Slashdot Mirror
The People Vs. Common Sense
Mogg writes "GamerGod.com has a new article up entitled "The People Vs. Common Sense, A Citizen's View at Michigan's SB-0146 Law," commenting on the new Michigan state video game law. "Have we made absolutely certain books and movies are not degrading the minds of our children and video games and all computerized representation of violent and sexual acts are the cause of an increase of depraved sociopaths??" Very nicely written piece.
The band Scatterbrain, aka Ludichrist, had a song called Goodbye Freedom, Hello Mom about 15 years back, sounds like they weren't far off...
...
...
...
...
:)
We'll ban that book and T.V. show,
Forget that movie, no you can't go.
Can't sell that record, don't like that song.
We know what's right we know what's wrong.
Can't have abortions, what's yours ain't yours,
Just obey the laws.
Too young to drink, say no to drugs
Bikers wear helmets, cars safety belts
You might hurt yourself.
We're watching out, We're watching out
We're watching out for you...
Well the new right's been at work some time
They ain't so new no more
Can you hear 'em knockin'
Knockin' down your door.
1984 has past, forget about Big Brother,
Welcome to the 90's where the government's your
mother.
They'll tell you - don't do that.
They'll try and tell you - it's for your own good.
Big Mother is watching you
Mother's protecting you
Mommy knows what's right for you
Goodbye Freedom, Hello Mom
The Bill of Rights just disappeared
There it is - whoops it's gone!
Goodbye Freedom, Hello Mom
All your rights just disappeared
Everybody stay calm.
Good stuff
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
and from another time
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC).
When you're too old to know what it is to be young, it seems, you'll inevitably subscribe to an orthodoxy that sees children as wild and at risk of being irrevocably corrupted.
Kids are leaky hormone sacs. What you see them up to in public is nothing compared to what they do in private.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
But the punch line comes at the end of the article, where the inflated language is dropped. It adds to the effect. If you didn't read all the way to the end, you missed the payoff.
Way to go at taking away any responsibility on the politicians part. I'm not saying you don't have a point, but the way your post is worded it's like the politicians aren't to blame at all, and it's all the fault of the ignorant voters.
Oh it's not the politician's fault for lying. It's the fault of the people for believing him.
I'm not saying you don't have a point, what I'm saying is politicians are partly responsible (I'd say the greater part myself).
That's all well and good, but the truth of the matter nowadays is that both parents want to work. Our parents did a good job raising us, telling us that if we want to make something of ourselves, we have to go to college. So we did. Both men and women. Then, in university, we met the person who would eventually become our spouse. After college, they both wanted jobs, to put this new, expensive education to work. After all, they're young, educated, enthusiastic, and unemcumbered by kids. So they both get great jobs, and buy a nice big house and each drive a BMW SUV.
A few years later, they want kids. Being used to getting what they want, they proceed to spawn. However, neither of them want to work, being new-age, enlightened folks. "Why should I automatically have to stay home? This is 2005, for cryin' out loud," says the woman. "Well, I'm not quitting my job," says the man, "I make more than you. It makes sense for me to keep working." They crunch the numbers and realize that they both must keep working, in order to continue being able to afford gassing up their BMW SUVs and heating/cooling their 3000 sq. ft. mansion.
Kids are inevitably born, and a minimum-wage, immigrant nanny is hired, or the kid is shipped off to daycare, where he/she learns questionable value and is largely emotionally devoid of the individual attention he/she needs and deserves. But mom and dad, still working 8 - 10 hour days, only have to deal with Junior for a few hours a day, so they don't notice that Junior is starting to resent them. Feeling guilty, they buy him whatever he wants (after all, they're still "rich" enough to do so). Junior wants a cell phone. "It'll let us reach him wherever he is," the parents reason, and buy him the phone. Junior wants a car. "It'll free us from having to shuttle him around all the time," reason the parents. Junior wants GTA3. "It'll keep him out of our hair for a few hours a day," say the parents.
So junior, having been raised by an immigrant with poor english and questionable credentials, learns to entertain himself, and finds that he can spend a very large amount of time hanging out with his friends doing whatever, and his parents won't nag him about it. He doesn't really like (or know) his parents anyway. Eventually, they get divorced. Junior plays GTA4 with his buddies in his basement while his parents are at work, and they laugh every time they run over a hooker. Then they go out under the deck behind the house and smoke a joint. Mom and Dad won't be home for hours anyway.
