Bread and Circuits
A recent discussion at BoingBoing about the new Grand Theft Auto is an eclectic treatise on how hipster netizens view media ethics. The most interesting tension is between those making a feminist critique of the game's misogynistic tendencies and those calling the game social satire. I think the truth lies somewhere in-between, but the polarized discussion does demonstrate that in an age of postirony (irony with a faux critical pose lacking real substance) it's hard to be critical without coming across as anti-fun. People are ridiculed if they use big words and analytical tools to back up their ideas (some commentators derided the use of "patriarchy" which begs the question, when did being educated become so uncool?) Granted, academic jargon can be a kind of inarticulation that obscures a lack of creative thinking or good ideas (and also, frankly, has the effect of being quite boring), but we should be able to say things like patriarchy and militarism without seeming stuck-up.
GTA maneuvers social norms because postirony allows us to take pleasure in the politically incorrect, permitting us to dismiss without consequences our own moral standards as frivolous relics of the '60s. I'm for engaging fantasy as long as it's done mindfully--perhaps we're in need of a kind of post-postirony, which in the laws of logic makes a kind of double negative, and hence we return full circle to irony as a rhetoric of social critique (i.e. Dada, Situationism, punk). Irony and humor are often the only way corporate media take on serious issues while maintaining some emotional distance. The court jester was always the one person who could criticize the king without getting his or her head chopped off--compare this figure to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both satirists employed on a network owned by one of the world's biggest media companies, Viacom. And consider that their silly/serious media deconstructions educate the public on current events more than Fox News (as a PEW study showed).
Navigating the media landscape requires traversing a realm of double binds such as real news being fake, and fake news being real. You can add to the list just about every advertising message which has as its subtext the concept that commodities have utopian properties that will transform our mundane lives into magical realms of possibility. To stay sane we require cognitive dissonance, which means holding contradictory beliefs as true (like buying new designer jeans that look old or freedom equals militarism). Mental tools like "truthiness" help us seek moral clarity in a world that has little, yet we sill suffer greatly when we see acts of cruelty played out in the media. Video games are an easy target because we associate them with children, but we should be aware that talk about the media victimizing children is often a projection of adult anxieties about technology. Most media critics claiming to represent children are probably masking their own adult fears regarding rapid changes in society's engagement with new machines.
Is it possible to accept the existence of video games as a kind of phenomena on their own terms? Unlike traditional media video games contain problem solving tools that often require people to work together. Moreover, video games have depth and challenges that encourage transgression. In one anecdote from a friend who teaches digital media, he found a clever kid using his taxi in GTA to run over and kill as many people as possible. His rationale? He was testing the stupidity of the game's AI.
Can video games be used as tools to discover something important about how our minds operate, and where in the spectrum of moral critique our values come from? I don't suggest making them into Rorschach tests, although that is what GTA has become for many. Nor I'm I calling for solipsism, because we do need a moral compass and social norms that respect people's rights and integrity. I do feel in many respects that we are as much defined by community as we are by our own internal thought process. Perhaps we should go from the Western idea, "I think, therefore I am," to a more indigenous concept like, "It all thinks, therefore I am." As such, there should be a space for us to consider the intelligent aspects of video gaming, albeit with an eye towards critical engagement, and explore the potential holographic concepts contained within them.
(A recent book, Gamer Theory, takes a slightly different POV to argue that life in capitalist reality is in itself a gamespace, and that gaming reflects the ideological structure of our world.)
At one point research on the effects of media changed the question from, "What does media do to children?", to, "What do children do with media?" The latter question assumes a lot more agency on the user's behalf. Media products are not just ideological magic bullets that control our thoughts. They can also be a source of gratification. That in itself is not evil, despite what the religious fanatics want us to believe. Still, the rule of the playground stands: it's always fun until someone gets hurt.
So far, the only injury I can only vouch from this ideological back and forth is tennis elbow.
I don't think games like GTA pose a threat to society, but I do feel that their presence both enriches and further complicates the various entangled arguments that make up the debate concerning media effects. Yes, some people are prone to violence and can be pushed over the edge by certain heightened states of nerve stimulation, but I believe most people have a check against that. Similarly, we should also be able to criticize the game without being attacked as neo-Victorians.
When I go to teach my mass media class at the university, my bus passes the Roman Colosseum, built by Emperor Vespasian in his "bread and circuses" campaign to entertain and feed the masses in order to stave off social unrest. It's a reminder that in ancient times real people were killed for sport, and that was perfectly normal. Now virtual people are killed for entertainment which seems like progress (admittedly our method of aerial bombardment warfare is a kind of "virtual" killing that is very real for its victims, but our present example concerns killing for entertainment, not during warfare). Reflecting upon the Colosseum and all that went on there, I have the strange, if not naive sensation, that in general the world is a more moral place to live (albeit less than perfect and full of bloodthirsty lunatics supported by institutionalized violent pathology), and that it is in direct relationship to ideas about human rights disseminated and normalized by global media.
When reading the Buddha's sutas from over 2,500 hundred years ago, I find that people have not changed much. Back then the mind was just as susceptible to greed, ignorance, delusion and confusion as it is today. The difference now is that the feedback system is far greater and involves more people. Frankly, it's harder to get away with things. In terms of cosmic cycles, you could say that we're in a global phase of high spiritual metabolism. We amplify and burn more quickly. Trick is, at what point does the organism/system stabilize? Clearly a society that produces GTA for entertainment is in a highly volatile state. However, there are signs from the great GTA Debate that we are edging towards homeostasis. The fact that we have this instantaneous and massive societal discussion is certainly an important indication that rather than being brainwashed, many of us still care deeply about the world… and we use the media to voice our opinions.
After Orson Welles' radio broadcast of War of the Worlds inadvertently produced a panic (recall that HG Well's classic was recast as a news report) social scientists went back and surveyed listeners to find out what happened. What emerged from their media effects study is that educated people were the least susceptible to believing the broadcast was of a real invasion. Those with strong religious convictions were the most vulnerable. That caveat should remind us that more often than not it's not the media itself but our own beliefs and education that produce the outcome.
Despite all of the meaning and outcomes we attempt to ascribe to it, an individual's experience with media is only one element of a far more complex mental ecology. If there is one sure thing to be gleaned from this whole exercise, however, it's that all of this debate equals free marketing for Rockstar, whose $100 million investment has already paled in relation to its profits.
P.S. – Finally some sanity in the video game debate. In Grand Theft Childhood? some real researchers have actually looked at the evidence to see what is really happening with gamers. For a sneak peak. Definitely check out the "myths" page.
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- 5-12-08
- Antonio Lopez's blog
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WarGames
Some tasty food for thought here, Antonio.
I recently caught an episode of the Discovery Channel's new documentary series Rise of the Video Game. This episode focused on the advent of ultraviolent "first-person shooters" with Id's Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom games, ushering in a new era of controversy surrounding youth and video gaming.
As the doc explains, the political outcry that arose in response to these graphic, immersive experiences in virtual mayem has since given way to the military complex's co-opting of shoot-em-up gaming as a recruitment and training tool. Hypocritical to say the least, but it gets deeper than that. Taxpayers have funded the creation of Army branded warfare games that glorify intense and ultrarealistic violence with themes of nationalism. The US military has become a massive presence at the E3 Electronics convention, and their gory games reap record profits in the retail market.
