Posted by
Andrews on Sunday, May 11, 2008 3:19:06 AM
I was thinking about an essay from a few weeks ago.
Brent Bozell wrote about the newest incarnation of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, and the usual argument ensued. One side asserted that video games are harmless recreation while the other argued that violent video games lead to societal violence. Nothing new, though that won't stop me from commenting.
I have
written on this before, but it was buried in an essay on several topics, so I feel I should give this subject the attention it deserves.
Let me start with a bit of disclosure. I have worked as a software developer, though mostly on medical information systems, financial software, networking and security applications, and fax firmware, never on video games. I do play video games, though my taste runs to tactical and strategy games more than the "first person shooters" which usually inspire these debates. I have played some FPS, mostly older games, but I have never played any of the Grand Theft Auto series. I will also say that, in those games with role playing elements which allow multiple choices, I find I have trouble taking the "evil" path. Perhaps it is some shortcoming of mine, but I empathize too much even with fictional characters to intentionally do them harm. Even when I know it's just a game.
Having said all that, let me begin.
First, I just cannot accept that video games "cause" violence in any meaningful sense, for the same reason I can't believe that pornography "causes" rapes. I know that many will show studies or anecdotal evidence showing a correlation between violent video games and violence, or between pornography and sex, but that makes the common mistake of confusing correlation and causation. By the same logic one could say that moving to Florida causes heart disease, as so many people who move to Florida have heart conditions.
Obviously, my example is foolish, but only because we recognize that there is a secondary factor explaining both events. Older people tend to move to Florida, and old age correlates with heart disease. But my argument is the same for video games and violence. We may not see it, but I believe that there is probably a personality trait which explains both. A person who is predisposed to violence against others will also likely be attracted to violent video games. Or a person who is predisposed to rape will also be attracted to pornography. One does not cause the other, they are both effects of an underlying, but unseen, cause.
But (and there always is a "but"), having said all that, while I do not think violent video games cause violence, they do contribute to a culture which accepts violence, and that makes acting on one's desires easier. Where, in the past, peer pressure would have discouraged a teen from committing acts of violence, the climate fostered by, among many other things, violent games, does not have such pressures, so the expression of violent tendencies is much easier than it once was. We have come to accept violence so readily, though we claim to deplore it, that we fail to make clear to the young that we expect them not to harm other people.
Then again, the video games themselves are such a small part of that culture, that even their role in making violence easier is somewhat negligible. Yes, they contribute to the mass media glorification of violence and criminality, but with so many movies, television shows, and popular music showing violence as commonplace, the role of video games should not be overstated. Were every bit of violence to be expunged from games tomorrow, I doubt it would make any difference. So, even in the limited context of facilitating the expression of violent tendencies, the guilt of video games is hard to establish.
Like so many things in our culture, violent games are not a cause or an effect, but a little of both. We have a culture which has become accepting of violence, of criminality, of outright sociopathy, and that is reflected in popular entertainment, including video games. But, once those games enter the public consciousness, they begin to shape society themselves, leading to even more acceptance of their violent, antisocial content. It is a sort of cultural feedback loop. Once an idea gains a degree of approval, it becomes a self-perpetuating idea, growing on its own.
So where did this glorification of violence and criminality come from? How did it enter our society?
Since at least the sixties we have been creating a culture which glorifies the "outlaw", the outsider, the rebel
1. At first this took the form of harmless escapist fantasies of independent "free spirits", but very quickly it was taken to its logical conclusion, and society began to worship the criminal, the amoral, the misanthrope, and the sociopath
2. And once we began to idolize the criminal we also began to approve of his world, to develop a mythology of violence. This led to a society which accepted violence, which led to violence permeating popular culture. But as popular culture guides society at large, we could not keep approving violent fantasy without seeing it seep out into reality. And the violence that we began to see around us fed back into that pop culture, driving it into ever more violent avenues.
But having said that, it is still not the culture which causes violence, even when society has become so defective. Society does not cause violence, but it does fail to provide restraints. Normally those with a tendency toward violence would feel pressure from the culture to restrain their urges. Those pressures are no longer there. So, what we see is not so much violence caused by society as a preview of what the world would be were society to break down entirely.
All of which is a rather round about way of saying that violent video games, even games which openly glorify crime, are not so much a cause of violence, as they are a symptom of the societal collapse which makes such violence easy. There are always violent people among us. Truthfully, we are all prone to violence to one degree or another. But normally society exerts pressure upon us, keeping us from acting on those impulses. When society begins to break down, we no longer feel those pressures, and violence begins to rise. The violent video games we see are but one expression of that societal breakdown
3. To a small degree they help to perpetuate that trend, but to call them a cause is to go too far
4.
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1. Actually, this trend started much earlier, even the sixties' trend of outlaw worship was hardly new, it had existed since the juvenile delinquent films of the fifties. And the whole lot really arose during the romantic era.
I have written before on the harm I believed the romantics caused, so I will not dwell on that here, I just wanted to point out that this idea may have become widespread durign the 1960's, but has a much older pedigree. (In fact, even the romantics may be too late, as Rousseau's view of the society as innately harmful really lies at the root of much of this distrust of tradition, and he predates the romantics by almost a century. But I plan to write on Rousseau's foolish ideas in another essay.)
2. An interesting example of the changes in society can be seen in the modern fascination with serial killers. This is not new, as the century or more of fascination with Jack the Ripper shows. However, where in the past it was always a fascination tinged with revulsion, a questioning of what could drive someone to do such evil, it has now become almost an admiration. If anyone doubts that, examine the ratings
Dexter is receiving, and explain how a show about a sympathetic serial killer fits into a well adjusted society.
3. It is not so much the violence that is disturbing, as the tendency to accept outright evil as normal behavior which I see as troubling. Violence has been a part of entertainment throughout history. Look at a chess board, a deck of cards or any medieval poem. Or look at the scriptures of almost every religion. Violence itself is not inherently good or bad. What is troubling is the tendency to remove all morality. I do not think games have to serve as sermons on proper living, but the content of some games is dark enough that I worry about the designers. There is just something wrong with finding entertainment in beating up prostitutes and then driving over them in a car.
4. Obviously, the glorification of criminality, even including the Rousseau-like distrust of tradition, does not sufficiently explain all we see around us. The tendency to
reduce punishment until it no longer deters crime, the non-judgmental tendencies of
multiculturalism and
self-esteem movements,
racial separatist rhetoric and the hostile climate it creates, and many other factors all feed into this as well. To reduce it to one cause would be to oversimplify. But to mention every possible influence would take much more space than I have available.