"Yes the game is DARK, BUT...."
"Yes the game is VIOLENT, BUT..."
"Yes the game depicts a HORRIBLE HELLISH FUTURE, BUT..."
But what? All you guys want to "debate" me. About what? To try to convince me that violence and killing incorporated into entertainment is innocent and harmless? Well I don't think it is.
Isn't this just the gamers version of "It's not wrong when the president does it"? Killing is not wrong when gamers do it. What else is not wrong when you all do it?
How about computerized rape? Would that be okay too? It's not real rape, it's just fantasy rape. Would that be just a game that has no affect on society or people's heads and value systems and I'd be stupid for saying it did?
The idea of entire formalized game scenarios around rape, gang rape, raping the enemy, that doesn't go down so well does it? I wonder why. No I don't actually, I know why. It is because you have not yet been desensitized to the idea of rape so that it doesn't bother you or shock you. You still see something sick and wrong with rape. You don't think of rape as legitimate. But strangely you see killing as perfectly fine and even entertaining. Well who does that serve I wonder? It certainly wasn't something you were born with. Where did it come from then? Go ahead and tell me you haven't been skillfully indoctrinated all of your life to accept war and most of this society's standardized forms of "legitimized" violence, killing and death. Or are you just natural born fantasy killers? I doubt it.
Luckily for the women of the world, rape isn't quite so easily and handily paired with some noble idea to make it seem acceptable. Unfortunately for the whole world, mass killing has. We have entire, complex games built around killing. Nothing else, just killing. Because that's good wholesome fun. According to you.
Is killing glamorous? Is killing good? Is killing fun? Why do you find it fun when you play your games of death and war?
How do you suppose your subconscious mind parses that out, or do you actually think it can? I say it can't. It's not possible. Because in order for you to play your killing games, at some level, somewhere, you've decided that killing is okay. Under SOME set of circumstances, your particular set by coincidence, the idea of killing and fighting and shooting and making war is perfectly lovely.
Well, I'm sorry, but I can't come along with you on that.
You see, my basic position is that killing is wrong. Killing doesn't fix anything. Killing isn't justice. Killing doesn't even take any brains, any thug with a big club can kill.
Killing and war have been glamorized, justified and legitimized by connecting them to patriotism and 'we're number one' , to self defense and the nobility and bravery of the individuals who go off to war. But those things are not war. War uses those things to get its credibility and its legitimacy because the truth is that war has no credibility or legitimacy of its own.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm no shrinking violet. When it comes to defending myself I'll use a gun in a heart beat. But I won't find it amusing. I won't do it without feeling it hard afterwards. I will defend myself, but so much of the violence we see and engage in this society has nothing to do with self defense. Have you not seen the police beating and shooting people who are no threat to them? The police are 100% legitimized and so by default anything they do is automatically legitimized, even when it's not at all legitimate. Even when it's senseless and punitive and unjustifiable. But try getting around that inculcated, naive belief that police can never be criminals or act inappropriately or be rapists or serial killers. They can be and some of them are. Cops are just people like everyone else, and there are cops that are real thugs. That's on the record. Some cops commit crimes. Every day in fact. Some soldiers commit crimes. All presidents commit crimes. Regardless of any title, badge, uniform or high office, these are all just people, ordinary people, and not all of them are nice. They are able to hide under the freely given blanket of legitimacy from this unthinking society and they are able to get away with murder because of that. That's a fact, check it yourself.
Where I guess all this violent gaming loses me is pretty much right from the beginning. You see, I don't consider any form of violence to be entertaining. I don't get why millions upon millions of people in this country ENJOY a "good" rape and murder movie. In my mind, that's cracked. There's something wrong with that. There's nothing at all fun or amusing or entertaining about brutality and killing. Violence, brutality, murder, killing, shooting are serious business, there's nothing fun about them. I know, I've seen it and been in it and there's nothing fun or romantic or swell about it. It's the worst thing in the world. That's my opinion for which I'm sure somebody somewhere would be willing to snap my neck. They would feel entitled to snap my neck because they strongly stand behind their own conception of what kind of violence is good, even noble, or at least excusable, acceptable, all the way to "harmless" fun. But how did it ever come to be that any kind of brutality slid over into the category of "fun" at all? Something is out of whack there. That doesn't make any sense.
Some people who love playing these violent games got very angry with me because I pointed out the violence in them. I'm not putting the violence in them, the violence is already in them. This is like it's not wrong for the violence to be there it's only wrong of me to say so out loud. Well I'm sorry, the violence is in there and I'm saying so out loud.
I didn't pick Warhammer for any particular reason. This isn't about Warhammer. I don't care in the least about Warhammer. I don't care about the characters or the story. They are not at all what I am addressing. There are dozens of incredibly violent and dark "games" out there, I picked Warhammer by chance, so I'll say it again, this is not about Warhammer. There are millions and millions of men playing Warhammer along with dozens of even more violent, more disturbing games. That's a whole lot of fantasy killing.
Why do they like their killing games so much? Why do they spend so many hours and so many years playing their killing games? What are they feeding? Are games without killing incapable of fulfilling the entertainment urge for some reason? Do war gamers ever ask themselves these questions? Is there really nothing better they could do with their time than have war fantasies? There probably is but games are easier and the pleasure hit comes fast and large and is guaranteed. You all are addicted, you just don't want to see it that way. After listening to the hostile bombardment in defense of a silly game it tells me that this is far more serious than you're even willing to face. Why should it matter to you at all what I think? Am I a threat to you lot?