We are now in a scenario where the questionable elements of violent gaming has been seized upon by the armed forces as an unapologetic tool for influencing an impressionable youth culture. There's little room for debate, in this case -- unlike GTA and other titles that can at least claim entertainment value.
indoctrination vs initiation
Lately, I am increasingly seeing the "war for souls" - or whatever is happening now - as based around an ancient split between techniques of initiation and indoctrination. I first started conceiving of the situation in those terms when I read John Lash's "Not In His Image". Lash theorizes that techniques of creating dissociative states and then using suggestion to imprint structures of thought and feeling have existed since the Zoroastrian days. The Gnostics were protectors of ancient Mystery traditions (such as Eleusis) in which similar techniques were used in initiatory processes. A group of Mesopotamian priests perverted these techniques and made them into means of indoctrination - this legacy continues today.
In other words: You can use non-ordinary states of trance to decondition people and give them their freedom, or you can use trance states to create disocciation and split personalities, as explored in the last decades by Operation Monarch and MK-Ultra. The potent "entrainment" of the mass culture (sports talk or horror films) is a technology for keeping people - especially young men who are most prone to this if they have no initiatory discipline - in dissociative states that are potentially violent and psychopathic.
It would be interesting to know if military funding was involved in the violent gaming industry from the beginning - just as initial research in psychedelic substances was funded by the military and CIA.
My next question is whether these techniques of dissociation/indoctrination can be appropriated for positive and liberatory ends. For instance, could games be created where the flickering trance leads to a spiritual realization or some kind of break in the numbness? Can the high-speed patterning of 30 second commercials be transmuted into propaganda for freedom of thought, community building, nonviolent activism, and sustainable downsizing of our industrial culture?
According to Lash, these techniques may have been brought here by "off-planet entities," Archons, in the language of Gnostics, who are seeking to make earth into a slave planet.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Yes it is possible!
Surely, both fast paced commercial TV and video games can be used for good, conscioussness rising purposes.
Post modern times could be a good example for TV, but its also movies like what the bleep do we know or the secret - more like talking head documentaries than fast paced stuff. In terms of music video - check out the TOOL videos (available on youtube) - yes they are on a dark side but are great example of symbol rich, deep message going far beyond the visualising lyrics of the song. 'Parabol ' is a great example.
As for the games - they reinforce certain outlook and promote certain strategies. Especially interesting here are cRPGs - computer role playing games, where the
main character develops throughout the game. Usually it is simple increase of strength / magical powers but it doesnt have to be. Instead of typical Strength / Dexterity / Endurance / Magic combo it could be based on real things like chacra powers or other interesting systems like those postulated in book 'spiritual inteligence'. Using such alternative hero development, its structure could be painlessly understood and assimilated by player. Then it could be confronted with real world.
Another thing important in cRPGs is the story - in many cases these deal with topics like destiny, own path, conflict, identity. And its not always cliches - in few cases like Planescape Torment or the Witcher the choices that we make throughout the game quite realisticly (ie not black and white) affect the world we play in sometimes to the extent that the player gets the constant remainder of importance of his actions.
It could be also interesting to see the games that say that reality is kind of game too. No save or undo and just one life, but still a game :)
And for all the peakoilers I'd recommend Fallout I and II - games of post nuclear war america. Not very enlightening but fascinating and showing descent of humanity into clans, tribes in much more convincing way that Madmax did.
gaming
hi true,
yes but even if the content of the games is uplifting, what happens to those people who are immersed in them? Are they committing to transformation of the real planetary environment which is now collapsing? Or do the games work as a Luciferic diversion which keeps people emeshed in a virtual bubble of disconnection?
I had the same criticism of people taking psychedelics in the old Leary context. Ultimately, I don't care about what people say about their inner experiences as much as I do about the tangible effects their actual actions have on the world around them. Or as Gandhi discussed, a spiritual pricinple is meaningless unless it is embodied in action.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Thinking out loud
It's true that the military has invested a lot of money into video game research, and also movie special effects. True enough, drone and robotic warfare are the wave of the future, and I wouldn't be surprised if remote torture is on its way. But the military also invested in the Internet.
As McLuhan argued, media content is like meat for the guard dogs. It's the medium we need to pay attention to. Rushkoff's Screenagers does an excellent job of showing how gaming (along with skateboarding and other teen activities) are contributing to the breakdown of Cartesian thought. And that is a tremendous service to the world, and global ecology. If we want to talk about alien technology, then look at the alphabet. Writing has done more to disassociate consciousness from the body than any other human invention. After recently rereading Huxley's Brave New World and this article by a neuroscientists (I think her conclusions are bit conservative, but there's some good info there), I think the greatest danger to society is not video games or media, but pharmaceutical drugs. They are are not separate, given that TV is a great propaganda device for Big Pharma (I'm also reminded of graffiti I once saw in Santa Cruz that said,"First they said pot led to acid. Then they said it led to heroin. Now they know it leads to television"). But I believe the inoculation of the mind with mood altering drugs is a bigger societal threat to mindfulness then playing video games. Combine the two, then you have a different situation.
I'm also aware that there are studies that indicate that thoughts about something can be as powerful as their actuality-- that brain waves look the same whether thinking about something or seeing it. So I'm being flip when I say fantasy is innocuous. But I think critics are wrong when they state that people don't distinguish between "reality" and "mediated reality." It's the wrong argument. They coexist, especially if you consider McLuhan's belief that media are extensions of our nerve system. When we drive the car's tires are an extension of our body, but we also know that the car is a car. When we play games we enter the game's magic circle and suspend disbelief, but we also navigate away from it. No doubt, there are those who cannot tell the difference. I think we call that schizophrenia.
I believe one of the greatest benefits of film and moving image technology is that they mimic how our brains suture reality. If we want to take it to metaphysical level, I think media are an externalization of our thoughts. We should embrace our nakedness and acknowledge, yes, we do think like this. It's the opposite of repression. Some could argue, though, that the externalization of our thinking is also a way of not taking responsibility.
Maybe it's disappointing that I did not make a clear argument for or against video games, but my point is that it's complicated and not an either/or situation, but one that is more ecological in the sense that certain things thrive depending on their environment, thoughts in particular. GTA is a product of the "creeping cycle of desensitization," which is the idea that as certain kinds of media become more normal, newer media have to be more "shocking" to distinguish themselves from the old. There are a couple of ways to look at this phenomena. One is to realize that we manage to become immune to media and learn to ignore them. The other is that we become so desensitized we are oblivious to our own conditioning by media. Again, not to be wishy-washy, but I think the reality is that this is a spectrum of experience, and not an either/or situation.
I believe the mind is a garden, not a computer, so if it is full of strong and healthy plants and rich soil, it can coexist with the weeds. Media certainly can facilitate parasitic thoughts, I have no doubt about it, but my feeling is not to take an industrial farming approach and simply throw weed killer at the media we don't like, but take a permaculture approach and strengthen the mind's ecosystem (meditation, art, music, education, nutrition, nature, love, community, etc.). According to the conventional belief concerning media's effects, I should be a violent sociopath because of all the media I have consumed, and from the amount of war games I played as a kid. That is not the case. And it's also the case of many media critics. If they consider themselves immune to the effects of media, what is every body else's problem? Why aren't they brainwashed?