Welcome to 2005.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Much like the MPAA ratings, the ERSB ratings were put into place to arm the parents with the tools they would need to protect their children from inadvertently partaking in games that should rightly be marketed and sold to adults. Until the Illinois law went into effect, the public appeared to manage rearing their children just fine on their own. Law makers such as Senator Alan Cropsey, given the amount of thought, time, and taxpayer money that has gone into enacting laws that allow for punitive repercussions, have gone to great lengths to insinuate that parents have indeed failed their children by allowing them to do as little as glimpse at the packaging in which violent video games are sold. Is it that those parents are not doing their part, or that the ERSB has failed to properly warn parents about products which are appropriate for their children?
In a word, Yes. I've always felt that parenting should be active instead of passive. Children don't learn right and wrong from TV, music, or video games, but from parents. It's too bad that good parenting has been lost on this generation.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
Somtimes I wonder if its not the media itself that perpatuates this witch hunt. After all other forms of entertainment such as TV, movies and music all stand to gain from a games market that is relagated to toddlers and kids. Its the fact that games are so popular with the 18-34 crowd that is driving them crazy as we are spending our dollars and our attention to something other than thier passive drivel. Oddly enough as people freak out the biggest spenders on video games are people who are above the maximum age range anyway. Little kids playing GTA are actually in the miniority as I understand it. The parents smart enough to keep stuff with obiously bad titles out of thier kids hands of course arent going to complain. Only those who were dumb enough to think a game with a title like "Slash Killer Gore IV" is somehow wholesome for thier 12 year old to play.
For the most part its this miniority that is at the hands of all this anti-game stuff, unfortnatly they are also the most vocal and of course the media just loves to run away with any oppertuntiy they can for a story coupled with an oppertunity to bash an opposing medium that is eating into thier bottom line more every year.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
I wish I had time to search for a quote, but Socrates also bashes poetry and art for being corrupting forces in a couple dialogues (notably the Republic, IIRC). POETRY. Yes, old people are blaming video games for corrupting the youth. A few short years ago, they were blaming music. Elvis used to be evil. Well, thousands of years ago, they were blaming *poetry*! And not Jack Kerouac poetry, but things like the Illiad. You know, that boring stuff that they make you read in school? Hell, Socrates was executed for corrupting the youth with *philosophy*.
Just as an aside. Slavery in the ancient world WAS NOT like slavery in America. It was not a permanent situation. Slaves were still paid, if menially, the children of slaves were not slaves but citizens of the country, city, state of the owner. Most slaves were taken from an enemey ravaged by war and would probably have starved to death if left in their own country considering it was standard practice to loot all food stores and destroy the rest during an invasion.
Slavery is not a terrible thing. And is it any different than paying someone such a small wage they never have the means to improve their life? The type of slavery that is bad is slavery just based off of race or religion. Which allows for absolutely no hope of ever being anything other than a slave. During the Roman empire 1 way for someone not born a citizen to become one was to become a slave. And yes there were reasons people would voluntarily sell themselves into slavery to become a citizen. Ask yourself if the people hoping the border into the EU or US wouldn't do the same?
Government imposition is becoming increasingly more prevelant in our society. "We must protect the children..." is cited in most or all of the cases. Well, I realize that this has been said 99,000 times alerady, but I repeat: WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?
Children need to be governed and protected by their parents, not the Government! In most cases you will find that the root of the problem are the parent(s), sure, there are genetic dispositions that might make someone more succeptable to commiting violent acts, but for the most part, the way they deal and react in every situation is learned at a very early age and age where most kids are not playing video games. Unfortunately, the kids are thrown into daycare and the parents are too busy working late so then can pay off their $40,000 SUV. So, realy parenting is out of the question..
Where are the parents when these kids are playing the games? The kids are in front of their baby sitter, a video game or the television!
Enter the Governement..."We'll take it from here"
Parents! Pay attention to your kids! spend some time with them instead of shuffling them off to soccer, ballet, etc... and spend some time with them. What a simple concept!
It's not my fault!
