Dick Cheney Ninjas karate chopping our children-- oh the humanity!

An interesting (and looong) article on government intervention in violent video games atIGN.COM And a discussion of the article at slashdot.

Everyone today is worried about violence in the media. "Too many Ninjas karate chopping robots." But worst of all, our children are now pretending to be ninjas karate choppng robots and the fancy graphics of modern video games make their kung fu antics very realistic. And many are now crying out to ban these games, or at least take strong actions to keep them away from children.

As the article points out, Censorship is not new. But let me add a little music history perspective to the discussion. Ancient Greece was a pretty boring place to be: No ninjas. No robots. But even back then, the likes of Plato (in Republic) advocated for censorship of certain music "modes" because the were too... (drum roll please)...

"non violent."

That's right Plato led an effort which actually ended in certain city states (sparta- but not plato's native athens) passing laws to ban certain music modes because they were too gentle and might make young men too "soft" and "sentimental" and hence utterly useless in war.

This leads me to the conclusion that we're missing the whole point of violence in media-- it's not good, it's not bad-- it's about pragmatics. All media has a certain effect-- well, what kind of effect do you want to have? Not good or bad-- it's about skillful use of media or unskillful use of media. The US government has certainly come to the same conclusion. If you ever wanted clear proof that our culture has deteriorated into a sort of comic-book, Science fiction, Klingon-war-society then check out the US Army page here

That's right, the maker of the two most popular extreme violence video games today is the US Government.

Hmm, so what kind of society do we want to have? To me, the effects of violent media are horrible for our society, and according to psychologists, the effects are the same on adults as they are on children!

But are more laws the answer? Well, although the US has fewer protections for consumers and workers than any other western nation, it has more outlawed behaviors than any other country in the world (accept in some people's opinions the few countries with strict sharia law-- though this is debated!) Gee, with fewer freedoms (to act freely and freedom from government intervention in our lives) than any country you might start getting the idea that we arn't the beacon of freedom we say we are. So lets not make "the terrorists", who "hate freedom," jealous by throwing yet another freedom on the fire.

Yet again, my solution is that people need to be taught to take responsibility for the state of their minds, and to understand how our minds actually work. People need to be pragmatic about how we keep the state of our minds-- do you want to walk around all the time with our fight or flight mechanism turned on? Do we want our children to do that too?

So how does violent media effect us? Here are the best parts of the article: (keep in mind that the results for violent to and movies is Double that of video games, and the amount of time spent with these media increases the effect hugely!)


Playing videogames with aggressive content does have an effect on children, teens, and adults. In children and teens, several results are associated with exposure to aggressive videogames.

First, youth experience an increase in arousal that suggests an increase in tension that may contribute to aggressive behavior.

Second, youth engage in more aggressive thinking about others and changes their attitudes toward people as they emerge from play more likely to believe that others are interested in harming them.

Third, play diminishes the level of empathy that kids have for other people.

Fourth, play has an effect on the amount of aggressive behavior demonstrated in verbal aggression, teasing, and some physical aggression by increasing the frequency of these actions...

Finally, playing and viewing does desensitize people to aggressive images and the impact of aggression on others. After play and viewing, children are much less distressed by images of characters being hurt or killed, and, given their reduced empathy, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior against others.