The fact is that I've felt this way all my life. It hasn't affected a single one of you in the slightest. It made no difference at all in any of your lives. It didn't make a difference until you found out about it and then all of a sudden it was like the end of the world for you. It's what you are telling yourselves that is upsetting you. My thoughts and feelings have always been here in the same earth plane with you. It is not my thoughts or feelings that are causing you any grief whatsoever. It is your thoughts and your feelings. My thoughts and feelings have no affect or presence in any of your lives. I cannot affect you in any way. So why, suddenly, are you all up in arms over my beliefs and opinions? Why are you all rushing in to insult me and accuse me of being everything from stupid to a liar to someone who just doesn't get it? Why are so many of you needing to explain every detail of the game to me? You are seeking justification for why YOUR preferred killing game is a good and okay killing game. Apparently it is not enough that you think so. You require me to think so or you feel threatened. I see that as an abject failure to even try to be objective or serious about the whole of the violent gaming phenomenon.
Killing is not fun. Death is not fun. You're the ones who are saying it is fun, but I'm the one under unending attack from you all. Doesn't that strike you as at all backwards? I'm not attacking anyone, I never have. I am pointing at things I see because they are there. I am connecting dots that you refuse to consider connecting. Your refusal doesn't mean the dots aren't there to connect, they are there. That's why you're so pissed off with me. Because I am challenging you not to defend your silly games, but to defend your own private lust for violence and killing, and you can't do it.
Where is the fine line that you prefer to think of as a mile wide that separates thinking and fantasizing about killing from being willing to do it? Oh, only under the "right" circumstances to be sure, but what makes the circumstances right? A good and noble cause? Whose cause? Yours? Theirs? Mine?
Don't you get that killing is always deemed justified by who ever is doing the killing? Serial killers feel justified, are they? Cops feel justified, are they? The military feels justified, are they? Does anyone bother to think about it anymore? It takes two sides to have a battle, and obviously both sides feel justified in their killing. Well if only one of those sides is in the right, then one must be in the wrong, but which is which? In the heat of the battle nobody seems to care too much who is actually right or who is actually the "bad" guy. Both sides consider the other to be the "bad" guy, for their own reasons. So how do we ultimately decide who is really the bad or good guy, objectively?
When you really start digging down into the nitty gritty about who is justified and who is not, it's quite surprising to find that so very often whoever is doing the aggressing is in fact not a very nice guy. Often the side that is being howled about and called the worst of the worst people in the world are in fact the real victims. It seems more to depend on who can scream the loudest and kill the most. Whoever is left standing is the victor. But does that make the victor the good guy? Should it? I don't know you tell me.
See, I ask these questions. And I am willing to admit that it really depends a whole heck of a lot what side you're on in any battle. Both of the sides see themselves as in the right. But if both sides are in the right then you shouldn't need war to reach a mutually beneficial solution. War is an option that should rarely need to happen, but in this country it happens all the time. There's something very wrong with the whole damned thing, and even more wrong is how few Americans seem to give a shit at all who all or how many are getting killed somewhere else. Killing others has become the means to feel safe. Is that twisted enough for you? It sure is for me.
What makes it truly miserable is when good men are called to battle and they can't afford the luxury of doing too much thinking about who is shooting who and why. All they know is the reality that someone over there is pointing a rifle at them in the here and now, and they either have to shoot first, and accurately, or die. All of the critical thinking, all of the critically important questions, all of the issues of who is right and wrong evaporate in the harsh cold reality of survival. It truly becomes mindless killing in the literal sense. It can be very gripping. Intoxicating. You can totally lose your mind and your soul, if only for an hour, or a day, or a week or a year.
And this feeling, this exhilaration, the winning, the danger, the glamor of it, if you can call it that, this is the same high, the self same buzz that you gamers get high on. Only you do it all safe and snug in your bedrooms and offices at a computer terminal. But you still celebrate your kills, you even keep track of them. You count your trophies. And all the while you tell yourselves that it's just a game. And you damn well insist that I have to see it that way too, as if it's your right to tell me anything. It isn't your right. Even though it shouldn't matter in the least to you what I think, it seems to be of critical importance to you. Why should it be, if you truly believe there is nothing wrong with playing killing games?
Couldn't it be that even pretend killing, "fun" killing, is still thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings of winning by the use of deadly violence? Oh yes, you love chalking it up to skill and strategy, but what's all that skill and strategy for? It's for killing. What else? It's not for setting a nice luncheon table. It's for killing. Admit it.
So please, spare me the "let's debate the game" nonsense. I know the game. This is not about your particular game, it's about you. It's your taking extreme pleasure, addictive pleasure from your war games. And it's you telling me, demanding of me, insisting to me that there's no harm in it whatsoever, that it does not and cannot affect greater society in any way shape or form; and for me to suggest that it gets inside our heads at the deepest level and serves to inculcate people into the acceptance of violence as legitimate, as long as there is a sufficiently evil bad guy in the picture, our violence and our killing is automatically 100% justified. It's warranted. It's necessary. It's even good. And dang it, who can help it if it's fun too? It's just a game after all.
I'd better take a minute to clue in my regular readers as to what this is all about. Let's see, how shall I put this? Let's just say I've had a busy couple of days.
Two years ago I started looking around at all of the online gaming going on in this country and I'll tell you the truth, I was really blown away by how violent, dark, depressing, depraved and grotesque a lot of it is. There are all kinds of games of course, ranging from cute little games with goofy little characters to amazing, impressive 3D productions in Flash with lifelike characters and lots of women with immense breasts running around half nude with humungous swords. As if. I don't know a single woman who'd be the least bit interested in being around sharp instruments in her underwear but this is "just fantasy". No worries about men getting themselves all wound up on bullshit that makes it impossible for them to have real relationships with boring old normal, clad, unarmed females. I say that with some sarcasm obviously.
Anyway, I'd decided to do a web page on my site about this violence. Not to attack the people who are into it, but to bring to the fore, to conscious awareness, particularly for parents, what it means to think of violence in terms of it being "fun" or "harmless". Because the human mind doesn't work like we love to believe it does. It doesn't separate out what our eyes see into fantasy and reality.
