is a potential relationship between the rise of hyper-realistic, hyper-violent video games and how mass shooters choose to treat their victims as video game characters. However, for the majority of people who engage with them they are fairly harmless and can provide an "escape." That's probably not the answer most people are looking for - "both"! That they can be both a deeply negative influence on a few people and a largely benign one for the majority. Perhaps sort of like alcohol and many other drugs - most can handle responsible usage, but for some people they simply cannot.
2. I do think that creating violence is simply our "natural" human nature. It says something about us as boys that our "natural" urge when going out to play on the playground is to play war. Think about how naturally it comes to a little boy to turn his thumb and index finger into an imaginary gun. Why is this? I don't think it's necessarily "society" or "media" that trains an otherwise blank slate to want to be an imaginary soldier. I think that's just who we are as males. That we are descended from generations of warriors, killers, criminals, and hunters. We are the end result of the killers who survived.
Perhaps we can also look at it in a biblical context. Cain and Abel is a much more foundational narrative than we tend to give it credit for. Doesn't it say something about humanity that the first child born on earth grew up to murder his own brother? That is who we are as humans.
Years ago, my preschool- aged boys who had not watched much tv or seen “violent movies” and had certainly never played with toy guns delighted in turning the toy chicken thighs from their older sister’s kitchen set into guns to aim and shoot at each other. Nature is a factor.