It's all in the game
"North America's getting soft, patron, and the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're going to have to be pure and direct and strong, if we're going to survive them." - Videodrome
Perhaps you've seen this:
Venezuela lawmakers blast video game
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- A U.S. company's video game simulating an invasion of Venezuela is supposed to hit the shelves next year, but it's already raising the ire of lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez.
...
Pandemic describes Mercenaries 2: World in Flames as "an explosive open-world action game" in which "a power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone." The company says players take on the role of well-armed mercenaries.
...
Lawmaker Gabriela Ramirez said "Mercenaries 2" gives a false vision of Chavez as a tyrant and Venezuela as being on the verge of chaos. She said the game could be banned under a proposed law aimed at protecting Venezuelan children from violent video games.
"Pandemic has no ties to the US government," says Greg Richardson, the firm's vice president of commercial operations. That's the sound of hairs splitting. Pandemic Studios is a Pentagon subcontractor through the aegis of the "Institute for Creative Technologies," launched by the US Army in 1998 with $45 million as a go-between with the entertainment and gaming industries. Pandemic is the developer of military training simulations such as Full Spectrum Command, commercially available as Full Spectrum Warrior for gaming on Playstation and XBox. ("A quantum-leap forward in battlefield simulation" says Game Informer. "Enlist Now" for updates.) "Within days of its release" in 2004, "gamers figured out the cheat code to unlock the Army-only version hidden on the commercial discs, featuring less flashy graphics but smarter opponents." (Gee, how careless can the Army get?)
The Pentagon is co-parenting Pandemic with its unlikely - or possibly inevitable - same sex sugar daddy: U2's Bono. His Elevation Partners spent $300 million last November to bring the Studio together with Bioware "to create the world's best funded and largest independent game development house." Now there's a cause.
America's New Flesh is machine-scarred from its generational incubation in immersive battlefields which are, like Bono sings, even better than the real thing. Meanwhile, the real thing becomes just another level of play, until you play it, survive it, and return with the Home Version. Diplomacy is never on the table, except as a a board game that fewer young people have the patience to engage. So it has to be Grand Theft Oil, when some "power-hungry tyrant" in Venezuela "messes" with America's petroleum. War is the last option. Play is the first.
Defending World in Flames, Pandemic publicist Chuck Norris says "although a conflict doesn't necessarily have to be happening, it's realistic enough to believe that it could eventually happen." Or, as in the words of Brian O'blivion, "The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena." It's been fought, and maybe decided, for this generation.
posted by Jeff Wells at 1:57 p.m.
59 Comments:
Jaw-dropping.
A video-game about America invading Venenzuela over oil?
Bono? Chuck Norris?!
I liked post-modern craziness a lot better when it was confined to arty novels.
I think my head is about to explode.
haha. wow. this is just the beginning. i'd love to know if the makers of Battlefield 2 have any governmental connection. anyone know?
Propagandhi's got it covered. . .
http://www.americasarmy.ca/
And let's not forget this gem from last week about staging it's own simulated invasion:
Venezuela stages mock foreign invasion
PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has for years predicted that a foreign army would attack the South American nation to snatch its vast oil reserves. A simulation conducted this week showed how it might happen.
A naval landing craft made landfall on the shores of Western Falcon state carrying troops and over a dozen camouflaged tanks. The "invading" army then took over the massive Paraguana Refining Complex, a key asset of the world's No. 5 crude exporter.
The "occupation" is part of a military exercise to train troops and communities to repel a foreign invader.
The Chavez government said it is preparing citizens to fight a guerrilla war to repel a possible Iraq-style invasion by U.S. troops. The Bush administration insists the invasion paranoia is nothing more than leftist saber-rattling, but for Chavez supporters the threat is real.
"They've already invaded us, now the invading forces are controlling certain strategic objectives," said Rear Admiral Zahin Quintana, a squadron commander, after disembarking from a warship as part of the exercise. "Now begins the resistance by our troops together with our people."
The tanks began circulating through the streets, and units of mock invading soldiers launched smoke bombs to clear the way. But local residents, organized and trained by military authorities, resisted the assault by blocking roads with rusting cars and burning tires.
"We're willing to go anywhere to defend our homeland," said Rosmery Trujillo, a participant in the operation, told state television. "This country will never again be put under the boot of the North, thanks to our President Chavez."
The simulated attack is part of a military operation called "Operation Patriot 2006" being carried out this week.
There's more, go read the rest. Right on time - the two of these events together seem HIGHLY coordinated. Perhaps Chavez isn't quite as cut off from Washington and their marketing campaigns as we all like to believe... Or maybe he's just seeing the writing on the wall. The problem is with so many simulations running, what's real seems to take a backseat to what's possible...
My work enables me to write a little about the video game industry. I didn't know about the military connection to Pandemic aside from the US govt involvement with Full Spectrum Warrior.
