[Skybird]

Jajaja... it's never the action games I love to play. It's also not the action movies I love to see. And certainly not the guns in my parent's household, and the fetish my society is making of them. All what I like has nothing to do with it...

Sounds familiar? Well, rightfully so. The discussion is old.

Truth is: culture and media output both are symptom and expression of the state of human mind and society - and affect that human mind in a feedback loop at the same time. If you are dumb, you do stupid things, that turn your culture into a stupid culture - which makes you even more dumb. Its kind of a codified interaction between society, and individual. If parents steal items in their companies and offices, do not be surprised if their kids steal in the supermarket and are not aware that what they do is not right. If medias teach you from young years on that all your social problems can be solved with pulling a trigger simply, don't be surprised if violance itself becomes an idol, and a focus. If no other and more valuable idols and ideals give orientation during the years a young human seeks orientation and borders that help him to define his structure - don't wonder when he falls for wrong idols, raw messiahs and a way through life that wills to easily pull a trigger. You become what you do and like, you like what you are used to, you are used to what you have done often. The debate of wether it is a given personality structure or a given media causing people to turn into freakheads is pointless. It works both ways simultaneously. that way, people's wishes become limited in scope, and canalised by market strategists. The argument that the market only delivers what is demanded is a foul excuse. In the above mechanism, people are no longer able to want certain things, and are fixated to want other things. There is no freedom of choice if you never have learned the ability of excercising freedom and think it is only doing what you want, without responsebility, only rights: no duties. The degree of your freedom is defined by the number of your options. And you can be made not to be aware of options you have. That way, the market gains control over your behavior, especially consummation and buying behavior.

Not only with video games, btw.

If I were a father, I would have a close eye on what my son or daugther is playing. Mindless violance orgies would be off limits, that means most egoshooters setting place in a war ambient like WWII, Vietnam, or War on terror, and all ego shooters that are only that: shooters. More complex sims, strategy, and others would be allowed. I also would set up a contrast program that is obligatory. If he/she is playing a war-setting-game, he/she also would have to see docus showing the cruel reality of war in all shocking brutality, or reflective movies on the matter as well. Information, not just the display of miltary action, like the many looping warmovies CBS is showing here in germany and that seem to be adverts for how great modern weapns take out this or that kind of target and what a picnic war is if you only wear the right uniform. Realizing what is going on in human minds when they fall for this leader or for that ideology that propagates war. And so on. Scepticism. A doubtful, but awake, alert mind asking questions and accepting no answer untested.