Recently I saw a video which featured the onboard filming of a massacre of Iraqi civilians thought to be dangerous by a US army helicopter crew. The commentary of the soldiers onboard struck me as remarkably similar to the commentary I hear coming from boys as they play their ubiquitous single shooter wargames. İn fact, the whole video struck me as frighteningly similar to many video games now popular in our society. A bit of research will reveal to you that such video games have the U.S. military to thank for their existence, as their use has been shown to be the answer to an old problem for the military: how do we get people to kill other people? As human beings, we have an innate revulsion to killing our fellow humans, which is obviously problematic for the military. Up until the present time, militaries all over the world have had serious problems with their soldiers purposely shooting over the heads of their enemies due to their instinctual desire to avoid killing other human beings. Single shooter games have been proven to be remarkable tools in getting those who play them to see humans as objects, as an other to be eliminated as thoughtlessly as an icon part of some imaginary world where points are earned for killing these imaginary enemies. The US Army uses such games as recruiting tools as well as training tools for impressionable young minds who are already accustomed to seeing people splattered across their media screens. The military knows that those who play such games are learning to get over their aversion to killing their enemies in real life. İ urge you to watch the clip İ have linked to this blog and start talking to the young people around you. Don't let your homes become training salons for massacre like what is glorified in those video games. Killing is not entertainment, it is dehumanization.
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I can't watch this sort of thing - can't watch movies like Platoon or The Killing Fields - walked out of Saving Private Ryan in the theater. Unreal how second-nature it has become for some people to just kill without thinking. This is a very uncomfortable topic. But an important one.
ReplyDeleteWhen you see the prevalence of such imagery in our mass media culture and know the dehumanizing effect it has, it begs the question of why are we being inundated with such images all the time and as well, asking how it serves to propagate the violent agenda that seem to predominate in our modern world
ReplyDeleteI think you are wrong about people somehow having a innate aversion to killing. Quite the opposite is true. People have been gleefully killing each other for millennia with no help at all from American video games. Most people who have been killed in Iraq are Arab Muslims killing other Arab Muslims at random. How do you explain that? Is that America's fault? And why are you not trying to figure out what motivates that ridiculous hatred.
ReplyDeleteIf your statement above were true the US Army would have no problem finding soldiers. That is not the case. Also it would stand to reason that anyone who played a video game would then go out an kill people, having had their "innate human aversion" to killing stripped of them by X-Box. Also not the case. In fact the most genocidal killers, who act with zero remorse, in this world do not have video games. All they need is the Koran.
İ am glad to have your voice here. İ agree with you that there are some people who are born without an innate revulsion to killing. We now call those people psychopaths. As for Arabs killing other Arabs, İ would certainly look for other factors before İ would imply that they were inhuman. Thankfully, as you have noted, such devices as video games are not completely effective. However, it is clear that as training tools such games given enough reinforcement are unparalleled in their effectiveness.As you point out, there are other things in play in the psyche and I am grateful that we as humans have more complex inner workings that motivate our behavior.We are not completely robotic yet, though İ may live to see the day when that is no longer true. İ will also concede to you that other tools and constructs have been used throughout history to get humans to kill other humans. İ did not mean to imply that we were angels. Mass extermination, as İ understand history, is isn't as particular as you contend. İ assume that most cultures/nations/groups now in existence at one time or another wiped somebody else out to get where they are now. We are just getting better at it through using technology for those ends.
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