However, I don't know what Jeff is trying to allude to by namedropping Bono into the article. Bono seems to be just one of the people on the board of directors for the venture capital firm. He's probably the most visible person associated with the firm, so he makes for an easy target. I don't like all of what Bono is about, especially his constant crusade against countries like Canada for not giving enough to Africa, and never mentioning the hypocracy of rock stars that fail to see the strings pulled behind the scenes of a NWO, but I don't see an ulterior motive right now between Bono's involvement in a venture capital firm and a video game about a hypothetical invasion of Venezuala.
In the past there has been a constant stream of video games using para-political, fringe politics or paranormal topics yet I don't think any one of them has a direct connection to any possible real agency or affiliation behind such events in our world. Did the makers of XCOM understand the conspiracy behind a covert extraterrestrial invasion of the Earth when they made their games? Did the makers of the Fallout games have some inside knowledge about government plans drawn up for a world society after a post-apocalyptic event? I doubt it very much. These game creators are drawing from the zeitgeist for their game inspiration, and like it or not, the more realistic and violent the game is, the bigger the attention it seems to grab. When a violent, realistic game also happens to have something else going for it, like a new form of gameplay that grabs the gamer, then it can leap to the top of the headlines (see Grand Theft Auto.) It's just a sign of the times, and not every puff of smoke has to resemble the head of the Devil.
Anonymous 6:59, I was going to craft a response then I realized your comment contains its own refutation, point by point.
If it's a Sign of the Times, it is a devils-head.
As one of the "benumbed" generation; I'd like to comment.
First it was Wolfenstein, where you got to kill Nazis; no problem there, right?
Then it was Doom, where you got to kill Demons out of Hell; no problem there, right? And then Quake, which was more of the same.
The next generation, such as Siphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid, Max Payne, et al. integrated more special ops. that required varying levels of brain-work. They also had more immersive plots.
And then Wolfenstein Enemy Territory revolutionized team-play. Now, multi-player death-dealing is standard fare and comes in many flavors.
Well, at least that's how it was for me.
If you go to a Best Buy, and look at the games, you see either Sports or War. That's about it. Almost every game has some component that involves killing, violence, or a surrogate. Even your so-called RPGs. And Civilization-style trade games also make killing a big part.
Parallel to the development of the first-person shoot-em-up was the real-time-strategy game.
It started with Dune 2: The Building of a Dynasty and continued with Command & Conquer and its progeny, including Warcraft and Starcraft.
You gather resources, build a base, protect your supply of the resources, build an army, and the destroy your enemies.
Killing is [one] of the ultimate taboo[s]; but most games justify the killing in some way. Sometimes the hero further mitigate this "just" war tendency by expressing regret, or hestitation. Some games, such as Deus Ex*, offer incentives to avoid killing, or allow the player to make it through the entire game without killing an enemy. The incentives usually center around using the smarts to stealthily avoid the opponents.
However, killing is almost always more expedient. Like Jeff pointed out, diplomacy is almost never an option.
Other oddities include varying levels of gore. Wolfenstein had Hitler melt into a puddle of goo after you blasted him with the chain-gun; Doom had the Chainsaw; Rise of the Triad had ludicrous gibs, including the errant eye-ball. Siphon Filter had the "smart" tazer, which allowed you to electrocute people from odd angles; if you held down the button they would start screaming, then they would catch on fire. Deus Ex and the new Wolfenstein also allowed you to set people on fire; the pay-off: you get to watch them run around screaming.**
Even real-time strategy games had minute amounts of gore to them.
One interesting lesson to take from these games, aside from the fact that they teach youths to kill, use single and squad tactics, strategy, etc. to defeat an "enemy," is that they also provide converse lessons that can potentially undermine the militaristic message of the game.
The greatest opportunity for this arises when players engage other "humans," and not the inhuman computer.
Computers are easily outwitted; and this provides the illusion that war and killing are somehow controllable and manageable so that you can minimize casualties to nil if you are "smart" and "professional" enough.
However, when you play humans, even the most inept ones, all bets are off, because humans have brains and are unpredictable.
Thus, in a multiplayer environment, even the most grizzled veteran can be easily fragged multiple times by newbies.
And when you extend this to the squad level, individuals will sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the team. For example, one player might run into a room and set everyone on fire, knowing full well that they'll be killed, but that they'll inflict disproportionated damage on the enemy. After all, they can respawn in 15 seconds.
But through all of this comes the realization that war is hell, and that no matter how good you think you are, in real life, you'd be getting killed ten times over. Sometimes by a "players" with superior skill, sometimes by those who get lucky, and sometimes purely by accident, like when you fall off the edge of a building, or step on a landmine.
In fact, some of the newest, and more realistic games, which only allow you to get hit with a few bullets, and with limited healing opportunities [as opposed to Wolfenstein, where a medics can revive you endlessly as long as you aren't fragmented by a rocket or a grenade], further drive the "war is deadly" message home.
Many people argue that these games provide an outlet for violence, that would be otherwise expressed in physical form. Thus they are a sport.
However, they do train people to kill. Or, at least they provide people with the illusion that they are trained to kill; which can be practically the same thing.
But, in real life, there are no do-overs. Get hit with even one bullet and you may never walk, see, screw, or live again.