Our brains take it all in as real, as you may have experienced if you've ever been to a horror film or a really scary movie. Your heart is beating a mile a minute, or maybe you suddenly cry out from the tension and a good scare on the screen; but why would you? You intellectually know that it's only a movie and that the guy with the chainsaw or the ax or whatever, is just an actor and so are all the other people in the film. They're not even really there, it's just a recording. But tell your rapidly beating heart that. It doesn't care what's in your head intellectually. It is responding to the danger it perceives from a whole different part of your brain that is authorized to over ride your conscious intellect at will. You can actually think one thing and feel something in direct opposition to your brilliant conscious mind thinking its grown up, rational thoughts, at the same time.
You may think it silly to have a physical fear response to a recorded scripted story, but the fact is your body is reacting to it as though it was real. That's the main reason people go to scary movies in the first place. If they didn't feel real fear it wouldn't be much of a thrill. This isn't fantasy, it's fact. The whole of your brain is not just the conscious awareness part. In fact George Lakoff came out with the results of research last year where he stated that most of what we think of as thinking, over 90% of it, is done unconsciously. In fact the number is even higher than that. According to Lakoff, we do practically no conscious thinking. So the fear you experience at the movies is quite real, and it is not the result of your conscious thoughts but thoughts you don't even know you're having. The most you can do is keep that fear response under control with your intellect and will, and a feeling of assurance that you are indeed safe. But I guarantee you, if the scary guy playing the insane killer in that movie suddenly came walking down your aisle, you'd piss yourself.
Does that relate to violence in other entertainment? It does relate, and in the same way, and then some. My concern in writing the web page was to flag parents, and people in general who have never once thought about their beliefs about war and violence. As I mentioned above, we automatically assign justification to some of the most heinous acts of violence in our country, just as long as the violence is done by people we think of as authorized to do it. It's a bit weird when you really stop and think about it because there is no such thing as automatic justification. No one deserves to be given free reign to kill or shoot or imprison at will, period, no human being is so perfect as to be qualified for blanket authorization to kill or do violence at will, no questions asked. But we in this country have been so propagandized through television shows that always portray law enforcement and government and lawyers and investigators and intelligence operatives as these sparkling great people that are good hearted and always in the right, so that is our perception in real life.
We have no direct personal experience to explain our automatic trusting belief in authority, so where does it come from? Well that's obvious. It comes from the only experience we do have on the subject, and that experience isn't even direct. It's not even an experience of reality. It's an experience of watching fiction, 100% made up, no real cops or presidents or intelligence operatives anywhere in sight, ever. It's not even live, it's recorded. It is actors saying lines from scripts, and characters we come to "know" and actually grow fond of. None of it is real, but people none the less come away from it fully indoctrinated in their staunch belief that all authority is benign and beneficent and can be trusted at all times, so there is little in the way of questioning anything authority does, even when it's grotesquely and blatantly wrong. We'll even make excuses to cover for them, such is our deep self-indoctrination based on sheer fantasy. It feels real to us though, and we'll be damned if we let any facts set us straight. Hell no. We won't stand for it.
I am saying that the same kind of indoctrination occurs through all forms of major entertainment, and in the case of the web page I did two years ago, in computerized games of violence, war, killing and death too. Why would this one thing be exempt from affecting the mind?
It can't be exempt, everything affects our minds. There is nothing that does not affect our minds. It will affect different people in different ways, but I am only asking people to be conscious of what their children are being inculcated into without anyone realizing it or paying attention to it; because we have a serious problem with violence in this country. Where is all of this violence coming from? The major share of influence comes out of the whole of what we think of as ordinary entertainment. And this country is the most violent of westernized nations in the whole world.
Something somewhere is behind this astonishing level of American violence. Shouldn't we be willing to consider ALL forms of standardized violence that children are exposed to? Should we ignore out of hand anything that we personally happen to be behind and like? Is that fair? Is it honest? No, it's not fair or honest. If children were not inundated with death images and death messages from the first day they turn their TV sets on, if they were instead never even introduced to the idea that killing is okay, wouldn't they have a much harder time doing things like joining the army to go off and fight without even knowing why? To them killing would seem as senseless as it actually is, and they would need a reason before being willing to risk everything for what boils down to nothing at all. Am I horrible for asking people to think about that? I do not know why that would be anyone's valid opinion.
One of the arguments I keep hearing over and over is that it is only a game, as if that's supposed to be proof enough, absolute evidence that there's nothing harmful about it. It's a game. It's fun. But what I know, is that because it is so seemingly harmless, because it is fun, it is supremely able to enter the brain without encountering any defenses, no screening, no critical thought whatsoever, in fact it is welcomed. It is welcomed on the grounds that it is entertaining. It is fun. Sure it is killing, but it is only a game. The two things really have no business connecting because they exist at the opposite ends of a long and far away spectrum. And it scares me and it bothers me very much that somehow the two have met in the middle, and all of the negativity and horror of violence and war is washed away under the halo of wholesome enjoyment for one and all.
It began on Thursday morning. Someone, somewhere, an avid player of the game I happened to use for the example on my web page, ran across that web page and had an extremely, I'll repeat that, extremely negative reaction to what he read there. He immediately went into battle mode in his own mind, and I became his hated enemy. How dare I have a problem with anything about his death game? How dare I ask questions about serious things like killing and war when this was only a game? Was I so stupid that I couldn't see that it's only a game? It's not real. I am too dumb for words according to this guy. The email he actually sent would not be reprintable here, it is too offensive and vulgar. I don't have tender ears or anything, but when somebody's really hammering me with profanity and insults, it's not pleasant. That's where it began. This one unhappy camper was so extremely offended by my rather fairly presented criticism, so outraged that I had anything resembling a problem with Warhammer 40,000 and the Space Marines and the Angels of Death, that he meant to teach me a lesson I'd never forget.