Feed rewarding images of
Feed rewarding images of death and crime into the mind of a dispossessed 17 year old strung out on heavy skunk (cut in with who knows what), who has no role model save culture glorifying guns, aggression between the sexes and easy money and guess what you get?
Marketing/ advertising/ PR works. Placing images inside people’s minds actually does get them to do things the manipulator wants/ needs. Separation, hopelessness and control in this case – the architects of these products know that an educated or privileged mind is not so easily taken in, but those people aren’t the target for this virus. Are the well educated or rich targets for Armed forces recruiters? No, but guess who is?
Could be Willie Nelson flogging Jeans to Gap customers. Could be Governments selling an invasion, repetition of multi modal meaning always finds its mark. The western world can’t afford to have games that glorify crime out there if it desires safe society. Sorry but if you destroy the nuclear family, run down education, make nasty street chemicals available and isolate neighbour from neighbour this stuff is a recipe to perpetuate what we’ve already got – decline.
Frankly anyone must be fucking stupid to think otherwise.
I’m so tired of lame justification for this cancer when on my doorstep violent teenagers stab each other nightly. One might be alright to ‘enter into debate’ about this stuff with a college education and encyclopaedia in your back pocket. Vulnerable people on the estates of UK cities feel they can’t even leave their apartments because of the siege situation created by young people living in a reality devoid of basic morality.
simplified connections
Somantics,
You make oversimplified connections here and dont mention importance of many other factors in London killings.
Take wealth distribution - London being on one capital of world finance, on the other a world of housing prices being outside the reach of teachers and nurses. People who dont have education and perspective of getting one (as in the last three years education prices went much higher and many affordable courses got slashed) are becomming frustrated as they may have the feeling of getting excluded and burried alive. Rejected from this colourful consuming game above in which all Londoners play.
And when their life has no value, they start acting accordingly. Isolated, excluded and frustrated they join gangs of alike people, empowering themselves in a twisted way. Gang is way of social identity, gives you a feeling you belong to community where you set the rules. You go by gang rules, youre being promoted. Its a tough game but may seem to be the only one they can play in.
Inner city gangs are problem, that is much older than any computer games.
In Defense of Men
The whole conversation makes me furious, and leads me towards feelings of desperation and hopelessness.
The fact is, men are aggressive, lustful, and violent. They're also (excuse me, but let me speak for you for a moment) frustrated and furious with women, who one of my friends described as "walking NO machines."
Perhaps women are, overall, at parity with sexual libido with men. And perhaps one day, swingers clubs will stop letting single women in for free, (and stop giving them discounts,) and stop prohibiting single men from coming in. Perhaps. Perhaps. It's an interesting theory.
My basic belief is that men are basically oppressed and disposable in our society. Nobody has written anything good to say about men's sexuality, except perhaps to give it a stamp of "SPIRITUALLY CLEAR!" if men swear to promise to "hold it in."
Men live their whole lives sexually invisible; Women only have a chance of experiencing it when they turn 50.
But men can't speak up.
Men are men's own worst enemy.
The strength of women is their appearance of weakness, and the weakness of men is their appearance of strength.
If a man dare complain, he'll get stomped on by the guy who wants to appear noble before the ladies. "No, of course we're not like that..."
No, of course not...
I've been in conversation with other men and women, where I've been stomped on by other men, for speaking my mind. But when the women left, they said, "Well, of course what you said is right, but you have to say it differently."
Say it differently my ass.
I'm sick and tired of societies every effort to control men, to dispose of men, to say, "The women are valuable, you are the ones to pony up." Look at this paper on men's sexual needs vs. this paper on women's sexual needs.
Find me a paper on men's sexual needs that is even close to parity in quality. You won't find any.
Why? Because men don't count. Because we're disposable. Every surviving civilization has known this.
Look at that bullshit paper on men's sexual needs-- why do our needs need to be looked at?
In order to support our roles as better husbands, fathers and financial providers.
You got that?
Not because you're a person. Not because people are sacred, period. Not because needs are themselves valid things.
NO: Because you've got to pony up, buster, and pay your way.
It's the same message we men always heard.
You'll excuse us if there are some men who have moments of anger, and occasional mysogynistic feelings.
I can understand why men are angry with women.
It's not spiritual, but it doesn't mean it's not addressing something, either.
"You have it harder than people know." -- Norah Vincent.
Men, I know what you're about to say, "I'm not like that! I'm not lustful, violent, or aggressive!"
Perhaps you are low libido (I've met many men like that,) perhaps you're against war (like myself,) perhaps all these things. But tell me you haven't struggled with any of these tendencies.
Realize that your sisters aren't like that. They just don't get that testosterone kick.
But let me tell you something else, -- you have virtues.
I'm not about restoring old gender relationships. In fact, I'm really on about completing the feminist revolution. But it's not going to be more and more feminism. We need to seriously dig into what men are and what men need.
The feminist mistake is that the powerlessness of women = the power of men. It's actually not the case -- men were just as powerless as women, under the machinery of culture. Dad's gotta provide, right? If he had power, he wouldn't have to. But he did have to. He wasn't in power.
Ah, hell, whatever.
Take away all our machines, video games, porn (here's a secret: men are the real holders of sexuality, not women; the beauty of men is evoked by the imaginations of men; women make themselves bland in women's magazines -- look at the erotic imagery made by men, vs. made by women, and you'll see what I mean;), and strip us down and make us serve goddesses all day long, goddesses demanding cosmetics, cars, houses, and household services. Make your own prison.
Down with Patriarchy, because, ... ... yeah, I'm really enjoying the fruits of the patriarchy. It's late, and I gotta go home. The missus is going to be asking me, "But why did you stay at work so late?" ... And besides, somebody has to take out the trash, or it'll just pile up, and pile up, and pile up, ...
What other stream?
While I agree society and women only have as much power as we give them, that's a pretty large "we."
Two women are talking in the 1950's, at a homemakers club. One says to the other, "You know, I don't like how I always have to be the housewife." The other women say to her, "Well, if you don't like the direction the river is going, step out of it and find another current."
What other current?!?
The rush to individualize, to de-socialize, ("Oh, it's just you, don't try to interact with society, just change yourself or find your own,") can be really invalidating.
The rush to socialize ("I'm having a problem, and it's something all of society needs to change to accomodate!") is also a problem. So the challenge is, how do you know when it's one or the other?
So you try to figure it out, "Is it just me, or does society need to hear about this?"
And in talking with other men and women, I've come to the conclusion that this is something that society stands to benefit by hearing about.
In that sense, I'm trying to create a stream that doesn't exist, and then we can decide how to interact from the mainstream from there.
Some things about this new stream, I imagine:
Boys and Men will be respected for what they are, not for what it would be convenient to society for them to be. I can envision a society of rough edges, rather than the society of comfort that we work so hard on today -- this could have enormous implications for the Eco movement.