* Deus Ex is a game where you play a duped agent of the "NWO" who then becomes illuminated and turns on his masters. Probably the closest thing to a work of art to be found in these types of games. Deus Ex combines all the elements of an RPG with a first-person shoot-em up; it gives you non-violent options, and it actually takes "Conspiracy Theories" seriously. It was made be fore 9/11, and like that episode of the Lone Gunman, proved prophetic.
** Many games allow you to kill civilians. Some games allow you to torture NPCs, either overtly or covertly.
*** One more point; basing games on "real" wars is not a new thing. A company, I believe it's called Kuma, makes up-to-date missions that mirror this Iraq War. Talk about bad taste.
WWII, the Vietnam War, Iraq, Somalia, etc. are all popular virtual battlefields.
Of course, this goes back to the boardgame tradition of mirroring a game on real-life conflicts . . . .
Well, I've rattled on long enough. The point is, these things CAN be a double-edged sword, and not be used purely for militaristic purposes; but that would require a paradigm shift from the "constituency" that the military recruits from.
The "benumbed" again.
Alex Jones, love him or hate him, actually posted an alarmist, reactionary article about how Deus Ex was training children to be part of the NWO. It was the same as Delay mistaking Colbert for a conservative.*
In Deus Ex, a terrorist attack results in the creation the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Organization. You play a nano-augmented UNATCO agent trained to fight U.S. militias.
At first you follow orders, but then your brother goes rogue, and you have to take him out. He reveals that there really is an evil conspiracy going on to lower population levels with a global pandemic. UNATCO is really a front organization for MJ12, an Illuminati splinter faction.
Although the game has many comic-book elements thrown in, it also poses a lot of serious questions, and is somewhat politically subversive.
You don't have to kill, you can avoid your opponents. If you creep up on people, you can overhear their conversations, learn their motives, and understand that they are "humans," and not evil enemies.
There are cameras everywhere, watching your ever move; alarm systems of various types; and perhaps most frighteningly, hulking robots that patrol private AND public areas. There are media artifacts, some of which make varying political arguments.
The villains are trying to become omnipotent and omniscient; at the end of the game, the player can choose which path to take, each with a radically different outcome, based on the arguments made by characters throughout the game. Some think a one-world government would be good, others think things should go back to a new Dark Ages. Finally, there is the option of the player becoming the god-head by merging with an AI.
The game also mirrors initiation; as the player becomes progressively enlightened throughout the game, as he learns the motives of the various factions.
Oh, one final thing. Let's not forget Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game," where Ender thinks he's playing a game, but he's really wiping out an alien civilization.
I'm glad Jeff dropped Bono's name. If he's on the Board of Directors, he has a duty to know what they're venturing in. If he does know, and continues in his role, then he is a phoney, baloney......yet another member of the false left, just like Ramsey Clark, as Jeff alluded to several months prior.
In regards to the video game, it doesn't surprise me in the least. In fact, it's to be expected. There will be no video games in my home, period. It's just another touch point of desensatization which only serves to innoculate us from the inevitable. They're definitely not shy about it. In fact, they're downright blunt.
As Cold Play says:
"We Live In A Beautiful World"
By the way, Mercenaries are all the rage these days, and the Religious Right is leading the pack.
The Nation (another false left publication, but they do speak some truth) had a recet article about our friends at Blackwater. Contemporary Brownshirts gaining momemtum, if you ask me.
Here's the link:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060605/scahill
A couple of choice excerpts from the article:
""That's what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm--instead of aid, they get contained," says Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch."
"It's hard to imagine that the cronyism that has marked the Bush Administration is not at play in Blackwater's success. Blackwater founder Erik Prince shares Bush's fundamentalist Christian views. He comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family and social circle, and his father, Edgar, helped Gary Bauer start the Family Research Council. According to a report prepared for The Nation by the Center for Responsive Politics, in all of Erik Prince's political funding generosity since 1989, he has never given a penny to a Democrat running for national office. Company president Jackson has also given money to Republican candidates. For his part, Joseph Schmitz--the former Pentagon Inspector General turned general counsel to Blackwater's parent, The Prince Group--lists on his résumé membership in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Christian militia formed before the First Crusade. Like Prince, he comes from a right-wing family; his father, former Congressman John Schmitz, was an ultraconservative John Birch Society director who later ran for President. Joseph Schmitz was once in charge of investigating private contractors like Blackwater, but he resigned amid allegations of stonewalling investigations conducted by his department. He now represents one of the most successful of those contractors."
Of special note in that quote is this:
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Christian militia formed before the First Crusade.
WTF? Jeff, I think some research into that org would be intriguing, to say the least.
I would presume the invasion of Venezuela, and Cuba while we're at it, is the real reason we are militarizing our southern borders and coast lines.