He posted my web page and my email address on a gaming site that I'm told has something like three MILLION members. In the first 24 hours I was besieged with hate mail telling me where to go and to go there now. They wanted to rip my head from my body and shove it down the neck hole. Really a rather bizarre reaction in my opinion. I didn't attack gamers. I didn't attack anyone in fact. I pointed out what I could see with my own two eyeballs and asked questions about legitimacy. And a whole lot of gamers could see no legitimacy in my doing that. And they came in droves to tell me so.
In the last 24 hours that little web page has gotten over 11,000 hits. And whatever that unhappy camper originally posted on his gaming site went viral. I mean to tell you, it spread like wild fire to almost every large and small gamers web community on the internet. It even went on Twitter. You wouldn't even believe all the places that picked this up. Some horrible, outrageous, despicable woman is saying disrespectful, downright wrong, utterly stupid things about the killing game Warhammer 40,000. I am the most hated person in the whole of the global gaming community today. At least it sure feels that way. My inbox is smoking. I cannot keep up. And I have honestly tried. I really have.
I could have gotten myself all in a wad over the truly bad behavior of some very selfish, unkind people who simply cannot grasp the concept that I can have an opinion and it's no skin off their nose in any way. But I decided that since something I said caused such an uproar that I needed to step up to it and see if I could bring at least some of these people around to mid ground and at least show them that I'm not a drooling down the shirt nazi fundamentalist screeching about things I know nothing about. And I've had a 99.9% success rate with every exchange where I put forth the effort to find common ground. Because I know for sure we have common ground, I just needed them to know it so they wouldn't have to be so upset with me over something that in fact, was never said. It was not an attack. But this game has a following, and a very devoted one for that matter. I can't begin to tell you how many emails I've gotten from guys who explained the intricate details of the characters and the story line and all of the details of the game in the attempt to prove to me what a great game it really is so that I'll admit how wrong I was for not giving it, and them by default, the respect they both so richly deserve. Only a true idiot would fail to respect the game or its honorable, noble, intelligent, sophisticated players.
But I just don't see it that way. In fact as I see it, most of these guys are incapable of pulling out of where they are, just for long enough to try to be objective. They are not objective to put it mildly. I find it truly amazing that I can write about and criticize religion and have never gotten such scathing, abusive responses from staunch religionists. These guys blow Christian fundamentalists out of the water. The intensity of their defense of their clearly, immensely beloved killing game exceeds everything I've ever seen. The only close comparison I can make is the standard reaction to criticizing Israel. These seem to be in the same ball park.
So what's this all about, really? I thought it was just a game. They don't act like it's just a game. In fact, they act like it is the most serious thing in the world. They believe in this with all of their hearts and souls. Is that really rational? Should grown men feel this intensely devoted to a mere game? To the point they are willing to send vicious hate emails to someone who has done nothing to them whatsoever, and to threaten her, and call her every insulting name in the book? Is that the behavior of a reasonable adult mind? Is it really the end of the world when someone has a different opinion than you do? Is that grounds to despise someone and dismiss them entirely as a human being? Over a game?
As this process has unfolded, in just a short two days, I am watching as all these angry men, men of all ages, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of my concerns are legitimate. That the acceptance of violence and hatred and killing and making someone an enemy for the slightest cause in a "game" or non-serious format does indeed saturate the mind down deep, not at a conscious level but even more scary, at the same level where the heart beats rapidly at a horror movie. They feel they have permission to hate, to be hostile, to dismiss someone different from themselves. It plays right into the hands of the social engineers who seek to guarantee that there will always be a steady supply of warriors for their armies. These guys feel rage, and the rage is real. Reason is not a part of this. They approach me with demands to bow down to their will, to see it as they see it, or die, in a way. If I fail to comply I am literally loathed, with full body loathing, despised and reviled. I become the most heinous person they know. Over a game. Over an opinion which is in fact, justified.
How can they defend that? How is their game, which has not been touched, or threatened, or in anyway taken from them, nor is there the slightest risk that it could ever be taken from them, how is it of such immense importance what I think? Why is it so unacceptable to them that I fail to give them the justification for enjoying killing games that they have given themselves? Why am I automatically evil and they automatically righteous? What compels them to feel it is legitimate at all to behave so badly with anyone for any reason, much less over a difference of opinion over a game they like to play.
I don't know, but it makes me feel very sad..
But cheer up, as I write these words it is only Friday night. I can hardly wait to see what will happen when the weekend comes and all of the gamers and all of the players come home from their offices and places of employment, and belly up to the computer to play their favorite games and read their favorite posts on their favorite gamers web sites. And when they find the word, the message, the fact that some vile stupid person criticized a killing game, how many more dozens and dozens of furious, obscenity laden emails will I be getting? It kind of tuckers me out just thinking about it.
But there is an upside to this believe it or not, and it tickles me a good bit. Because all of these gamers, at least the ones who first go to the website to see it for themselves, are being brought directly to my movie site, which is packed to the gills with hundreds of the kinds of movies they don't show us on television. And I am loving that. And according to the numbers, some of them are actually coming back, again and again.
As I see it, that is a grand victory wrapped in a prickly coat. I'll take it. Because honestly, I think I win this time, and in more than one way.
Hooah.
If you want to see what caused all the hoo-ha, here is the link to that page at my website.
UPDATE:
As of today 6/22/09 I am no longer accepting comments or emails from gamers about this. I can not do it. I do not have the time. I can't spend all day, every day, for weeks and weeks on end, doing nothing but responding to people who run across this one post or that one web page and want to get their digs in. I know you think I owe you that, but I don't. It's not reasonable for you to demand that I have to do that. It's not possible for me to do that. I've heard every one of your positions over and again. I HAVE TO move on to other things. I'm sorry if you feel that's not fair, but that's how it goes. I've asked you to stop the emails and rage filled tirades. You're not respecting me at all. So I have to shut this down. The subject is closed, you missed the window, it's over. Whatever your opinion is, you are entitled to it, and I am entitled to mine. I am now officially closing the door on this. I won't post your comments, answer your comments, or read your comments. I won't read or answer any more of your emails. I can't. Sorry.
