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Always
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On violence and desensitization:
I don't understand it though, why he would enjoy a game like that.
I'm really hung up on this video thing.
When I was a kid I used to fold up papers and drop them into the
trash when other kids crumpled. I still, as an adult, can't rip
wrapping paper off gifts. I have to remove it neatly. I just have a
problem destroying things people have spent time crafting. (Even
school notices.) My daughter Kat is very similar. And yet we both
had a lot of fun playing Godzilla Destroy All Monsters and not only
destroy monsters but cities too.
Kat will say mean things to characters she doesn't like and send them
ugly shirts in Animal Crossing. But in real life she's very conscious
of not hurting people's feelings.
I read murder mysteries, but it doesn't make me want to murder
anyone. (Or question people who might be murderers to find the real
killer.) I like to watch strong characters like Xena and Buffy and
anime characters too numerous to mention slice and dice the bad guys
and other nasties. It doesn't make me want to take up a sword and
kill things or feel depressed that I'll never master Kamehameha times
ten and blow up planets. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and could
wallop a board or a pad pretty well, but it didn't make me want to
kick someone in the face.
There's something satisfying in taking out your aggressions on things,
but in real life there are bad consequences you want to avoid. But in
games—and acting and writing and art and pretending—it's
possible to act those out and release it without doing anyone harm.
It doesn't make me want to smash things in real life because I know
the real consequences are still there. I think it's a very healthy
way to play out needs you don't want to play out in real life.
—Joyce
I think his character is back to being a hero, based upon him doing
some good deeds.
In Dungeons and Dragons you can change your alignment (how
good/evil/lawful you are) by one placement according to how your
character is acting during the game.
If you act out of character for your alignment, you can actually lose
intelligence ratings. A "lawful good" character would never hurt
anyone for no good reason, or break the law. A chaotic evil character
would be pretty hard to trust as they do whatever benefits themselves.
It's interesting to have all these dynamics and play a character
unlike yourself, trying to decide how THEY would act in any given
situation. I might turn around and hide, but I have to figure out
what my halfling rogue would do in the situation when faced with an
ogre.
Great fodder for storytelling, strategy, acting, human (or non-human)
behavior study etc...
Acting out as someone you're not is fun! Where else can you practice
being evil or good? Much better in a game than real life.
—Ren
I'm just not even sure about the very idea of being "desensitized."
Right! I think people believe that "desensitizing" will mean a person can't
even recognize when a thing is horrible.
I think the more exposure we have to difficult things the better we get at
surviving them. If we lacked coping skills, we wouldn't still be here. But
I don't believe getting used to seeing, say, starving children, means a
person would then want to deliberately starve a child.
My vet told me he fainted a couple times in vet school. After years as a
vet he doesn't faint.
If I needed a brain surgeon, I wouldn't want him puking during my operation.
If I get cut and need stitches, I hope the person sewing me up can do it
without fainting. Most surgeons can see a lot of yuck, but that doesn't mean
they want to go out then and create random acts of yuck. Emergency room
nurses who see lots of blood don't usually go out in public and make people
bleed.
So even when a person becomes less sensitive to something horrible through
repeated exposure, that does not mean they would deliberately do a horrible
thing. That doesn't mean they don't recognize it's horrible. It means
they've found ways to keep the thing from crippling them, emotionally.
People talk about video games like that's real violence. It's not.
Emergency room stuff is real violence, and if exposure to real violence
doesn't turn emergency room personnel into murderers or vampires or The
Abominable Dr. Phibes, then why do people work so hard to believe that
exposure to games, where depictions of violence are not real and where no
one is ever really hurt, will?
I think it's grounded in religion. Somewhere in the bible a verse
says if you've thought a bad thing, that's the same as doing the bad thing.
Well, that's just a bunch of crazy shit. If I think I'd like to smack the
bank teller, but I smile instead and say "thanks, have a good day," it is not
the same AT ALL. She is not injured. I don't get arrested. If I
fantasize about killing my neighbor, but I bake a cake instead, my neighbor
is still alive, her husband is not grieving, her dog does not miss her, her
employees still get paid, I stay out of jail.
Isn't the inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality a mental
disorder?
—Deb
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