Yeachhh! And Bono makes me barf with all his self-righteous shit about africa, africa, africa. Like he's really doing anything for the poor of the world. He's all fucking ego. Recently (and I saw this in a dentist-office copy of Vogue,captive audience, I wouldn't usually indulge...) he started a fancy-ass designer uber-hip fashion line that was all being made by third-world people and sold for ultra-first world designer prices(and he was being so X-tianly unctious about it too...). Nice, Bono, nice, to first glance, but it seems to me the Irish, your countrymen and women could use a few jobs...don't have to go to asia or africa or something to set things up...unless you don't really want to pay a living wage, eh? Unless you want to take advantage of the little loopholes that allow Nike and Gap to claim to be fair employers, nay, bleeding hearts while enslaving others for pennies a day. As another far superior non-sellout Irish punk, Mr Patrick Fitzgerald, said : "You're so busy fighting your irrelavant battles to see what's going on in your own back yard...'cause some of us are having a hard, hard time..."
Nothing against Asia or africa (may they shake the yoke of imperialism), but damn, Mr. philathropist holy-moly himself is not concerned with anyone but his good copy in the bloody press and it's about fucking time we wrote him off as a hypocrite! Bono why do U hate the Irish? There. Done with rant. Thank you all so much.
PS thanks for the videodrome reference, just saw that again two weeks ago. Makes more sense to me now than it did in '84 when I first saw it...it's a scary flick, huh?
Gees, how do all of you have time to know so much about playing these video games. Personally, I have never held a Gameboy or a Playstation in my hands.
I maintain, simply, that the more a person "kicks ass" in the simulated world - whether it be video games, watching "24" or "flaming" people who disagree with you by calling them names in your web site blog empire (see above-referenced PopOcculture's older version for a great example) - the less a person will feel like he or she has to confront issues in our real world. In the mind, the frustration is released and the action is already done.
Paz/peace/paix
The Knights of Malta are a regular fixture in conspiracy theories -- though mostly ones that go back a few decades. *Very* heavy CIA connections:
William Casey, Alexander Haig, John McCone, James Jesus Angleton, William Buckley and James Buckley, William Simon, Prescott Bush Jr., Clare Booth Luce.
Also extensive links to the P2 fascists in Italy.
It's interesting that there would be a tie-in with the Prince/DeVos nexus on one hand and the John Birch Society on the other.
There was also a game called TASK FORCE 121. Apparently the plot involves a Marxist coup d'etat in South America:
"After years of simmering unrest, Marxist Rebels have obtained a foothold within the Armed Services and found sympathetic comrades to lend both a voice and weapons. While a full blown coup d'état is not yet underway, a few early high profile rebel victories could quickly turn the tide. U.S. forces have been called in to put a halt to these terrorist acts.
http://www.groovegames.com/Games/CombatTaskForce121/
I'm not a gamer, but according to most reviews, it's pretty lame.
The real TF121, of course, was one of those ultra-spooky joint special forces things. "Rumsfeld's boys."
Benumbed again.
Additionally, we have to ask ourselves, what does the PLANNED phenomenon, or practice of selling violent video-games tell us about our society? And let's add to that violent films and TV shows.
I would say that the capacity for violence is valued, hence it is taught. But I would also say that violent urges are natural in humans, and that the videogame and film industries exploit this for profit.
So violent media serve two purposes:
1. Give people a non-destructive, profit-generating outlet for their violent urges;
2. Instruct them in the ways of violence, so that if necessary, the desensitivization and killing training transfer over to militaristic purposes if necessary, even if such purposes are only tacit approval and empathy with the war effort.
It seems to me that the military has always viewed public empathy with war to be crucial to retaining its tacit support, or at least in preventing rebellion. This is why everyone, across every level of media will agree that they SUPPORT THE TROOPS; even if they don't support the president.
This "support the troops" thing is relatively new in our history, I wager. It comes with people watching all of the war movies, reading about war, playing war games, reading glorified accounts of war in the history book, and thinking they, being mature, understand the necessity of war.
I think military propagandists are pushing it even further, trying to see how much they can get the public to empathize with; namely torture, constitutional violations, using WMD; all by sending media messages that "there is no choice" or "this is the way war is."
I can recall an episode of "Over There" where the special ops guy explains the rationale and justification behind certain interrogation technqiues; it was done in a way to humanize him, and by extension the practice.
And let's not forget good ol' Jack Bauer.
But like I've said before, this mass desensitivization of the public to violence is a double-edged sword.
It can deter people from signing up for military service because they get a more intimate, first-person experience regarding what would happen to them in a combat situation. It can also train subversives to attack government.
And let's be honest about our history; without such violence, we wouldn't really be Americans would we? Our country has a bloody history; labor vs. management; organized crime vs. the law & community; white vs. other races.
It was common for kids to get into gang fights and beat the shit out of each other back in the so-called, and oft mythologized "good ol' daze."
And then the whole "peaceful resistance" meme was introduced. Who do you think that benefits? There's a reason we have a second amendment and nobody wants to touch it with a ten foot pole because it's so damned unpleasant. It was put there so the "people" or masses could spill bureaucrat blood if need be.
Of course, as Hilda Martinez pointed out, there's a big difference between cyber-problem-solving and real-world-problem-solving. These videogame outlets, similar to the "free press organs" serve the similar function of being pressure relief valves.