"Yes the game is VIOLENT, BUT..."
"Yes the game depicts a HORRIBLE HELLISH FUTURE, BUT..."
But what? All you guys want to "debate" me. About what? To try to convince me that violence and killing incorporated into entertainment is innocent and harmless? Well I don't think it is.
Isn't this just the gamers version of "It's not wrong when the president does it"? Killing is not wrong when gamers do it. What else is not wrong when you all do it?
How about computerized rape? Would that be okay too? It's not real rape, it's just fantasy rape. Would that be just a game that has no affect on society or people's heads and value systems and I'd be stupid for saying it did?
The idea of entire formalized game scenarios around rape, gang rape, raping the enemy, that doesn't go down so well does it? I wonder why. No I don't actually, I know why. It is because you have not yet been desensitized to the idea of rape so that it doesn't bother you or shock you. You still see something sick and wrong with rape. You don't think of rape as legitimate. But strangely you see killing as perfectly fine and even entertaining. Well who does that serve I wonder? It certainly wasn't something you were born with. Where did it come from then? Go ahead and tell me you haven't been skillfully indoctrinated all of your life to accept war and most of this society's standardized forms of "legitimized" violence, killing and death. Or are you just natural born fantasy killers? I doubt it.
Luckily for the women of the world, rape isn't quite so easily and handily paired with some noble idea to make it seem acceptable. Unfortunately for the whole world, mass killing has. We have entire, complex games built around killing. Nothing else, just killing. Because that's good wholesome fun. According to you.
Is killing glamorous? Is killing good? Is killing fun? Why do you find it fun when you play your games of death and war?
How do you suppose your subconscious mind parses that out, or do you actually think it can? I say it can't. It's not possible. Because in order for you to play your killing games, at some level, somewhere, you've decided that killing is okay. Under SOME set of circumstances, your particular set by coincidence, the idea of killing and fighting and shooting and making war is perfectly lovely.
Well, I'm sorry, but I can't come along with you on that.
You see, my basic position is that killing is wrong. Killing doesn't fix anything. Killing isn't justice. Killing doesn't even take any brains, any thug with a big club can kill.
Killing and war have been glamorized, justified and legitimized by connecting them to patriotism and 'we're number one' , to self defense and the nobility and bravery of the individuals who go off to war. But those things are not war. War uses those things to get its credibility and its legitimacy because the truth is that war has no credibility or legitimacy of its own.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm no shrinking violet. When it comes to defending myself I'll use a gun in a heart beat. But I won't find it amusing. I won't do it without feeling it hard afterwards. I will defend myself, but so much of the violence we see and engage in this society has nothing to do with self defense. Have you not seen the police beating and shooting people who are no threat to them? The police are 100% legitimized and so by default anything they do is automatically legitimized, even when it's not at all legitimate. Even when it's senseless and punitive and unjustifiable. But try getting around that inculcated, naive belief that police can never be criminals or act inappropriately or be rapists or serial killers. They can be and some of them are. Cops are just people like everyone else, and there are cops that are real thugs. That's on the record. Some cops commit crimes. Every day in fact. Some soldiers commit crimes. All presidents commit crimes. Regardless of any title, badge, uniform or high office, these are all just people, ordinary people, and not all of them are nice. They are able to hide under the freely given blanket of legitimacy from this unthinking society and they are able to get away with murder because of that. That's a fact, check it yourself.
Where I guess all this violent gaming loses me is pretty much right from the beginning. You see, I don't consider any form of violence to be entertaining. I don't get why millions upon millions of people in this country ENJOY a "good" rape and murder movie. In my mind, that's cracked. There's something wrong with that. There's nothing at all fun or amusing or entertaining about brutality and killing. Violence, brutality, murder, killing, shooting are serious business, there's nothing fun about them. I know, I've seen it and been in it and there's nothing fun or romantic or swell about it. It's the worst thing in the world. That's my opinion for which I'm sure somebody somewhere would be willing to snap my neck. They would feel entitled to snap my neck because they strongly stand behind their own conception of what kind of violence is good, even noble, or at least excusable, acceptable, all the way to "harmless" fun. But how did it ever come to be that any kind of brutality slid over into the category of "fun" at all? Something is out of whack there. That doesn't make any sense.
Some people who love playing these violent games got very angry with me because I pointed out the violence in them. I'm not putting the violence in them, the violence is already in them. This is like it's not wrong for the violence to be there it's only wrong of me to say so out loud. Well I'm sorry, the violence is in there and I'm saying so out loud.
I didn't pick Warhammer for any particular reason. This isn't about Warhammer. I don't care in the least about Warhammer. I don't care about the characters or the story. They are not at all what I am addressing. There are dozens of incredibly violent and dark "games" out there, I picked Warhammer by chance, so I'll say it again, this is not about Warhammer. There are millions and millions of men playing Warhammer along with dozens of even more violent, more disturbing games. That's a whole lot of fantasy killing.
Why do they like their killing games so much? Why do they spend so many hours and so many years playing their killing games? What are they feeding? Are games without killing incapable of fulfilling the entertainment urge for some reason? Do war gamers ever ask themselves these questions? Is there really nothing better they could do with their time than have war fantasies? There probably is but games are easier and the pleasure hit comes fast and large and is guaranteed. You all are addicted, you just don't want to see it that way. After listening to the hostile bombardment in defense of a silly game it tells me that this is far more serious than you're even willing to face. Why should it matter to you at all what I think? Am I a threat to you lot?
