Some tasty food for thought here, Antonio.

I recently caught an episode of the Discovery Channel's new documentary series Rise of the Video Game. This episode focused on the advent of ultraviolent "first-person shooters" with Id's Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom games, ushering in a new era of controversy surrounding youth and video gaming.

As the doc explains, the political outcry that arose in response to these graphic, immersive experiences in virtual mayem has since given way to the military complex's co-opting of shoot-em-up gaming as a recruitment and training tool. Hypocritical to say the least, but it gets deeper than that. Taxpayers have funded the creation of Army branded warfare games that glorify intense and ultrarealistic violence with themes of nationalism. The US military has become a massive presence at the E3 Electronics convention, and their gory games reap record profits in the retail market.

We are now in a scenario where the questionable elements of violent gaming has been seized upon by the armed forces as an unapologetic tool for influencing an impressionable youth culture. There's little room for debate, in this case -- unlike GTA and other titles that can at least claim entertainment value. 

It's true that the military has invested a lot of money into video game research, and also movie special effects. True enough, drone and robotic warfare are the wave of the future, and I wouldn't be surprised if remote torture is on its way. But the military also invested in the Internet.

As McLuhan argued, media content is like meat for the guard dogs. It's the medium we need to pay attention to. Rushkoff's Screenagers does an excellent job of showing how gaming (along with skateboarding and other teen activities) are contributing to the breakdown of Cartesian thought. And that is a tremendous service to the world, and global ecology. If we want to talk about alien technology, then look at the alphabet. Writing has done more to disassociate consciousness from the body than any other human invention. After recently rereading Huxley's Brave New World and this article by a neuroscientists (I think her conclusions are bit conservative, but there's some good info there), I think the greatest danger to society is not video games or media, but pharmaceutical drugs. They are are not separate, given that TV is a great propaganda device for Big Pharma (I'm also reminded of graffiti I once saw in Santa Cruz that said,"First they said pot led to acid. Then they said it led to heroin. Now they know it leads to television"). But I believe the inoculation of the mind with mood altering drugs is a bigger societal threat to mindfulness then playing video games. Combine the two, then you have a different situation.

I'm also aware that there are studies that indicate that thoughts about something can be as powerful as their actuality-- that brain waves look the same whether thinking about something or seeing it. So I'm being flip when I say fantasy is innocuous. But I think critics are wrong when they state that people don't distinguish between "reality" and "mediated reality." It's the wrong argument. They coexist, especially if you consider McLuhan's belief that media are extensions of our nerve system. When we drive the car's tires are an extension of our body, but we also know that the car is a car. When we play games we enter the game's magic circle and suspend disbelief, but we also navigate away from it. No doubt, there are those who cannot tell the difference. I think we call that schizophrenia.

I believe one of the greatest benefits of film and moving image technology is that they mimic how our brains suture reality. If we want to take it to metaphysical level, I think media are an externalization of our thoughts. We should embrace our nakedness and acknowledge, yes, we do think like this. It's the opposite of repression. Some could argue, though, that the externalization of our thinking is also a way of not taking responsibility.

Maybe it's disappointing that I did not make a clear argument for or against video games, but my point is that it's complicated and not an either/or situation, but one that is more ecological in the sense that certain things thrive depending on their environment, thoughts in particular. GTA is a product of the "creeping cycle of desensitization," which is the idea that as certain kinds of media become more normal, newer media have to be more "shocking" to distinguish themselves from the old. There are a couple of ways to look at this phenomena. One is to realize that we manage to become immune to media and learn to ignore them. The other is that we become so desensitized we are oblivious to our own conditioning by media. Again, not to be wishy-washy, but I think the reality is that this is a spectrum of experience, and not an either/or situation.

I believe the mind is a garden, not a computer, so if it is full of strong and healthy plants and rich soil, it can coexist with the weeds. Media certainly can facilitate parasitic thoughts, I have no doubt about it, but my feeling is not to take an industrial farming approach and simply throw weed killer at the media we don't like, but take a permaculture approach and strengthen the mind's ecosystem (meditation, art, music, education, nutrition, nature, love, community, etc.). According to the conventional belief concerning media's effects, I should be a violent sociopath because of all the media I have consumed, and from the amount of war games I played as a kid. That is not the case. And it's also the case of many media critics. If they consider themselves immune to the effects of media, what is every body else's problem? Why aren't they brainwashed?