However, if things get bad enough, all bets are off.
From the linked Buzzscope article:
"Pandemic Studios has shown their versatility with hit titles ranging from the Army tactical shooter Full Spectrum Warrior to the hilarious Destroy All Humans!..."
Seemingly done, simulated, real, possible, planned and all too likely. Hilarious.
Ah, so fly to be freed from those quaint days of being earnest:
"And it's true we are immune - When fact is fiction and TV is reality - And today the millions cry - We eat and drink while tomorrow they die..."
Pandemic. "Destroy all Humans!"
Hmm.
This makes a good companion piece to an earlier post of Jeff's, the Game of Terror, which references an article (the link no longer works) in which Chavez decries the Halloween ghoulishness of America, its delight in the practice of inducing fear, and conditioning children to feel comfortable with the occult. *Intuitively* I feel that "run and gun" games desensitize kids to violence. My little brother played a game called Half-Life that scared him so bad (jibbering zombies with parasites attached to their heads jumping out of dark corners-- option to set them on fire to kill them) that he couldn't play it alone in the dark-- at first. . .
All this reminds me of something I read about how the television series The A-Team was used to "train" Central American death squads who were connected with the School of Americas.
It seems alot of video games these days here in the big school of America are either training programs to become a urban street criminal or a member of a death squad. It all makes WarGames almost Camelotish.
Another company developing 3D, video game-like military simulations is Forterra Systems.
The company's website follows:
http://www.forterrainc.com/index.html
As far as I know, they are not actively engaged in the consumer market but maybe some of you remember a game called There?? This company is the result of the same team behind There changing direction.
Decades ago it was rock&roll music. Then came action/horror movies, then music videos, and now computer games. One poster suggested that "these things CAN be a double-edged sword". What, pray tell, isn't?!
Anyway, Jeff quoted and commented that "'the battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena.' It's been fought, and maybe decided, for this generation."
You might be jumping the gun here. Scheduled for release in Q4 2006 is the game 'Spore'. It is a game of evolution. The player develops organisms, from 2-dimensional amoebas to intelligent beings that create cities, control planets, navigate solar systems and even galaxies! But the most important bits are that the player is almost in full control of all design processes throughout the game, and that his/her universe is shared via network with every other person who owns the game.
In other words, this is the most expansive, up-to-date, and intelligent 'playing God' game ever made. Never before has there been a simulation of our reality that transcends space and time in this way. Just imagine the potential!
Do a video.google.com search on Spore for a demonstration video (and no, I don't work for EA).
An odd perspective to this timely article is Tupper Saussy's book Rulers of Evil. http://www.tuppersaussy.com/html/writings/roe/roe.html
What if the majority of the world is
truely 'evil'... ?
This has much more relevance than most people seem to comprehend from the comments I've read so far. I live and work in an area of California that is heavily saturated with these video gaming companies and can tell you that this industry is filled with spooks. One of my close friends has been heavily involved in this industry for over ten years. This has been a hotbead for the ugly side of US military Occultism as testified by the likes of Danny Casolero, Kay Griggs, and Gary Webb. This is a continuation of Micheal Acquino's "Mind War" first laid out in the early stages of the 1980's in the Reagan administration. Also, Gary Webb's last written assignment was about this very same industry and the military's involvement. JUst weeks before he died from 2 bullet wounds to the head, he wrote about this. Yet no one seems to connect the dots...
I, being privy to these games and some of the insiders, know full well the role they've played in turning most of America's young men AND women into numb killing machines. This is a huge story that no one seems to take seriously. If you've ever played any of these first person shooters online yourself, you know full well that your average 20 year old has killed tens of thousands of people through playing these games. I can tell you that in the couple of years that I played these games myself, it was like a drug. I would play for hours and hours. There is alot more to this story and I wish people would snap out of it and realize it.
I can't believe people are actually sticking up for Bono. Anyone who rubs soldiers regularly with Paul Wolfowitz and won't admit that AIDS is man-made is suspect.
Bono? Chuck Norris?! I liked post-modern craziness a lot better when it was confined to arty novels. --5:01 PM
Chuck Norris is not even the latest in a long series of American action stars with easy identification and association with the political right wing. Often the kind of movies made by his kind of actor just happen to be what would be called propaganda if they were made in a different country (perfect individual cops just trying to do their job despite "bureaucracy" and subhuman criminals, the SS man always gets his untermensch, miltech as the answer to life's problems, etc). Norris was a vocal Bush supporter although that was only around the campaign as he doesn't want to be seen as too political: if we recall correctly, he skydived with Poppy.
As for the disqualifying error of U2, the man who thinks whining is singing, the unapologetic globalist who condescendingly instructed Ireland on how to vote to best impoverish themselves, he's no better than that other exploiter of third world poverty who digs (and pretends to want to help) prostitutes. Fuck Bono. He's no more a progressive than Catharine MacKinnon or Alan Dershowitz aren't totalitarian thugs, Job Loserman is a Democrat, Chinese slave labor is democratizing, George Bush is doing much of anything to lead the country or find Osama or the tobacco industry's annoying "educational" efforts aren't just flailing guilty tentacles.