The fact is that I've felt this way all my life. It hasn't affected a single one of you in the slightest. It made no difference at all in any of your lives. It didn't make a difference until you found out about it and then all of a sudden it was like the end of the world for you. It's what you are telling yourselves that is upsetting you. My thoughts and feelings have always been here in the same earth plane with you. It is not my thoughts or feelings that are causing you any grief whatsoever. It is your thoughts and your feelings. My thoughts and feelings have no affect or presence in any of your lives. I cannot affect you in any way. So why, suddenly, are you all up in arms over my beliefs and opinions? Why are you all rushing in to insult me and accuse me of being everything from stupid to a liar to someone who just doesn't get it? Why are so many of you needing to explain every detail of the game to me? You are seeking justification for why YOUR preferred killing game is a good and okay killing game. Apparently it is not enough that you think so. You require me to think so or you feel threatened. I see that as an abject failure to even try to be objective or serious about the whole of the violent gaming phenomenon.
Killing is not fun. Death is not fun. You're the ones who are saying it is fun, but I'm the one under unending attack from you all. Doesn't that strike you as at all backwards? I'm not attacking anyone, I never have. I am pointing at things I see because they are there. I am connecting dots that you refuse to consider connecting. Your refusal doesn't mean the dots aren't there to connect, they are there. That's why you're so pissed off with me. Because I am challenging you not to defend your silly games, but to defend your own private lust for violence and killing, and you can't do it.
Where is the fine line that you prefer to think of as a mile wide that separates thinking and fantasizing about killing from being willing to do it? Oh, only under the "right" circumstances to be sure, but what makes the circumstances right? A good and noble cause? Whose cause? Yours? Theirs? Mine?
Don't you get that killing is always deemed justified by who ever is doing the killing? Serial killers feel justified, are they? Cops feel justified, are they? The military feels justified, are they? Does anyone bother to think about it anymore? It takes two sides to have a battle, and obviously both sides feel justified in their killing. Well if only one of those sides is in the right, then one must be in the wrong, but which is which? In the heat of the battle nobody seems to care too much who is actually right or who is actually the "bad" guy. Both sides consider the other to be the "bad" guy, for their own reasons. So how do we ultimately decide who is really the bad or good guy, objectively?
When you really start digging down into the nitty gritty about who is justified and who is not, it's quite surprising to find that so very often whoever is doing the aggressing is in fact not a very nice guy. Often the side that is being howled about and called the worst of the worst people in the world are in fact the real victims. It seems more to depend on who can scream the loudest and kill the most. Whoever is left standing is the victor. But does that make the victor the good guy? Should it? I don't know you tell me.
See, I ask these questions. And I am willing to admit that it really depends a whole heck of a lot what side you're on in any battle. Both of the sides see themselves as in the right. But if both sides are in the right then you shouldn't need war to reach a mutually beneficial solution. War is an option that should rarely need to happen, but in this country it happens all the time. There's something very wrong with the whole damned thing, and even more wrong is how few Americans seem to give a shit at all who all or how many are getting killed somewhere else. Killing others has become the means to feel safe. Is that twisted enough for you? It sure is for me.
What makes it truly miserable is when good men are called to battle and they can't afford the luxury of doing too much thinking about who is shooting who and why. All they know is the reality that someone over there is pointing a rifle at them in the here and now, and they either have to shoot first, and accurately, or die. All of the critical thinking, all of the critically important questions, all of the issues of who is right and wrong evaporate in the harsh cold reality of survival. It truly becomes mindless killing in the literal sense. It can be very gripping. Intoxicating. You can totally lose your mind and your soul, if only for an hour, or a day, or a week or a year.
And this feeling, this exhilaration, the winning, the danger, the glamor of it, if you can call it that, this is the same high, the self same buzz that you gamers get high on. Only you do it all safe and snug in your bedrooms and offices at a computer terminal. But you still celebrate your kills, you even keep track of them. You count your trophies. And all the while you tell yourselves that it's just a game. And you damn well insist that I have to see it that way too, as if it's your right to tell me anything. It isn't your right. Even though it shouldn't matter in the least to you what I think, it seems to be of critical importance to you. Why should it be, if you truly believe there is nothing wrong with playing killing games?
Couldn't it be that even pretend killing, "fun" killing, is still thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings of winning by the use of deadly violence? Oh yes, you love chalking it up to skill and strategy, but what's all that skill and strategy for? It's for killing. What else? It's not for setting a nice luncheon table. It's for killing. Admit it.
So please, spare me the "let's debate the game" nonsense. I know the game. This is not about your particular game, it's about you. It's your taking extreme pleasure, addictive pleasure from your war games. And it's you telling me, demanding of me, insisting to me that there's no harm in it whatsoever, that it does not and cannot affect greater society in any way shape or form; and for me to suggest that it gets inside our heads at the deepest level and serves to inculcate people into the acceptance of violence as legitimate, as long as there is a sufficiently evil bad guy in the picture, our violence and our killing is automatically 100% justified. It's warranted. It's necessary. It's even good. And dang it, who can help it if it's fun too? It's just a game after all.
I'd better take a minute to clue in my regular readers as to what this is all about. Let's see, how shall I put this? Let's just say I've had a busy couple of days.
Two years ago I started looking around at all of the online gaming going on in this country and I'll tell you the truth, I was really blown away by how violent, dark, depressing, depraved and grotesque a lot of it is. There are all kinds of games of course, ranging from cute little games with goofy little characters to amazing, impressive 3D productions in Flash with lifelike characters and lots of women with immense breasts running around half nude with humungous swords. As if. I don't know a single woman who'd be the least bit interested in being around sharp instruments in her underwear but this is "just fantasy". No worries about men getting themselves all wound up on bullshit that makes it impossible for them to have real relationships with boring old normal, clad, unarmed females. I say that with some sarcasm obviously.
Anyway, I'd decided to do a web page on my site about this violence. Not to attack the people who are into it, but to bring to the fore, to conscious awareness, particularly for parents, what it means to think of violence in terms of it being "fun" or "harmless". Because the human mind doesn't work like we love to believe it does. It doesn't separate out what our eyes see into fantasy and reality.
