By Nelson Schneider - 04/20/14 at 03:50 PM CT
Last week, I discussed the recently revealed source of rage that spurs gamers to violence, and shared one of my personal experiences with frustrating gameplay leading to outside-of-game fury. This week, I’d like to take the opportunity to follow-up on last week’s topic and share some of my ruminations on the interactivity between media (of any kind) and the instigation of violence among its consumers.
Because I’m an “insider,” so to speak, nobody on the “outside” will take my comments as unbiased, and will consider them to be some kind of apologetics, so I feel no need to keep the kid gloves on. I’ve been an insider since I first ignored the cries of “Videogames rot your brain!” and “Dungeons & Dragons is the work of the Devil!” back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The saddest thing about these cries for the censorship and restriction of media is that they come most strongly from a group that desperately clings to its own source of media – a source which has been at the root of inhumane and violent activities for more than 1500 years.
The truth of the matter is that games – be they digital or tabletop – are no different than any other form of media when it comes to the glorification of violence. We’ve seen bloody battles played out in literature since the first epic poems were passed orally down through the early generations of mankind. Shakespeare (who I consider highly overrated) filled his stage plays with violence both historical and fictional. Conflict is a central tenant to the construction of a good narrative, and the easiest conflicts – and resolutions to said conflicts – take the form of simple barbaric warfare between a group of “us” and a group of “them.”
The thing about media that makes it dangerous, no matter what form it takes, is its ability to educate. Media allows humans to transmit information, knowledge, and skills amongst ourselves. Without media, we would still be living in caves, bludgeoning to death with rocks those among us who might occasionally come up with a novel idea. Knowledge in and of itself is always a good thing, however, the way knowledge is used can be for good or ill. Yes, it’s a tired old platitude, but it is one of the truest tired old platitudes.
Recently, I expressed concern about a new augmented reality app that would allow users to turn their immediate environment into a first-person shooter. I did not express this concern out of some simplistic hand-wringing sentiment that first-person shooters turn their users evil and violent, but out of the common sense perspective that it could be used as a training device for users who already had evil and violence on their minds. It is no coincidence that the United States military has adopted first-person shooters as part of their training regimen.
Indeed, the FPS genre throws a lot of complex concepts at players and expects them to catch-on or lose. While it is definitely true that aiming a simulated gun with a ridiculous mouse or a ridiculous thumbstick is nothing like aiming an actual firearm, there are optional controllers that are much closer to the real thing (not to mention classic light guns). But marksmanship is the least of the skills taught by FPSes: Spatial awareness, target leading, muzzle climb, and team tactics like flanking and crossfires are all built into the core gameplay mechanics of modern (multi-player) shooters. There’s even the niche game “Receiver” that teaches the player about gun maintenance and mechanics. These concepts can be difficult to pick-up, but videogames allow for a safe environment in which to practice with no threat of actual bodily harm.
Of course, even without videogames teaching core concepts that are important in combat situations, those with violent intentions could gain access to potentially-dangerous knowledge through any number of other sources. Books, videos, ham radio broadcasts: Anything that can transmit information can be used to transmit information into the wrong hands. There are entire Hate Groups dedicated to the use of media – in the form of propaganda – to spread their ideologies to further fields. It matters not that the majority of humanistic-minded folk will recoil in disgust at such ideologies, for like plants spreading thousands of seeds upon the winds, it only takes one seed finding fertile ground to start the process anew.
What kind of “mind,” though, is required for evil thoughts to take root? A feeling of exclusion and of being an outsider with nothing to lose can lead rational minds down dark pathways, but more commonly I fear that undiagnosed mental illness is at the root of most instances where knowledge gained from the consumption of media has lead to negative action. With the ability of modern medicine to diagnose and label far more mental illnesses than ever before, it seems ironic and completely at odds with reality that our modern world no longer has asylums for the criminally insane. Before the collective “we” knew what was wrong with the mentally ill, they were all simply dubbed “mad” and locked away from the rest of us for their own safety as well as ours. Now that science is beginning to understand the ways in which brain chemistry imbalances and tissue damage (be it recent damage or a congenital defect) to specific areas of the brain can affect behavior, we are simply stuck with lunatics who are tenuously kept “sane” via medications that they must remember to take of their own volition… provided they even receive the examinations and treatments they so desperately need.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether someone with evil/madness on the mind is handed a copy of “Call of Duty” or a copy of the “Bible” (or “Quran”). The knowledge contained in any piece of media can (and will) be misused if the intent to misuse it is there in the first place.