And his singing is awful. U2 should release "stripped" (instrumental) versions.
yikes.
see Webb's last story here:
The Killing Game
For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That's why the Army spent $10 million developing its own. But there's a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.
http://www.newsreview.com/chico/Content?oid=oid%3A32361
personally, i like the computer games i've played (more sci-fi, and not the FPS type stuff,) and one thing about the strategy Civ type of game is that it teaches you *how* the mind of Empire thinks, which can be to our advantage, yes?
but the trade-off is that the bulk of the games are merely training killers, and getting people used to ideas like "invade Venezuela" and anything Don Rumsfeld wants to give a million of my tax dollars to, is probably NOT something i'm going to end up liking when i see the results!
The Party Line..
There is no such thing as chemtrails.
Here is a list of 400 songs that will not be played while we conduct the "long war".
Crimestoppers..
I'm glad people are beginning to see the braying jackass Bono for what he is... a Wolfowitz in sheeps clothing! This is a guy whose met with Bush and gave him accolades on his character. This is also the same pretentious bastard that met with David Rockefeller on a number of occasions, and whose own organization works with the Rockefeller Foundation to molest Africa. Bono and others like Angelina Jolie, are the new missionaries/scouts for the advance party in the recolonization of Africa. I don't know what George Clooney's personal motives are, but he seems to just want global focus onto the U.S. instigated, and potentially genocidal Darfur conflicts.
Play = learning.
Years ago i read an article by Micheal ventura, columnist for LA weekly.
He described a trip to hell.
He went to the shop, K mart or walmart or whatever, and saw this kid buying a serial killer costume, possibly for halloween, possibly not.
When I was a kid we played soldiers, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians (but never blackfellas and red coats), etc, but I nevber turned into a violent psycho.
We never played games where we killed people for no good reason.
we used to sneak into the bush and shoot skyrockets at cars on the road, but never did we understand the dangerous consequences of our actions, when we were older we didn't do that anymore.
Benumbed your assessment of the video game situation is really good.
Playing being a soldier and killing is nothing new, and it doesn't turn you into a killer. There is a preprogrammed context for the violence.
Its in games like Grand Theft Auto, where you can blow ordinary people away for no good reason, or serial killer halloween masks, where the idea of killing for the sake of it apppears.
And even before video games, we still pulled wings off flies.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of video games is the absense of pain. That is how we learn empathy, through feeling pain. It is the consequence of our actions that teaches us the most.
Play = learning.
Years ago i read an article by Micheal ventura, columnist for LA weekly.
He described a trip to hell.
He went to the shop, K mart or walmart or whatever, and saw this kid buying a serial killer costume, possibly for halloween, possibly not.
When I was a kid we played soldiers, cops and robbers, cowboys and indians (but never blackfellas and red coats), etc, but I nevber turned into a violent psycho.
We never played games where we killed people for no good reason.
we used to sneak into the bush and shoot skyrockets at cars on the road, but never did we understand the dangerous consequences of our actions, when we were older we didn't do that anymore.
Benumbed your assessment of the video game situation is really good.
Playing being a soldier and killing is nothing new, and it doesn't turn you into a killer. There is a preprogrammed context for the violence.
Its in games like Grand Theft Auto, where you can blow ordinary people away for no good reason, or serial killer halloween masks, where the idea of killing for the sake of it apppears.
And even before video games, we still pulled wings off flies.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of video games is the absense of pain. That is how we learn empathy, through feeling pain. It is the consequence of our actions that teaches us the most.
Quote from Sinead O'Conner;
"It's a wonder Bono can talk at all,
with all that politian cock in his mouth."
8:21
Herzog Zwei for Genesis was the first RTS--the genre suprisingly enough originated on the console.
I've killed millions and I'm okay. Deus Ex actually leaned me in the direction I'm in today.
Welcome to Bash Bono Night here at Rigorous Intuition.
I'm not a fan, hell, I avoid his music like the plague, but he could probably be using his time in worse ways.
So give the guy a break.
& Chuck Norris?
Did anyone even read the article?
It's Chris Norris.
Ol' Chuck may be a lot of things but I have a hard time seeing him as a publicist for a video game company.
Sheesh!
With the social pressures placed on men through feminist agendas. Playing war games is a total escape from reality. It's like we are manipulated to engage the enemy with cunning, wit, and aggression. Saving the women and children from all real life social pressures. Which many men have found out and are finding out they simply cannot do. It's like adding fuel to the fire. Many men cannot bear with today's realities and are looked at as being rather juvenile in their escape with gaming.
The aspiring war hero in a relationship plays these games while the woman is more mature because she watches mainstream television shows. These games as mentioned in prior posts are very addictive.