Our brains take it all in as real, as you may have experienced if you've ever been to a horror film or a really scary movie. Your heart is beating a mile a minute, or maybe you suddenly cry out from the tension and a good scare on the screen; but why would you? You intellectually know that it's only a movie and that the guy with the chainsaw or the ax or whatever, is just an actor and so are all the other people in the film. They're not even really there, it's just a recording. But tell your rapidly beating heart that. It doesn't care what's in your head intellectually. It is responding to the danger it perceives from a whole different part of your brain that is authorized to over ride your conscious intellect at will. You can actually think one thing and feel something in direct opposition to your brilliant conscious mind thinking its grown up, rational thoughts, at the same time.
You may think it silly to have a physical fear response to a recorded scripted story, but the fact is your body is reacting to it as though it was real. That's the main reason people go to scary movies in the first place. If they didn't feel real fear it wouldn't be much of a thrill. This isn't fantasy, it's fact. The whole of your brain is not just the conscious awareness part. In fact George Lakoff came out with the results of research last year where he stated that most of what we think of as thinking, over 90% of it, is done unconsciously. In fact the number is even higher than that. According to Lakoff, we do practically no conscious thinking. So the fear you experience at the movies is quite real, and it is not the result of your conscious thoughts but thoughts you don't even know you're having. The most you can do is keep that fear response under control with your intellect and will, and a feeling of assurance that you are indeed safe. But I guarantee you, if the scary guy playing the insane killer in that movie suddenly came walking down your aisle, you'd piss yourself.
Does that relate to violence in other entertainment? It does relate, and in the same way, and then some. My concern in writing the web page was to flag parents, and people in general who have never once thought about their beliefs about war and violence. As I mentioned above, we automatically assign justification to some of the most heinous acts of violence in our country, just as long as the violence is done by people we think of as authorized to do it. It's a bit weird when you really stop and think about it because there is no such thing as automatic justification. No one deserves to be given free reign to kill or shoot or imprison at will, period, no human being is so perfect as to be qualified for blanket authorization to kill or do violence at will, no questions asked. But we in this country have been so propagandized through television shows that always portray law enforcement and government and lawyers and investigators and intelligence operatives as these sparkling great people that are good hearted and always in the right, so that is our perception in real life.
We have no direct personal experience to explain our automatic trusting belief in authority, so where does it come from? Well that's obvious. It comes from the only experience we do have on the subject, and that experience isn't even direct. It's not even an experience of reality. It's an experience of watching fiction, 100% made up, no real cops or presidents or intelligence operatives anywhere in sight, ever. It's not even live, it's recorded. It is actors saying lines from scripts, and characters we come to "know" and actually grow fond of. None of it is real, but people none the less come away from it fully indoctrinated in their staunch belief that all authority is benign and beneficent and can be trusted at all times, so there is little in the way of questioning anything authority does, even when it's grotesquely and blatantly wrong. We'll even make excuses to cover for them, such is our deep self-indoctrination based on sheer fantasy. It feels real to us though, and we'll be damned if we let any facts set us straight. Hell no. We won't stand for it.
I am saying that the same kind of indoctrination occurs through all forms of major entertainment, and in the case of the web page I did two years ago, in computerized games of violence, war, killing and death too. Why would this one thing be exempt from affecting the mind?
It can't be exempt, everything affects our minds. There is nothing that does not affect our minds. It will affect different people in different ways, but I am only asking people to be conscious of what their children are being inculcated into without anyone realizing it or paying attention to it; because we have a serious problem with violence in this country. Where is all of this violence coming from? The major share of influence comes out of the whole of what we think of as ordinary entertainment. And this country is the most violent of westernized nations in the whole world.
Something somewhere is behind this astonishing level of American violence. Shouldn't we be willing to consider ALL forms of standardized violence that children are exposed to? Should we ignore out of hand anything that we personally happen to be behind and like? Is that fair? Is it honest? No, it's not fair or honest. If children were not inundated with death images and death messages from the first day they turn their TV sets on, if they were instead never even introduced to the idea that killing is okay, wouldn't they have a much harder time doing things like joining the army to go off and fight without even knowing why? To them killing would seem as senseless as it actually is, and they would need a reason before being willing to risk everything for what boils down to nothing at all. Am I horrible for asking people to think about that? I do not know why that would be anyone's valid opinion.
One of the arguments I keep hearing over and over is that it is only a game, as if that's supposed to be proof enough, absolute evidence that there's nothing harmful about it. It's a game. It's fun. But what I know, is that because it is so seemingly harmless, because it is fun, it is supremely able to enter the brain without encountering any defenses, no screening, no critical thought whatsoever, in fact it is welcomed. It is welcomed on the grounds that it is entertaining. It is fun. Sure it is killing, but it is only a game. The two things really have no business connecting because they exist at the opposite ends of a long and far away spectrum. And it scares me and it bothers me very much that somehow the two have met in the middle, and all of the negativity and horror of violence and war is washed away under the halo of wholesome enjoyment for one and all.
It began on Thursday morning. Someone, somewhere, an avid player of the game I happened to use for the example on my web page, ran across that web page and had an extremely, I'll repeat that, extremely negative reaction to what he read there. He immediately went into battle mode in his own mind, and I became his hated enemy. How dare I have a problem with anything about his death game? How dare I ask questions about serious things like killing and war when this was only a game? Was I so stupid that I couldn't see that it's only a game? It's not real. I am too dumb for words according to this guy. The email he actually sent would not be reprintable here, it is too offensive and vulgar. I don't have tender ears or anything, but when somebody's really hammering me with profanity and insults, it's not pleasant. That's where it began. This one unhappy camper was so extremely offended by my rather fairly presented criticism, so outraged that I had anything resembling a problem with Warhammer 40,000 and the Space Marines and the Angels of Death, that he meant to teach me a lesson I'd never forget.