Men will be revered for their sexuality, rather than demonized. Men who willfully have sex when they are 13 will not be called "abused," which is an absolutely preposterous notion; Talk with men who had sex when they were 13. Seriously. If anything, we should be encouraging older women to have sex with young men. Girls, we all know, can only be harmed by having sex when they're 13, so they will keep the age 18 limit, to protect their safety and dignity and future.
Men will be recognized as the primary instigators and equal holders of sex and sexuality, because that's what they are. The notion that women are the embodiment of sexual virtue is absurd: thirst is not only in the water, it's also in the drinker. For sure, no man will ever be punished for a sexual fantasy in his mind, or a sexual fantasy that he has drawn or animated.
Aggression, and it's symbol in violence, will be valued, rather than villified. Society won't fall apart into violence, because men are also by nature fair-minded, justice-oriented, and very very deeply compassionate in nature. (Yes, Jesus Christ was actually a man. The Buddha was actually a man. The Dalai Lama is also a man.) The absurd notion that women somehow have a monopoly on compassion, or that it's a man's "female side" that makes him compassionate, will be thoroughly torn up and discarded.
It is not an accident that sex ends with marriage. Sexual attraction (which we desperately need to understand and come to grips with) is based in power imbalance. We turn a blind eye to power imbalance during the romance and dating stages, (see just about any movie,) but when a couple is married (or effectively married,) new rules come into play: "Okay, everything's going to be "equalized," as much as possible." Sex suddenly drops, and now the couple's "working at it." All the time, across the United States, the people are all "working at it." Men starve for air. This needs to totally change, but not by trying to change the nature of sexual attraction, that is impossible. It's absurd that we pretend to not know how or why attraction mysteriously ends at marriage. It's because the unthinkable is the reason.
The language of "sex objects" or "objectification" will be totally discarded. Attempts to shame men out of their desire will be seen for what they are, and will be totally discarded.
We won't be returning to a painful and idealized past. Women will not be subjugated. (Note: It's not subjugation of women, for men to enjoy porn, or to even feel anger towards women. Subjugation must be actual subjugation.)
I will encourage all women to strive to realize their creative natures, whatever that means. I personally, like most men I've met, highly value the Valkyries, the Amazons. In my experience, most men I know actually like women who have ambition, skill, and strength; They go, "Oh wow, you actually put in comparable work and labor. You're committed to figuring this out, and you're really doing it. Way to go!"
Women are their own people, and know their own wants and natures better than we do. It's really not our business to tell them what to be or how to be it. (If only they'd respect that about us.) In this vision of a new world, (which, by God, I am making up at this very minute as I go along,) we'll worship the Androgyn together, and we'll be committed to continuous dialog, for greater self-expression in The Other, encouraging each other along.
But we will not submit to enslavement, and man will not turn against other man to win the affections of woman. We'll need to self-police ourselves for turncoats.
What else... Men will be prized for our unique spirituality, our intuitive insights, and for our sciences and discernments and creativities. Not to the exclusion of women, of course: As women take on construction work, garbage pick-up, electronics, perhaps they'll also get into computer programming, mathematics, and other unpractical arts. I honestly don't know how it'll turn out. It depends on what men and women want to be in those ages.
But I absolutely know that the vilification of men, the ignoring of the deaths of men, the demonization of men's essential nature, boy's choices of toys, and so on -- it all needs to stop.
Read Gibran On Marriage, he was a wise man. This is the relationship we need between the sexes: "I'm different, You're different, That's good." He said: "Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup." Our marriages suck because we're trying to make men and women into one (inessential) nature. This is the goal of the "egalitarian" marriage -- making men and women the same. But it's a total farce, and it's making us all miserable. Let men be men. Really let men be men. I don't know if we'll have marriages in the future or not; I don't know how it'll work out. But I know that men need to be allowed to be men, and we're presently not allowed to be what we are, by the main stream, and just about every side-streams in American culture as well.
I'd personally rather not be married. I'd rather -- It'd be really great, to me, if my daughter, Sakura, spent a year with me, and a year with her. My girlfriend, Amber -- we are very good friends. It'd be great if we occasionally lived with each other, and we were all together for a time, as well. We really are a happy family, together as a family. But it's killing me, the individual, and it's killing tons of men I know who are stuck with only two options: "Deadbeat Dad," (whom courts are absolutely ruthless towards-- check out the suicide statistics and stories,) and "Family Slave" (remember "better husbands, fathers, providers," all that?) Women aren't really enjoying their marriage romances either. "Working at it" doesn't work. It just doesn't. It's as rediculous as the secular humanist depression therapies -- there's just nothing inspiring in secular humanism, it's a fundamental contradiction and flaw. So they just "work at it." But there are real alternatives that really work.
I realize that I've strayed way off-topic, and I apologize for that. I really need to find a way or place to say these things, because they need to be heard. I need to figure out how to say them better. My apologies for taking the floor space inappropriately.
Understanding Men
Not treating us as walking wallets is a good start!
If you really want to understand men, I would deeply contemplate the implications of men's need for sex.
depends on a person
My gf doesnt treat me like a wallet as I dont treat her as sex machine. If we do anything it must be because were both want it rather than satisfying one side's 'needs'. The trick is to make other side want the same - but thats a realm of flirt and perpetual effort (as is love itself) rather than something that comes granted with marriage or relationship.
You Make Your Own Prison
There's one (small) set of marriages where the couple is really in love with each other for life.
Then there's the far larger set of marriages where the couple is constantly "working" on it, which basically translates to him doing the "work." It's a sham.
The modern marriage fundamentally does not make sense, except in the sense of keeping kids alive and healthy.
Men are regularly violated in our society and emotionally abused, and we really need to stick up for ourselves, rather than letting society manipulate us, telling us what we want (when it's not what we want,) and sacrificing us for her, for her, and for her, all the time for her.
Boys and men really need to reclaim themselves and their own divinity. It's not a sin to seek genuine happiness, and it's not a sin to say, "These relationships, across the board, simply are not working for us."
a threat to society
hi monkeyblood,
i can definitely empathize with your worries about your son getting caught in this trance-inducing subculture of violent videogames. Increasingly, I believe that there is an ethical imperative connected with media and cultural productions. We have forfeited that in our present culture, with its language of deconstructivism and relativism, and it is a serious problem.
There are different ways that one can go on without making any ethical judgments about the phenomenon of hyperviolent videogames and the like. For instance, you can take the stance of a materialist nihilist who believes that nothing matters anyway, and therefore whatever people do is meaningless. Or you can take the extreme view of certain Vedantists (eloquently expressed by the sage Ramesh), who propose that we don't "do" anything at all and we have no free will whatsoever - our free will is just an illusion of the "bodymind organism," and enlightenment is therefore the extinction of this illusion, along with the ego itself. From either of these perspectives, the fact that millions upon millions of people keep themselves in dissociative states focused on virtual enactments of predatory and violent behavior seems fine.
Personally, I am increasingly sympathetic with Gandhi's perspective on nonviolence, and the need to actively embody spiritual principles, or they are meaningless. There was a nice event in Union Square Park recently next to the Gandhi statue, with Philip Glass, a Tibetan lama, and others, remembering Gandhi's legacy and his movement of satyagraha ("truth force"). Someone noted that almost all of the statues in New York City are monuments to violence -- generals charging on horses, World War One soldiers, etc. In fact, the Gandhi statue is probably the only sculpture in the entire city that commemorates peace.