I was told by an US Army sargent that some of these battles and future battles are not and will not be like these games. Where you literally face the enemy. Because of satellite surveilance and other intelligence a division is singled out 20 miles away and hit with missles. All the soldiers on both sides of a conflict who are singled out this way are killed. The idea of engaging with an actual enemy on a battlefield in the future may be just a fantasy for many soldiers.Unmanned flights and robotic technologies are replacing this kind of physical engagement too.
Agendas? Isms?Yes we all have them, I guess. I'm recently reading Oriana
Fallaci's book "The Force of Reason".
From what I can surmise reading this
text I could possibly get myself beheaded. Although I don't agree with all of it I think its a worthwhile read and a book everyone on this list should piok up.
I was early to the 911 conspiracy movement, peak oil, anti-war, left.
I still surf the periphery of these movements but have moved towards a more libertarian perspective over the last few years. Something is up
on the planet these days that may take a much much much higher level of discernment than what we have been offered to this point.
All I can say is that we need to seriously question our own isms.
Seek places you normally wouldn't go. Read things you normally would shun because of your isms. There
is much more going on in this world
than meets the eye. We and even Bono himself may not have a clue what team we are actually supporting. Be careful, be studious, be very discerning, be LOVE.
You're right about that, about seeking in places you normally wouldn't go; I think this all has to do with powerful spirits gaining control over the world, what the Christian Bible refers to as principalities. There are three primary principalities mentioned, Jezebel, Antichrist, and Death and Hell; Jezebel being the spirit of seduction, Antichrist being the spirit of idolatry, and Death and hell being the spirit of rejection.
Whenever a principality ascends to power over a culture it will always prop up a human figurehead to represent it, to speak for it and to manifest it's personality. One such example is Madonna who represents Jezebel; Bono, Norris, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. all represent Antichrist, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, etc. all represent the principality Death and Hell; there is overlap as the three principalities are referred to in scripture as a three stranded cord.
According to scripture the agenda of Jezebel is to weaken all cultures through seduction so that they'll lose their natural resistance to evil, after which she seeks to usher them over to Antichrist.
Games like the one mentioned are only a fruit of the feeling of powerlessness that is had by the weakened culture. The centralist statist authoritarian cult is also a fruit that manifests the inner fear and feeling of powerlessness that is owned by the 'political right'.
The televangelists have been propped up as puppets of distraction, to discourage people away from investigating true Christianity by presenting a skewed and powerless version of it.
buying a serial killer costume, possibly for halloween, possibly not.
a serial killer halloween costume!? uh, what?
Isn't that the joke from the Addams Family, where Wednesday is dressed as normal because "they look just like anyone else' (can't remember exact quote)
Someone earlier mentioned Spore, the upcoming video game by the creator of The Sims. I wanted to let people know about SporeStuff.com, a news site currently featuring some game demonstration videos led by creator Will Wright.
It looks like an incredibly engaging game. But I'm definitely concerned about Spore's unique potential to immobilize otherwise intelligent, technically-skilled people through what could be a literally endless simulation of "real life", rather than getting up, getting out, and doing something about our actual real-life situation.
Moderation in all things, certainly. Please exercise caution with leisure-time activities at this point. I'm not really sure how much leisure time we actually have left to blow anymore. :-/
I have a lot of experience with boys and video games. It is a bad idea to turn such things in to forbidden fruit, on the basis of some theory of their effects. They are what they are only within a context.
As with a mind expanding drug, set and setting are crucial.
The set and setting of a game--the context--is the child's mind. Deepen and complexify the context through exposure to great art. Read, read, read to them and their minds become deeper and more complex than the minds of those who would manipulate them. Then you can let them play what they will and attempts to frame reality will become counterproductive. They will play the games, for what they are worth, while remaining openly contemptuous of the shallow and ham-handed propaganda.
RI prescience confirmed:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/democrats-agree-to-confir_b_21687.html
Is Pat Robertson involved with the Game? That's the question that needs to be asked. Does he own stock in it? Personally I think Pat Roberton is the Devil and he's secretly scheming to Tsunami American lefty cities to invoke Armageddon... why does he keep saying stupid shit like he leg pressed 2000 lbs? Freakin' nutbag.
My rambling thoughts, if anybody cares:
I applaud anonymous 8:21+ for alluding to the fact that most events and objects contain seeds of their opposites. It's the law of unintended consequences: You need a war for a peace movement to gain force. You need monotonous mind-numbing entertainment for stand-outs to have significant value. Also similar to the Marxist dialectic: Usually a strong thesis begets a strong antithesis, ideally creating progress by way of a new synthesis.
The law of diminishing returns relates: The more you have of something (like ice cream sodas), the less value an additional one has to you. As a result, after the last exciting videogame, the only way to beat the sales is provide one with a bigger appeal: More excess, more gore, more of the lowest common denominator elements that will appear to a large base of consumers. More of the same would have less value over time, and sales would fall off.
If we see videogames as a reflection of the popular culture, one that is violent, fearful, xenophobic, defensive, paranoid, or what have you, each of these elements provides a basis for an opposite response, one that allows people to discover themselves. The most valuable things, whether physical or ideas, are those that are rare and/or useful. I do want to try to see any pros as well as cons. I hope that we also will see diminishing returns for violence and fear. Their antithesis can appear and people will choose.