He posted my web page and my email address on a gaming site that I'm told has something like three MILLION members. In the first 24 hours I was besieged with hate mail telling me where to go and to go there now. They wanted to rip my head from my body and shove it down the neck hole. Really a rather bizarre reaction in my opinion. I didn't attack gamers. I didn't attack anyone in fact. I pointed out what I could see with my own two eyeballs and asked questions about legitimacy. And a whole lot of gamers could see no legitimacy in my doing that. And they came in droves to tell me so.
In the last 24 hours that little web page has gotten over 11,000 hits. And whatever that unhappy camper originally posted on his gaming site went viral. I mean to tell you, it spread like wild fire to almost every large and small gamers web community on the internet. It even went on Twitter. You wouldn't even believe all the places that picked this up. Some horrible, outrageous, despicable woman is saying disrespectful, downright wrong, utterly stupid things about the killing game Warhammer 40,000. I am the most hated person in the whole of the global gaming community today. At least it sure feels that way. My inbox is smoking. I cannot keep up. And I have honestly tried. I really have.
I could have gotten myself all in a wad over the truly bad behavior of some very selfish, unkind people who simply cannot grasp the concept that I can have an opinion and it's no skin off their nose in any way. But I decided that since something I said caused such an uproar that I needed to step up to it and see if I could bring at least some of these people around to mid ground and at least show them that I'm not a drooling down the shirt nazi fundamentalist screeching about things I know nothing about. And I've had a 99.9% success rate with every exchange where I put forth the effort to find common ground. Because I know for sure we have common ground, I just needed them to know it so they wouldn't have to be so upset with me over something that in fact, was never said. It was not an attack. But this game has a following, and a very devoted one for that matter. I can't begin to tell you how many emails I've gotten from guys who explained the intricate details of the characters and the story line and all of the details of the game in the attempt to prove to me what a great game it really is so that I'll admit how wrong I was for not giving it, and them by default, the respect they both so richly deserve. Only a true idiot would fail to respect the game or its honorable, noble, intelligent, sophisticated players.
But I just don't see it that way. In fact as I see it, most of these guys are incapable of pulling out of where they are, just for long enough to try to be objective. They are not objective to put it mildly. I find it truly amazing that I can write about and criticize religion and have never gotten such scathing, abusive responses from staunch religionists. These guys blow Christian fundamentalists out of the water. The intensity of their defense of their clearly, immensely beloved killing game exceeds everything I've ever seen. The only close comparison I can make is the standard reaction to criticizing Israel. These seem to be in the same ball park.
So what's this all about, really? I thought it was just a game. They don't act like it's just a game. In fact, they act like it is the most serious thing in the world. They believe in this with all of their hearts and souls. Is that really rational? Should grown men feel this intensely devoted to a mere game? To the point they are willing to send vicious hate emails to someone who has done nothing to them whatsoever, and to threaten her, and call her every insulting name in the book? Is that the behavior of a reasonable adult mind? Is it really the end of the world when someone has a different opinion than you do? Is that grounds to despise someone and dismiss them entirely as a human being? Over a game?
As this process has unfolded, in just a short two days, I am watching as all these angry men, men of all ages, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of my concerns are legitimate. That the acceptance of violence and hatred and killing and making someone an enemy for the slightest cause in a "game" or non-serious format does indeed saturate the mind down deep, not at a conscious level but even more scary, at the same level where the heart beats rapidly at a horror movie. They feel they have permission to hate, to be hostile, to dismiss someone different from themselves. It plays right into the hands of the social engineers who seek to guarantee that there will always be a steady supply of warriors for their armies. These guys feel rage, and the rage is real. Reason is not a part of this. They approach me with demands to bow down to their will, to see it as they see it, or die, in a way. If I fail to comply I am literally loathed, with full body loathing, despised and reviled. I become the most heinous person they know. Over a game. Over an opinion which is in fact, justified.
How can they defend that? How is their game, which has not been touched, or threatened, or in anyway taken from them, nor is there the slightest risk that it could ever be taken from them, how is it of such immense importance what I think? Why is it so unacceptable to them that I fail to give them the justification for enjoying killing games that they have given themselves? Why am I automatically evil and they automatically righteous? What compels them to feel it is legitimate at all to behave so badly with anyone for any reason, much less over a difference of opinion over a game they like to play.
I don't know, but it makes me feel very sad..
But cheer up, as I write these words it is only Friday night. I can hardly wait to see what will happen when the weekend comes and all of the gamers and all of the players come home from their offices and places of employment, and belly up to the computer to play their favorite games and read their favorite posts on their favorite gamers web sites. And when they find the word, the message, the fact that some vile stupid person criticized a killing game, how many more dozens and dozens of furious, obscenity laden emails will I be getting? It kind of tuckers me out just thinking about it.
But there is an upside to this believe it or not, and it tickles me a good bit. Because all of these gamers, at least the ones who first go to the website to see it for themselves, are being brought directly to my movie site, which is packed to the gills with hundreds of the kinds of movies they don't show us on television. And I am loving that. And according to the numbers, some of them are actually coming back, again and again.
As I see it, that is a grand victory wrapped in a prickly coat. I'll take it. Because honestly, I think I win this time, and in more than one way.
Hooah.
If you want to see what caused all the hoo-ha, here is the link to that page at my website.
UPDATE:
As of today 6/22/09 I am no longer accepting comments or emails from gamers about this. I can not do it. I do not have the time. I can't spend all day, every day, for weeks and weeks on end, doing nothing but responding to people who run across this one post or that one web page and want to get their digs in. I know you think I owe you that, but I don't. It's not reasonable for you to demand that I have to do that. It's not possible for me to do that. I've heard every one of your positions over and again. I HAVE TO move on to other things. I'm sorry if you feel that's not fair, but that's how it goes. I've asked you to stop the emails and rage filled tirades. You're not respecting me at all. So I have to shut this down. The subject is closed, you missed the window, it's over. Whatever your opinion is, you are entitled to it, and I am entitled to mine. I am now officially closing the door on this. I won't post your comments, answer your comments, or read your comments. I won't read or answer any more of your emails. I can't. Sorry.
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