One teacher said that during a course on nonviolence, one of her students had gotten an A with an extremely short term paper that asked and answered a single question. The complete paper was fifteen words long, and here it is: "Question: Why are people literate but not nonviolent? Answer: Because they are taught to read."
What Gandhi discovered was that active nonviolence was a technique that could be taught to people, just like literacy. Active nonviolence or satyagraha - "truthforce" - is very different from the passive doctrine of ahimsa that is now taught in yoga schools across the West. Nonviolent activism is clearly a warrior's path. Gandhi in fact said that, when faced with oppression, if nonviolent activism was impossible, violent resistance was preferable to passive nonviolence.
At the moment, we do not live in a culture that teaches young people (or adults) active nonviolence, and therefore they are not nonviolent. What the violent videogames do is keep us in a culture where destructive activity is considered "normal," even glamorous and "cool." They support the military culture more generally - that pathological amping-up that is necessary to keep the great American war machine humming along.
My personal perspective is that we are quickly approaching a tipping point where we are either going to see the most dystopian nightmares of mind-control technology and high-tech surveillance unleashed on the population, or there is going to be a lightning-strike of awareness that society cannot be allowed to go in that direction. I recently interviewed Dr Nick Begich and recommend that people check out his work with The Lay Institute and his books on the Haarp Project and government mind control technology. Begich did not seem like an alarmist but a scientifically cautious and grounded person, who has recovered a lot of very frightening information about what is now known to the military about manipulating the human mind.
Personally, I truly believe that civil society can move in the opposite direction, away from Total Awareness and mind control, but it is up to the people to work together for the alternative and break the black magic spell of comatose passivity, cynicism, etc., that is cast over us. The mass passivity, ethical vacuity, cynicism, and dissociative acceptance of psychopathic behavior on the part of corporations and ruling regimes is not a normal state of human affairs but a real aberration. I think that Lash's book, "Not In His Image", is invaluable in showing how this "victim-perpetrator" complex based on "original sin" (compared to other cultures understanding of "basic goodness") is part of a particular Judeo-Christian deviation, perhaps devised by the off-planet entities or mind parasites that the Gnostics called Archons.
As I said in my earlier post, I believe that we can see this as being due to a manipulation of techniques of initiation - using suggestive states to create re-imprinting, as John Lilly discussed in Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer - so that instead of initiation, we have indoctrination.
Initiation makes adolescents into adult beings who take responsibility for their actions. We live in a world of "kidults" where people have been systematically entrained to believe that following their unleashed impulses and taking from others is allowable. Video games such as GTA are mechanisms of indoctrination that work on many levels. It may seem like an improvement that people are playing GTA rather than watching "Bread and Circuses" - and I tend to believe there has been an ethical advance in the subliminal consciousness of humanity - yet these games allow people to maintain alienation and even support the detached and distanced violence that the US military does in other regions of the world.
I am almost persuaded that a revival of the satyagraha movement with its range of nonviolent activism techniques - slow downs, walk outs, marches, etc. - is the only means to stop the military industrial complex in the US.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
statues/mental action
Just a reminder that poets walk exists in central park, with William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott...Wait, Christopher Columbus is there too. Whoops. Your point, Daniel.
I think these immersive role playing games are fed by a need to acquire the power to act in a world where action is presented as impossible by the culture. It's opium of the masses to an expent that would make Marx's mind reel. But learning to be active in what you might call a post-physical space might be helpful training, as long as folks graduate to the real "game", the real work in the expanded mystical space of this living planet and IT'S multi-dimensional reality, where you can't necessarily hit replay on global collapse. A game with real stakes.
Games such as WoW may be creating the massive online communities that can be of vital use in communicating and implementing massive change. Not so much through the pastimes themselves, but through training people to be part of a worldwide community that acts together for a common goal, in a collectively imagined non-physical way of "action".
I do believe that these games could be training for good as well as bad, much as another game might have been for some of us, once upon a time, with it's stack of books, hand drawn maps, and multi-sided dice. But GTA itself sounds like quite the purgatorial slog through realms of hungry ghosts!
nonviolent eyes
Since the satyagraha events and also since the discussion with Sharon Gannon at Jivamukti several months back, where I was arguing against nonviolence in extreme scenarios (a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp), I have been thinking a lot about nonviolence, and what it means. Right now, I am reading the Narnia books to my daughter, which is great fun, but in the midst of the current book she asked me, "How come there's a war in every book?" And she is right, of course. When I consider the Narnia books through that perspective, there seems something almost demented about them whenever they go into the war and fighting scenes. The weirdness of our cultural acceptance of violence is obscured by a kind of mechanical forgetfulness - not just in these books but in much of literature.
As for rpgs and video games, yes I think we can see the coordination aspects as (potentially) part of an evolutionary process that still might have a positive outcome. However, I also think we have to recognize that this stuff takes a brutal toll. Look what these virtual escapes do to the physical bodies of those immersed in them, for instance.
I think we seek out these virtual realms because we are denied necessary initiatory processes and higher-states of consciousness experiences - we accept them as compensation for those aspects of reality that we intuit and crave, as children, but the "real world" denies.
I can already see this process with my daughter's school: It is a really good school by mainstream standards, but they do not honor and make room for expression of the childrens' imagination as pure creative force the way I wish they would. Everything is so dauntingly regimented, even in first grade.
I am going to have to seek out "De-Schooling Society", an anarchist text that Levitch was always going on about...
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
fantasy
Even as someone who has loved video games his entire life, I agree with you whole-heartedly. I recently decided to cash in my games because I felt they were too distracting.
Somehow, the modern "virtual realm" seems different than what I remember from my childhood. I remember epic adventures and fantasy magic, seemed only heightened by my imagination. Perhaps the intention was different when it was still a relatively new, less marketable phenomenon? Nowadays, I feel more game publishers are banking on pulling people out of their "real world" instead of encouraging the "real magic" that perhaps exists outside of virtual space. This is a very romantic perspective, though.
Completely off topic, but if you're reading your daughter fantasy, you must pick up George Macdonald's The Light Princess. He was an inspiration for Lewis (who may or may not have come close to his predecessor, depending on who you ask or what you read). His ninteenth century fairy tales are undeniably human, evoking simple archetypes while venturing into the natural, philosophical and phantastical. Any of his children's stories would do--The Golden Key, Cross Purposes, The Princess and the Goblin or one of my favorites, The History of Photogen and Nycteris. As far as I can remember, there are at least no wars. Happy adventuring!
Baptise the Imagination
Many of the hopes expressed here and elsewhere on RS for alternative uses of mass media reflect what Lewis said MacDonald's work had done for him - that it had baptised his imagination. In other words, poets and artists have long made the claim that great works of art can confer initiation, that poetry in particular - inspiration in dialogue with intellect - can create the conditions for illumination.
Can hacked media turn tranced consumers into critically engaged "readers"? Can a computer game confer gnosis to a player, in the way that, say, Dante or Yeats can to a reader?