What a common theme on our society, I got a question, if it's not your fault, than whose is it?
"It's your fault, or his fault, or her fault, or their fault!"
Enter some government official with an agenda ready to make hasty decisions and judgements about a situation without completely understanding it. "I dont' care whose fault it is, your both wrong"
The problem and the blame and the responsibility needs to be the parents and it is not the Governements job to raise our children.
Poor Video Game Developers...yeah, right!
Here is where I will more than likely get slammed, citing; "You can't be on both sides of the fence", well, yes I can.
There are some real crap video games out there! Grand Theft Auto is Useless. I've played it, I am a gamer, it is completely unecessary killing and violence and everything else rolled into a first person experience. Children should never be allowed near this kind of crap, however,it it not the Governments' job to decide this, it is the PARENTS.
Senator Dinosaur
Lastly, I will make this short and to the point' People over the age of 40 should not be able to make or propose ANY legislation that involves technology! More often than not, they do not understand it, they don't understand the implications, and they are incapable of making an educated decision, so they apply their old school, antiquated ideals and sometimes, bring innovation to a screeching halt.
I have heard this many times before, but have yet to see references from which these facts are gleaned. Simply put, could they leave? Did they have freedom to do or go as they pleased? One could just as easily argue that american slaves were paid in food and shelter, that wouldn't make it any less repugnant. In fact, if it was so desireable of a lifestyle, why were the jews so up and ready to get out of egypt (which I seriously doubt was ever the case anyway)? At best, your argument illustrates more that we should be taking a serious look at how to make "border hoppers" less like slaves, than throwing up our hands and saying, "Sometimes, slavery just ain't that bad."
The big difference for me lies in whether one regards morality as being inherent to things or not. Either actions are morally right and wrong owing to inherent qualities that make them so, or they're morally right or wrong because an external authority figure has decreed them to be so from above.
The latter position is essentially authoritarian; it's an argument from (God's) strength, not one about inherent justice or morality. The all-powerful God has said X is good and Y is bad, and our role is to follow orders, not to use our consciences to try to figure things out.
As a result of taking that stance, religious movements like American "fundamentalism" wind up talking a lot more about authority -- God's authority, which they claim for themselves based on interpretation of the Bible -- than they do about morality. My Southern Baptist relations' church sermons aren't about the struggle to figure out what's right and wrong, they're essentially about obedience and fulfilling a sort of contract for eternal life they think they have with God. I've sat through them, squirming.
The results can seem pretty arbitrary as they lurch around, can't they? One never knows what odd target their righteousness will light upon next. Will it be single mothers? But then the authority they claim is essentially arbitrary too. It's based on arbitrary force.
Of course, since this is exactly what you do when you adopt a Christian moral code, a Christian studying the Bible will naturally take away a completely different lesson than a non-believer.
It really isn't true that all Christians take the Bible in the way you're suggesting. Christianity is a big place. Every "book" religion has this tension about fundamentalist readings of the text, too.
Somehow my Southern Baptist relations have made Jesus into a figure shutting out everyone not in their congregation; they actually manage to have periodic schismatic breaks within their tiny, small town congregation. (The most recent one was about the role of women. Ugh.) My parents' Northern Baptist church couldn't be more antithetical to that narrow vision, and the sermons and forums there are truly about trying to be morally awake and alive. Both Christian.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
about a troubled guy in a disfunctional family who kept playing GTA. One day, this guy decided to rob something, and the police caught him on the spot. He took one officer's gun to try to cuff him and run away, but the officer began yelling, and the guy shot him because he got scared.
The point in the article was that the "shooting officers" was an automatic response, something he had learned by playing GTA.
And this makes me think that we've been tackling the violent videogame issue from the wrong viewpoint: It's not that certain videogames make us violent - violence is something we learn at home, but that we are more prone to repeat the actions learned in videogames, when we become violent. This is, learned behavior from the videogames. This contrasts with movies,books and TV, where we are only spectators and no automatic-actions (such as shooting someone) are learned.
And it makes sense now: Home/Family learned violence + Videogame-learned violent actions = dangerous person.
In other words, it means that videogames such as GTA, which portray realistic violence (against fictional violence like "Street Fighter II") can turn an already violent person into a potential murderer.
Opinions anyone?