Feed rewarding images of death and crime into the mind of a dispossessed 17 year old strung out on heavy skunk (cut in with who knows what), who has no role model save culture glorifying guns, aggression between the sexes and easy money and guess what you get? 

 

Marketing/ advertising/ PR works. Placing images inside people’s minds actually does get them to do things the manipulator wants/ needs. Separation, hopelessness and control in this case – the architects of these products know that an educated or privileged mind is not so easily taken in, but those people aren’t the target for this virus. Are the well educated or rich targets for Armed forces recruiters? No, but guess who is?

 

Could be Willie Nelson flogging Jeans to Gap customers. Could be Governments selling an invasion, repetition of multi modal meaning always finds its mark. The western world can’t afford to have games that glorify crime out there if it desires safe society. Sorry but if you destroy the nuclear family, run down education, make nasty street chemicals available and isolate neighbour from neighbour this stuff is a recipe to perpetuate what we’ve already got – decline.

 

Frankly anyone must be fucking stupid to think otherwise.

 

I’m so tired of lame justification for this cancer when on my doorstep violent teenagers stab each other nightly. One might be alright to ‘enter into debate’ about this stuff with a college education and encyclopaedia in your back pocket. Vulnerable people on the estates of UK cities feel they can’t even leave their apartments because of the siege situation created by young people living in a reality devoid of basic morality.

The whole conversation makes me furious, and leads me towards feelings of desperation and hopelessness.

The fact is, men are aggressive, lustful, and violent.  They're also (excuse me, but let me speak for you for a moment) frustrated and furious with women, who one of my friends described as "walking NO machines."

Perhaps women are, overall, at parity with sexual libido with men.  And perhaps one day, swingers clubs will stop letting single women in for free, (and stop giving them discounts,) and stop prohibiting single men from coming in.  Perhaps. Perhaps.  It's an interesting theory.

My basic belief is that men are basically oppressed and disposable in our society.  Nobody has written anything good to say about men's sexuality, except perhaps to give it a stamp of "SPIRITUALLY CLEAR!" if men swear to promise to "hold it in."

Men live their whole lives sexually invisible;  Women only have a chance of experiencing it when they turn 50.

But men can't speak up.

Men are men's own worst enemy.

The strength of women is their appearance of weakness, and the weakness of men is their appearance of strength.

If a man dare complain, he'll get stomped on by the guy who wants to appear noble before the ladies.  "No, of course we're not like that..."

No, of course not...

I've been in conversation with other men and women, where I've been stomped on by other men, for speaking my mind.  But when the women left, they said, "Well, of course what you said is right, but you have to say it differently."

Say it differently my ass.

I'm sick and tired of societies every effort to control men, to dispose of men, to say, "The women are valuable, you are the ones to pony up."  Look at this paper on men's sexual needs vs. this paper on women's sexual needs.

Find me a paper on men's sexual needs that is even close to parity in quality.  You won't find any.

Why?  Because men don't count.  Because we're disposable.  Every surviving civilization has known this.

Look at that bullshit paper on men's sexual needs-- why do our needs need to be looked at?

In order to support our roles as better husbands, fathers and financial providers.

You got that?

Not because you're a person.  Not because people are sacred, period.  Not because needs are themselves valid things.

NO:  Because you've got to pony up, buster, and pay your way.

It's the same message we men always heard.

You'll excuse us if there are some men who have moments of anger, and occasional mysogynistic feelings.

I can understand why men are angry with women.

It's not spiritual, but it doesn't mean it's not addressing something, either.

"You have it harder than people know." -- Norah Vincent.

Men, I know what you're about to say, "I'm not like that!  I'm not lustful, violent, or aggressive!"

Perhaps you are low libido (I've met many men like that,) perhaps you're against war (like myself,) perhaps all these things.  But tell me you haven't struggled with any of these tendencies.

