People Kill People
January 20th 2008 04:12
Every so often someone kills someone else in the name of or under the influence of some sort of divine entity. We don't usually take offence at our consumerist tendencies when someone is murdered over money but we don't hesitate to attack the religion or belief of the day if a crime was committed by someone claiming to follow that belief.
Today I'm not going to talk about people killing under Islam or Christianity but rather video games. Why video games? Playing violent video games is something that is a bit of a past time amongst the younger folk, granted by younger I mean people under forty. So when someone who is under forty and plays lots of violent games murders someone it raises a few eyebrows.
At this point we have a two way argument, one side claims it wasn't the computer game but the person who was disturbed or had motives not related to games while the other side at its most extreme usually says something along the lines of 'since the game even in the slightest effected his actions they should all be banned'.
This isn't at all different to the Atheist mantra of how religion is the cause of the world’s pain and destruction, indeed they would be the first to attack religion when someone kills under its name. Of course other religious sects such as Muslims and Christians will do the same at the drop of a hat, so long as it doesn't involve them.
In the end the problem is we try to blame someone besides the person for the actions, preferably so we can further our own little agendas in the process. We can claim that a Muslim should be a murderer based on our own interpretations of the Quran but we can also claim people who play violent computer games are also crazy murderers and in all fairness, the computer games have the bigger guns.
Today I'm not going to talk about people killing under Islam or Christianity but rather video games. Why video games? Playing violent video games is something that is a bit of a past time amongst the younger folk, granted by younger I mean people under forty. So when someone who is under forty and plays lots of violent games murders someone it raises a few eyebrows.
At this point we have a two way argument, one side claims it wasn't the computer game but the person who was disturbed or had motives not related to games while the other side at its most extreme usually says something along the lines of 'since the game even in the slightest effected his actions they should all be banned'.
This isn't at all different to the Atheist mantra of how religion is the cause of the world’s pain and destruction, indeed they would be the first to attack religion when someone kills under its name. Of course other religious sects such as Muslims and Christians will do the same at the drop of a hat, so long as it doesn't involve them.
In the end the problem is we try to blame someone besides the person for the actions, preferably so we can further our own little agendas in the process. We can claim that a Muslim should be a murderer based on our own interpretations of the Quran but we can also claim people who play violent computer games are also crazy murderers and in all fairness, the computer games have the bigger guns.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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There's a lot of anger about GTA, since you can kill pedestrians, rob people, shoot people in the head, etc.
But what they ignore is that, if you do something like that, there's a price to pay. The game offers you the option, but doesn't tell force you to do those things...
Comment by D. Armenta
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