The passive body of the game player, with tranced consciousness focused in a screen, is a big problem I think - though the wii looks interesting. Poetry spoken aloud engages the whole being, body and soul. Perhaps a spoken word game, or better, a game where the characters sing to each other, is one way around this.
Singalong-a-theft Eco, anyone?
Lewis vs. Pullman
As someone who adored Narnia as a child, I feel that Phillip Pullman ("His Dark Materials") offers a devestating critique of Lewis:
http://www.crlamppost.org/darkside.htm
Also, Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan" tackles the issue of Susan being denied the chance to go to Heaven with her siblings in the last book because she's too fond of nylons and lipsticks (the story apparently ends with Aslan going down on the White Witch! If that doesn't constitute an alternative morality to the series, than what could?).
This goes back to the issue of games like GTA. Do we reject systems of myth out of hand because the morality it teaches is seen as too overwhelmingly negative to redeem? Is a "holistic" game really more useful, or is that a cop out?
The use of fables as a human form of communication is essential. The values of the fable teller becomes part of that communication. Because Narnia reflects so much of the beauty AND the poison of our effed-up culture, it's a tough choice. I would choose to present it, but not uncritically. It's a great introduction to the values, good or ill, of Western Civ. Better to receive it this way in a setting where it can be discussed.
Questioning the fairy tale is not some spoil sport move imposed by the parent, after all. Children WANT to interrogate the stories they are told...I wish that most adults were ready to do the same.
Fairy Tales and GTA
I agree with Pulman - I find Lewis's Narnia books unpleasant. I wouldn't call them a fairy tale, - to my mind they are a mean christian allegory, designed "for the good" of children, by an Oxford don, and without any real feeling for the language
Traditional fairy tales have no fixed form, and are honed and shaped in the telling. They are streamlined nuggets of folk wisdom, immediately concerned with the business of living and surviving in a capricious and painful world.
If we read GTA as an emanation of our own post-industrial culture (but is it?), we see that its answer to the problems of living in the capricious painful world is to simply forget about it, detach from the sensual body and drift in a nihilistic fantasia of violence.
GTA and similar games say the body is a rag to discard, and we get extra lives anyway. It one more of the many contemporary products that work to obscure, to veil the luminous tenderness and instictive sensual affection that can exist between us speech-creatures, us stargazing earthlings. So yeah, its the work of the devil, and I cast it from my window - lo, there it goes...
better, I feel, to spend the time memorising traditional fairy tales and poems, which can create surprising psychic linkages and also give the dreamer in us more material to work with perhaps.
"How Hollywood Saved God"
This is an interesting piece from a recent issue of The Atlantic contrasting the Narnia books (and movies) with Pullman's series, beginning its film production run...
As I haven't read either, I can't comment further -- but I'm curious what the consensus here might be...
-st
Reaching Consensus
I've loved both the Narnia Chronicles (which I read to my daughter,) and the His Dark Materials trilogy (we took her to see The Golden Compass the day it opened.)
I'm tempted to make a passionate case for the Narnia chronicles. The books are virtuous. They inspire courage and creativity and thought and passion and conviction. Nobody can call them materialistic. They're also extraordinarily liberal, witness Aslan and the Tartan who'd spent his life doing good deeds in the name of Tash. Aslan says that it's impossible for good deeds to be credited to Tash, and says that while he imagined he was serving Tash, he was really serving Aslan.
I don't think these books deserve the scorn they're getting here, at all. "Nylons and lipstick" are here taken to mean materialism and commercialism and quests for mere status, rejection of the imagination as well (Susan has been joking about all the "silly adventures" they imagined when they were kids, it's not only this.) -- not for women growing into sexual beings. It's totally a red herring. Someone's just not really paying much attention to the book, or looking for things that aren't there.
Because they are taught to read
"Question: Why are people literate but not nonviolent? Answer: Because they are taught to read." Daniel, thanks for that great quote!
I have always been struck with how in most typical stories the hero has to commit an act of violence to prove his worth/existence/manhood. This is a societal problem that pervades all media-- books, movies, video games, etc. One of my best undergrad classes was "Just War" with Bertrand Gross (author of Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America). He was strongly committed to nonviolence and often argued that when we say "violence is a last resort," he would reply, how do you know what "last" is? He also pointed out how *hard* it is to convince people to go war, and that it took incredible propaganda resources to make the argument for war. His point is that it is not our nature to go to war, and our resistance to it was evidenced by the massive propaganda machinery in place to influence people. I think propaganda needs to be thought of as an ecology-- it is many things going on simultaneously. Thus I'd like reemphasize my belief that it is better to strengthen the mental immune system than to blame media as the cause. With that said, I do also understand how powerful media are for shaping how we view the world, including the idea that conflict can only be resolved through violence.
I notice that people tend to think that all video games are violent, and that they are only played by males. I encourage people to go to the link below which refutes some of these stereotypes. http://www.grandtheftchildhood.com/GTC/Myths.html Incidentally, I don't play video games for the same reason I don't ski: It's too expensive and takes away time from doing other things. I cannot imagine introducing another thing to do, especially something that is a time wormhole (like the Internet!).
or
Q: Why are people literate but not nonviolent?
A: Because they are not taught to read.
I gather your forthcoming book is along these lines.
Consuming info is easy - its the fastest food of our era: ubiquitous, salty, and not very nutritious - just hop into the googlemobile and go get it.
Here's something: "any undeclared war, civil war, insurrection, rebellion, revolution, warlike act by a military force or military personnel, destruction or seizure or use for a military purpose, and including any consequence of any of these shall not be subject to any claim. Discharge of a nuclear weapon shall be deemed a warlike act even if accidental."
Here's something else: "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."
Antonio: "I have always been struck with how in most typical stories the hero has to commit an act of violence to prove his worth/existence/manhood."
I wonder if, in traditional tales, these acts of violence - slaying the gorgon for example - are metaphors for the necessary radical inner action that must be undertaken if one is to come to maturity. They needn't be taken literally. Afterall, there are a great many stories in which the hero slays a cannibalistic old crone....and there are very many where the hero is female.
Antonio: "it is better to strengthen the mental immune system than to blame media as the cause. With that said, I do also understand how powerful media are for shaping how we view the world, including the idea that conflict can only be resolved through violence."
I agree wholeheartedly. I also understand the anger expressed by somantics above - some of us live in parts of the world where there is no shortage of "violent sociopaths." At present, only a minority have access to books such as your own, or to yoga classes, or to buddhist meditation retreats, or poetry readings. It is difficult, when friends are murdered, to maintain one's faith in the powers of education to transform consumers into readers. Particularly so in countries like the UK, where an apparently idealist socialist reformer came to power on a great wave of public approval, promising "education, education, education" ... and was immediately corrupted by the corporatocracy, got into bed with a republican hawk (!!!) and led us into an illegal oil war - and stayed in power for a decade. I need to leave it there for now..
my diversion - apologies
i apologize i didn't mean to divert this into a dicussion of CS Lewis and Pullman - though if someone wants to write a feature essay on the subject, it could be great for us.
If possible i would like to steer the subject back to video games, nonviolence, entrainment, and initiation vs indoctrination. If the energy around these areas has petered out here i will wait for another chance to relaunch this discussion.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
literacy and school
not all games are equal
Gaming and Revolution
Thank you, Antonio, for articulating what I've been itching to say but haven't had the time to until today. I've a lot to say on this topic, so forgive the long post.