Realize that your sisters aren't like that.  They just don't get that testosterone kick.

But let me tell you something else, -- you have virtues.

I'm not about restoring old gender relationships.  In fact, I'm really on about completing the feminist revolution.  But it's not going to be more and more feminism.  We need to seriously dig into what men are and what men need.

The feminist mistake is that the powerlessness of women = the power of men.  It's actually not the case -- men were just as powerless as women, under the machinery of culture.  Dad's gotta provide, right?  If he had power, he wouldn't have to.  But he did have to.  He wasn't in power.

Ah, hell, whatever.

Take away all our machines, video games, porn (here's a secret:  men are the real holders of sexuality, not women;  the beauty of men is evoked by the imaginations of men;  women make themselves bland in women's magazines -- look at the erotic imagery made by men, vs. made by women, and you'll see what I mean;), and strip us down and make us serve goddesses all day long, goddesses demanding cosmetics, cars, houses, and household services.  Make your own prison.

Down with Patriarchy, because, ... ... yeah, I'm really enjoying the fruits of the patriarchy.  It's late, and I gotta go home.  The missus is going to be asking me, "But why did you stay at work so late?" ...  And besides, somebody has to take out the trash, or it'll just pile up, and pile up, and pile up, ...

maybe you should've married a feminist.'Cos not only are we having it all,we're doing it all. Bringing home the money,rearing the children,running the household and bringing in the trash...taking it out too.

As proud as I am that I never treated any man as a walking wallet or service provider its been a hard road and sometimes I envy those domestic goddesses you serve.

And yeah the early mistake of the powerlessness of women = the power of men has been corrected in some part but I feel you dont see the misogynistic embedding that is so deep its almost invisible. I do because I get to experience it quite frequently,being female.

To balance my interest in feminism I began to explore the field of 'masculinities' so in reference to your comment on seriously digging into what men are and what they need I found 'The Myth of Male Power' by Warren Farrell and 'Masculinities'by R.W. Connell useful.

...has been diverted and although the issues you raise are extremely valid I think you should write an article given the level of interest generated by your comments.

The issues around the gaming phenomenon need to be discussed so I can get clarity around them. As violent pornography has been clearly linked to violence how can games be any different?

And then theres the issue of the trance state it creates...what's happening subliminally with that?

And why do the games seem to appeal to males predominantly?

As I don't find these games interesting I would still like to get a deeper understanding on the whole gaming phenomenon as I have a ten year old son who named his chicken 'Fatality' after his favourite gamer.He really into them,x-box,Warcraft,Starcraft etc.

I don't want to abandon him to a subculture I have misgivings about...even though I cant clearly articulate what those misgivings are.

This discussion allows me to begin to intellectually understand those uneasy feelings so I can begin to have an informed opinion that will help me with the choices I make in regard to my son.

One thing I do know....GTA isnt welcome in my home.

Just a reminder that poets walk exists in central park, with William Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott...Wait, Christopher Columbus is there too. Whoops. Your point, Daniel.

I think these immersive role playing games are fed by a need to acquire the power to act in a world where action is presented as impossible by the culture. It's opium of the masses to an expent that would make Marx's mind reel. But learning to be active in what you might call a post-physical space might be helpful training, as long as folks graduate to the real "game", the real work in the expanded mystical space of this living planet and IT'S multi-dimensional reality, where you can't necessarily hit replay on global collapse. A game with real stakes.

Games such as WoW may be creating the massive online communities that can be of vital use in communicating and implementing massive change. Not so much through the pastimes themselves, but through training people to be part of a worldwide community that acts together for a common goal, in a collectively imagined non-physical way of "action".

I do believe that these games could be training for good as well as bad, much as another game might have been for some of us, once upon a time, with it's stack of books, hand drawn maps, and multi-sided dice. But GTA itself sounds like quite the purgatorial slog through realms of hungry ghosts!