Lest we forget, computer games are but a platform for content, like TV and Film. A platform is good or evil, destructive or constructive, negative or positive, depending on the content - not the delivery method. In the '80s, during the early days of video games, we had games ranging from Q*bert to Berzerk, vastly different in content and style. Today one might consider the military indoctrination games at one end of the spectrum, but there are many on the other end. For years, the game WildDivine has innovated creating meditative states by combining biofeedback technology with computer gaming. Perhaps this is the spectrum today, but I think that leaves out the most important aspect of the whole matter.
Outside of content, let us consider the change that has been wrought by the medium of gaming itself, that of activity versus passivity. Computer games are by their nature interactive, which has been a profound change in the way we relate to content. In computere games, we've always been in control of the journey of our "avatars," our digital representative/projection in the game world. What did it mean when we had technology that now allowed us guide the story? Maybe not that much, as games for years, due to technology constraints, offered pretty much linear narratives, much in the spirit of Film and TV. How we arrived at our avatar's "fate" was within a modicum of our control, but the outcome was ultimately predetermined or "canned." However, games kept expanding as technology improved, and the advent of multiple endings began to show up: instead of a single fate we now had the option of several, determined by our actions and choices. In the case of games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and other role-playing games, certain choices even inclined our characters toward the light side or the dark side (of the Force in this case), so that the outcome was not solely the final event of the narrative, but the nature of our avatar's psyche. Things progressed still further. The linear nature of games blew up with "sandbox" games. Now, instead of moving from one canned "zone" to another, the avatar is dropped into a single continuous world which they have freedom to explore as they please. The narrative unfolds as the avatar encounters story hooks, which he can then choose to follow or disregard and move on to something else that takes his interest. Oblivion is a fine example of this, but most games consider the ultimate realization of this form of game to be (drum roll) Grand Theft Auto. The power and appeal of this game has so much less to do with it's content and style (urban crime) than with the nature of the game and its gameplay: an incredibly open, rich and detailed world in which actions have consequences and in which I, as the player, determine how - and if - the story unfolds.
What is the value of this type of game? And more specifically, what is the effect on our consciousness? For this, Clay Shirky, the author of "Here Comes Everybody" has a lot to say. Here he is speaking on this topic at a Web 2.0 talk expo. What Clay says in this talk and in his book is that we have moved into an era where the line between the media consumers and the media creators is growing thinner. Many media professions are going the way of medieval scribes confronted with the printing press. Except in this revolution, the cost of production, both in time and money, has not just been lowered, it has collapsed. The leading edge of the computer game industry understands this well: games are growing more and more participatory. Will Wright created The Sims, a game in which the player has the digital equivalent to the most sophisticated dollhouse ever conceived. It was the best selling game of all time in 2000. Starting to see a pattern? His upcoming and highly anticipated project, Spore, is even more ambitious, involving the creation of a species starting with a single-celled organism and guiding it through its evolution. Though here again, it's not the content that we should heed but the philosophy behind the gameplay. Just listen to him and his team talk about their hopes for what the game will evoke in its players: creativity, artistry and, most importantly: authorship. In Grand Theft Auto, you don't create your avatar like in Spore, but you do have extraordinary control over the authorship of the main character's journey. No one will ever play the game exactly like you do. It is, within a certain latitude, your own. If you stand still and watch the sun go down and the stars come up (as I have often done in Oblivion), that choice is now part of that unique story.
When we engage in the creation of our own entertainment and media, a subtle but fundamental shift occurs in our perception. Practice in the co-creation of a world, albeit virtual, creates a very different psychology than one in which I receive, passively, the predetermined choices of some remote entertainment expert. Isn't this, vaguely, the psychology of an "activist" citizen, instead of a passive citizen: to author our reality? To make an impact instead of simply accepting what we're given: "canned" politics, for instance?
How this will bleed (or has bled) into our real, non-virtual society has yet to be fully realized, at least in the mainstream, but it is not far off. Mr. Shirky asserts that this is no fad. That what has been happening is more akin to a societal paradigm shift from which there is no going back. I'm inclined to agree. After all, I haven't just read this published article. I'm writing a post to it, thereby changing it, making my mark and being bestowed with a sense of authorship.
<<Play Again?>>
<<Yes>>
corporeal transcendence or bust
I meant to post something slong the lines of the following last night, but my battery ran out. Just expressing some concerns about games and media in general...
If somebody were to take some mushrooms and sing some songs or beat a drum they would begin to notice that their senses are sharpened, that the body feels more agile, more supple, more intimately united to thoughts. The world will become lit with an inner radiance, a sense of presence, a timeless presence -- it might seem awe-full or ferocious, or amused, or overwhelmingly beautiful - perhaps all of these! Later the dreamer might close his eyes and feel a sensation of flying - strange lands and beings might be seen and interacted with. I'm rambling on about the shamanic realm of course - and though it seems "out there" and far away, it is in fact inseparable from the body. In the lives that most of us are indoctrinated into, the body is just a passive instrument for us to pilot around the landscape from within our little cockpit behind the eyes, the mentalised ego. There is no sense in our culture that there might also be a world at the root of the tongue, or at the back of the head, or that there might be gateways along the spine. We go into the body to heal the body. After a shamanic festival, there is usually a shared sense of deep well-being - we've experienced the mystery, we've reconsummated the marriage of mind and body, and we laugh and embrace each other, recognising again our unity and community - and how fragile and miraculous life really is.
When we play computer games, it seems to me, we don't enter into a more harmonious union with the body - on the contrary, we dissociate from it, and forget about it - perhaps for hours. We go into somebody elses created realm - and it's a realm created with motivations and designs on us that we can't know, and perhaps the designer is not fully conscious of what he is doing either. Furthermore, this is compounding the problem that our society seeks to mediate all experience for us, and does effectively mediate our experience. Hence the reported 9/11 feelings that a breach had occured, that a movie was playing, that somehow the dream had slipped - for a brief sorrowful moment people brushed up against the real world. Its no surprise that GWB quickly instructed everybody to go shopping. When we see a wave breaking in the sunshine on a sandy beach, do we really experience it? Or do we escape into thoughts about holidays, or surfing, or "california girls"?
I think the problem many people have with computer games is that they exacerbate an already fucked up situation - we don't feel, we don't see things as they are because we are indoctrinated by and coccooned in media. Computer games take us deeper into this abstraction - all of them do, even the fluffy ones - and so are part of the problem. The real world is not pretty - cats torturing mice is not funny, polar bears drowning among melted ice is a tragedy - and life is tragic, sorry its true, and life will continue to be tragic untill we wake up and realise that any transcendece must be corporeal - must be. Then we might end this play with a marriage - but at the moment we are ending it with ruins and regrets and bodies all over the stage. Its horrific that people die without really living outside of the mediated bubble - I think I understand why Leary had such an urgency about him.
So yes, lets analyse media, use media to expose the hegemony of media, but also plan for the day when all people are able to experience the real on their own terms....lets just hope that it doesn't occur under circumstances of natural disaster or street crime, but in the company of friends and lovers, in a peaceful supportive moment of calm realisation.