 Since the satyagraha events and also since the discussion with Sharon Gannon at Jivamukti several months back, where I was arguing against nonviolence in extreme scenarios (a Jew in a Nazi concentration camp), I have been thinking a lot about nonviolence, and what it means. Right now, I am reading the Narnia books to my daughter, which is great fun, but in the midst of the current book she asked me, "How come there's a war in every book?" And she is right, of course. When I consider the Narnia books through that perspective, there seems something almost demented about them whenever they go into the war and fighting scenes. The weirdness of our cultural acceptance of violence is obscured by a kind of mechanical forgetfulness - not just in these books but in much of literature. 

As for rpgs and video games, yes I think we can see the coordination aspects as (potentially) part of an evolutionary process that still might have a positive outcome.  However, I also think we have to recognize that this stuff takes a brutal toll. Look what these virtual escapes do to the physical bodies of those immersed in them, for instance.

I think we seek out these virtual realms because we are denied necessary initiatory processes and higher-states of consciousness experiences - we accept them as compensation for those aspects of reality that we intuit and crave, as children, but the "real world" denies. 

I can already see this process with my daughter's school: It is a really good school by mainstream standards, but they do not honor and make room for expression of the childrens' imagination as pure creative force the way I wish they would. Everything is so dauntingly regimented, even in first grade. 

I am going to have to seek out "De-Schooling Society", an anarchist text that Levitch was always going on about...

 

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

Many of the hopes expressed here and elsewhere on RS for alternative uses of mass media reflect what Lewis said MacDonald's work had done for him - that it had baptised his imagination. In other words, poets and artists have long made the claim that great works of art can confer initiation, that poetry in particular - inspiration in dialogue with intellect - can create the conditions for illumination.

 

Can hacked media turn tranced consumers into critically engaged "readers"? Can a computer game confer gnosis to a player, in the way that, say, Dante or Yeats can to a reader?

 

The passive body of the game player, with tranced consciousness focused in a screen, is a big problem I think - though the wii looks interesting. Poetry spoken aloud engages the whole being, body and soul. Perhaps a spoken word game, or better, a game where the characters sing to each other, is one way around this.

 

Singalong-a-theft Eco, anyone?

now there's a collection of stories that have seared themselves on a portion of the collective conciousness. I read the same books to my children that I read as a child.

I think the Empress Jadis from The Magician's Nephew is one of those Archons you mention.

One thing about the gaming phenomenon is the sheer amount of time someone can spend playing them...anecdotally since my son can't play online at the moment I've noticed a naturally inventive sense of play come into being....two nights ago he constructed a miners helmet out of a plastic colander,torch,dressing gown cord and some sticky tape to explore outside at night.The kids have had a great time with it.

I have always marvelled at the games,seen them as one of the amazing flowers of a dying civilisation but like anything they can be misused.Increasingly I think they are by the developers and users alike,hence my disquiet.

And on Nick Begich,he's done great research on HAARP...should be more widely known.

As someone who adored Narnia as a child, I feel that Phillip Pullman ("His Dark Materials") offers a devestating critique of Lewis:

http://www.crlamppost.org/darkside.htm

Also, Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan" tackles the issue of Susan being denied the chance to go to Heaven with her siblings in the last book because she's too fond of nylons and lipsticks (the story apparently ends with Aslan going down on the White Witch! If that doesn't constitute an alternative morality to the series, than what could?).

This goes back to the issue of games like GTA. Do we reject systems of myth out of hand because the morality it teaches is seen as too overwhelmingly negative to redeem? Is a "holistic" game really more useful, or is that a cop out?

The use of fables as a human form of communication is essential. The values of the fable teller becomes part of that communication. Because Narnia reflects so much of the beauty AND the poison of our effed-up culture, it's a tough choice. I would choose to present it, but not uncritically. It's a great introduction to the values, good or ill, of Western Civ. Better to receive it this way in a setting where it can be discussed.

Questioning the fairy tale is not some spoil sport move imposed by the parent, after all. Children WANT to interrogate the stories they are told...I wish that most adults were ready to do the same.

that was a good article by Phillip Pullman.....always hated The Last Battle.

"Question: Why are people literate but not nonviolent? Answer: Because they are taught to read." Daniel, thanks for that great quote!

I have always been struck with how in most typical stories the hero has to commit an act of violence to prove his worth/existence/manhood. This is a societal problem that pervades all media-- books, movies, video games, etc. One of my best undergrad classes was "Just War" with Bertrand Gross (author of Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America). He was strongly committed to nonviolence and often argued that when we say "violence is a last resort," he would reply, how do you know what "last" is? He also pointed out how *hard* it is to convince people to go war, and that it took incredible propaganda resources to make the argument for war. His point is that it is not our nature to go to war, and our resistance to it was evidenced by the massive propaganda machinery in place to influence people. I think propaganda needs to be thought of as an ecology-- it is many things going on simultaneously. Thus I'd like reemphasize my belief that it is better to strengthen the mental immune system than to blame media as the cause. With that said, I do also understand how powerful media are for shaping how we view the world, including the idea that conflict can only be resolved through violence.

I notice that people tend to think that all video games are violent, and that they are only played by males. I encourage people to go to the link below which refutes some of these stereotypes. http://www.grandtheftchildhood.com/GTC/Myths.html Incidentally, I don't play video games for the same reason I don't ski: It's too expensive and takes away time from doing other things. I cannot imagine introducing another thing to do, especially something that is a time wormhole (like the Internet!).

i apologize i didn't mean to divert this into a dicussion of CS Lewis and Pullman - though if someone wants to write a feature essay on the subject, it could be great for us. 

If possible i would like to steer the subject back to video games, nonviolence, entrainment, and initiation vs indoctrination. If the energy around these areas has petered out here i will wait for another chance to relaunch this discussion.  

"Will the transformation."-Rilke

I deal more with this subject in my book (Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the Twenty-first Century), but a few quick thoughts. It was the dream of educators and the so-called "founding fathers" that universal literacy would lead to more democracy and a rational society. This ended up being not true, with Germany the greatest example of a highly literate and educated society committing some of the worse human crimes of the 20th century. John Taylor Gatto ("The Underground History of American Education") has written some great books about what happened to American education, but in a nutshell he said that in the 18th Century Americans were indeed highly educated, so much so they would not work in factories or do stupid things that the industrialists wanted them to do. So the fat cats imported the Prussian model of education-- which was highly militarized-- and through power and influence made it the standard pedagogy of our public education system. Fuller liked to point out how much school is like a factory with its bells and regimented structures. As someone who has spend considerable time in public schools teaching media workshops I can say with confidence that the current system is a conspiracy to keep people mentally weak and ineffectual. When someone once asked me if there was one thing I'd do about it, I replied that I would eliminate education altogether and start from scratch.

so given that the school system produces a mentally weak,largely ineffectual population how would you see the gaming phenomenon seguing into that?

Is there a dysfunctional entrainment set up from primary school so that the majority live into the 'Be silent, consume,die' ethos?

I believe kids are learning more from new media than from schools. Henry Jenkins fabulous book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, goes into great depth about fan culture and how kids are re-writing Harry Potter, working in collaboration with all kinds of new media, and are learning from video games. In other words, they are playing, and play is a great way to learn (not the only way, but one of many). I want to avoid associating the most extreme example of video games, such as GTA, with all other games and digital media, in the same way that not all films are pornos. I think we get into a distorted debate when we take one kind of video game and make generalizations about all other media based on the extreme content of that one game. Also, like all things in life, I believe in moderation-- moderation with TV, games and even books. I'm for mindful engagement of media, so I would teach kids how to read and deconstruct what they are playing so they have some critical thought about what is happening, and an learn to make their own evaluations (often they are more insightful than us adults). I think it's better to watch TV with a child and to ask questions about it while watching than to just ban it outright because that makes it more forbidden, and hence desirable. If schools embraced new media instead of having a hostile attitude about it, I would be more supportive of educational institutions. McLuhan said it was better to change the questions than to eliminate schools. I've thought about this a lot, and though I was being a little flip about eliminating schools, I would support educational environments that were embracing the new paradigm of distributed knowledge networks, sharing and collaboration, all of which are happening when kids play many kinds of video games and use other kinds of interactive media.