My second life character is called boddhisattva batteries by the way, if anybody wants to meet up - maybe we could go wolf watching or something...
Thoughtful
A Story and a Link
I do agree with you Antonio - of course people are not completely mediated at all times. I can occasionally be a bit unequivocal.
To follow your anecdotal lead: I've travelled widely, and heave experienced many non-western cultures. For the last two years however I have lived close to my origins, in an extremely impoverished (economically and culturally) part of Britain. Whenever I try to suggest to family or friends that we might investigate our habitual behaviour, the response is generally either anxiety or scorn - either of which might be followed by drugs, tv, music, sport gossip or whatever - quick change of subject basically. My point being that the mediated realm is comfortable even to those it is ruining. My friends and family also agree that media is bullshit - but it is also, creepily, home; it is security, in some weird way. I acknowledge this too - sometimes it is nice to rest in the "World of Warcraft" aka the High Street.
Here's a very excellent blog that I linked to somewhere else here on RS, and I think you'll appreciate - it addresses these very issues in the context of the Canadian Sioux: http://www.darkage.ca/blog/DarkAge/_archives/2005/1/29/289956.html
Well worth clicking around there - the writer seems to share common ground with you, in fact with many of us here at RS. A potential contributor perhaps?
Thanks for the blog link.
The alienation you describe is common everywhere, and I'd like to think it's the general state of the world with all it's fucked up wrong-headedness (media included). At some point our civilization got disconnected; I don't know the exact reason, but the solution is to begin reconnecting with each other and with our hearts (also remembering who we are). Sounds dumb but it's truth and quite simple. We just make things so damn complicated. Thanks for kind thoughts!
books and games and other musings
I was constantly told as a child that my computer gaming was anti-social and disassociating from the body. To which I always replied with "What about books?"
Books are even more anti-social than computer games. I can play with sixteen old friends from all around the world and catch up with them at the same time with the headsets and microphone that xbox provide.
As for disassociating. Books take us away from our bodies just as much if not more. There are trashy books as there are computer games. If we can read about an anti-hero with out being seduced by his ethics then we can do the same in a game. If the worry is that we identify with the avatar and so are more affected then what about people playing evil characters in plays. We don't worry that they will lose their ability to remember who they are.
Games like GTA 4 are far more sophisticated than you'd imagine with out playing them. The main character is forced into a world of violence that he seeks to escape from. It challenges the game player to make real decisions about what situations warrant violence. Within the first ten minutes the main character makes a long speach about how the youth are manipulated into fighting the wars of the old. The radio stations are full of social commentary and satire about immigration, the erosion of civil liberties and the consequeneces of the war on terror. Unlike the preceding games in the series this one puts a strong emphasis on the message that you can not go to america and fight your way to the top.
I wouldn't give GTA 4 to a young child. Neither would I give them The Godfather or Naked Lunch to a child.
Computer games as a tool of indoctrination used by military complex? I don't think so. Give the youth of today and game industry some credit. The military is marketing war as a computer game and that is deeply disturbing. In an advert for the british army the camera lingers on a game controller. They are even using xbox 360 controllers to pilot unmaned machines.
Most religions offer initiation ceremonies to mark adulthood. They are one of the many useful things we can take from the traditional religions.
Be the change you want to see through internal alchemy
The new comics
The Unholy Book
I agree to a certain extent about books - not sure about comics though. Books freed up psychic time and space (no longer any need to memorise all that formulaic ancestral stuff,) releasing energies that would create the modern individual.
What energies are released by computer games? What emergent being are we seeing - is it healthy or sick? Is it our familiar individual selves seking simple nihilistic escape, or is there something new and hopeful here? Both/and? Can a computer game be read aloud?
The Diamond Age
The "The Diamond Age: Or, a
Teaching children to be killers
I'm sure computer games can be used for all sorts of 'positive' reasons. But right now they are being used to teach children how to kill. And no amount of speculative waffle and hot air changes this fact. Check out the link below.
http://www.trufax.org/paradigm/paradigm/video.html
" Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
Counter Argument
While Lieutenant Colonel Grossman brings up some points worthy of consideration, the overall tenor of this article feels desperate and fearful. I too am concerned about the effect simulated violence has upon one's psyche (particularly my own, as I play the types of games he assails) but I question what is gained by responding with arch-condemnation and intimations of censorship. Generalizations are made that to my knowledge, are oversimplifications:
"The impact of visual, violent imagery on children has been identified as the key variable responsible for an explosion of violent crime around the world."
I suspected this was his interpretation of data from the organizations he earlier mentions, but the way he frames it suggests that it is also their interpretation. However, UNESCO's 1999 report of Media and Global Violence, states in its conclusions:
"Probably more important than the media are
the social and economic conditions in which
children grow up. However, the media as con-
stituents of cultures, beliefs, and orientations
also deserve much attention."
This is a far cry from media being the "key variable." I didn't have time to lookup the others, but that was enough to throw some cold water on his argument.
He goes on to cite violent crime statistics from a variety of nations over a 50 year period, then states:
"The common denominator in all these nations is the influence of media violence on children."
How has he reached this conclusion? The last 50 years has been a time of unprecedented rate, degree and variety of change. How can anyone assert such a broad statement with such certainty? Further, he cites a sixteen-year-old issue of a medical journal that supports its findings with ludicrous speculation:
"...if, hypothetically, TV technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the U.S."
Maybe he explains his reasoning better in his book. But this article does little to advance his ideas in my mind. In fact, I find myself once again highly suspicious of experts and social analysts with limited -or no - personal experience with video games but feel qualified to espouse unequivocally on their "obvious" social evil.
This is not to say that we shouldn't look with careful and discriminating eyes at what our children consume. But I would rather arrive at an understanding from sober, considered analysis than fear.
Thanks
Martin,
I didn't have time to do a point-by-point response but thanks for going through and making your comments. I agree wholeheartedly. A lot of what Grossman says is anecdotal and he is wrong to say that what studies show about TV apply to video games. They are completely different. By his logic the Internet should turn us into killeres. Moreover, FBI stats show that violent crime is decreasing. As victim of a violent crime committed by a young American youth with a gun, I don't for a second believe he committed his act against me because he played video games or watched violent TV shows and movies, but because he was poor and a drug addict.
Grossman states that a kid learned how to shoot accurately from a video game, but it did not train him how to kill. Those are two different things. Shooting at something that is clearly not real and at a real human being takes a major shift in consciousness, and I doubt what motivated the child to kill his schoolmates was because of videogames. It is true that violent media will effect some people-- I have never denied that. But everything carries a risk-- even driving-- and our society has become so risk adverse that it will eliminate anything that could be a potential threat to some people. I think we need to be really skeptical of anecdotal evidence.
More info
And this
Video games and 9-11
What a load of donkey manure. If any of the supposed flight simulator terrorists were on board any of the 911 flights which I and millions of others now doubt, there is much evidence ( see John Lear for one ) that they could not have hit a target the size of Manhattan much less the WTC. I wonder if they and Osama in their Palm Springs hideout are still playing with simulators.
" The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience "
Arthur Schopenhauer
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