I was watching that A&E special War Diary on Lima Company, a regiment of US marines who suffered heavy losses in Iraq. One thing that struck me was an interview where a marine describing a firefight referred to it as something like "the most fun you could ever have" and a strong "adrenaline rush." I was revolted. It's true, violence in videogames provides a model and context for more of the same in the real world, like a sick feedback circuit among individuals, society, mass [entertainment and news] media.
Even these things being the case, I admit that I find these games entertaining. The key for me is keeping what happens on the screen separate from what I do off the system. Many ideas are neither inherently good nor bad--their context and application determine the moral aspect. I played Wolfenstein and Doom II in adolescence and am still morally conscious.
My next read is going to be the e-text of Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Killing. Perhaps I can learn more from that.
Regarding violent video games, the thesis of West Point psychology professor Lt. Col. David Grossman [killology.com] seems to be, briefly:
- Soldiers, as human beings, are naturally reluctant to kill other human beings.
- To make more effective soldiers, this reluctance must be removed.
- Through operant conditioning (desensitization and repetition), this reluctance CAN be removed.
- Modern soldiers thus are many times more effective at killing the enemy (at the cost of creating a personality ill-suited to return to society).
- First-person shooter games are extremely effective training for killers, and thus they need to be regulated.
Here's a sample article:
"Trained to Kill" - Operant Conditioning
http://www.killology.com/art_trained_operant.htm
Jeff, tell the Firefox users with corrupted, cached versions of your main page to hold down shift and hit the reload button.
The real reason why one should pay attention to video games, and all other manner of virtual reality generators, is that it will be reality soon!
Listen, children, get thee to Ray Kurzweil's website http://singularity.com/ and read his books. Even the moneyed and man with the view from the top Bill Gates calls Ray the best prognosticator of the future of AI.
There is no danger though, of anyone trying to "capture" tommorrow's virtual space. When things start ramping up, it will be like living inside a blender on Jummy Buffet time. No one's going to set the agenda. Even if, for example, the rumours are true that Larry and Sergey's real goal is to create world's first AI, there will be a splintering and cascading of other AI's and then the brawl begins.
To understand what it is all about from that point, get thee to a Greg Egan book Diaspora http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/
hott off the wires from AFP:
'Bahman' to the rescue in Iran's anti-US video game
Sat May 27, 3:50 PM ET
TEHRAN (AFP) - Video-gamers in
Iran can now take on the military might of the United States -- and rescue a nuclear engineer kidnapped in neighboring Iraq, it was reported.
The game's plotline revolves around Saeed Kusha, a 30-year-old Iranian engineer abducted by American troops in Iraq while on pilgrimage with his wife to the Shiite holy site of Karbala, the semi-official Fars agency said.
When they discover who he is and what he does for a living, American forces decide to kidnap him.
"Commander Bahman" is appointed head of a special task force to track down and free the engineer. Bahman was a friend of Kusha's father, who was martyred in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
The video game, created by members of the Students' Islamic Association, has eight levels and will be soon be on the market, Fars said. It did not say what the game would be called.
The United States says Iran's nuclear program is a cover for the development of atomic weapons. Tehran strongly denies this, saying it is for purely peaceful purposes.
link
@Dugoboy
I'm not sure.
Dice = Developers of Battlefield series
Electronic Arts = Publisher
Battlefield 2 does depict a chaotic modern World War III, involving the U.S., China, Russian, and the Middle Eastern Coalition. All the maps in the first release are mostly about pre-emptive strikes by the U.S. (while the said countries defend their territory), but obviously most of the people that play it don't realize this.
Expansions have added U.K. and European forces. The latest expansion to be released is called "Armored Fury," which will have maps based on U.S. soil, since so many fans have demanded it.
Mental or psychological conditioning is never a game, though games can be a highly effective means to go about doing just that...hmmm?
Bear in mind that psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors all use role-playing as a powerful and effective tool to transform human behavior and thought.
Rudyard Kipling's "Kim", for any who weren't Boy Scouts or haven't read the tale, centers around a young boy who becomes an invaluable secret agent through the simple repetitive playing of a game... "Kim's Game" in fact.
Kim is never aware that the game is anything more than a game his spy-master simply likes to play with him after his "lessons" are over until it becomes time to apply the skill he has quite inadvertently honed to a very sharp edge by playing it.
He only then realizes that his ability to play the game was the crux of what he was being taught and most of his so-called "lessons" were merely a grind to whet his appetite for the simple relief and pleasure of playing it.
In short the game was a critical part of far larger "game" that was nowhere in sight at the time.
So the first question that we really ought to be asking ourselves about any particular game is what kind of mental conditioning or frame of mind is actually necesary, or being promoted in order to win at it?
What is the true conceptual structure or nature of the game and in what ways does it seek to challenge and in what ways do the players need to "change" or develop new ways of thinking in order to meet that challenge?
In other words what effects does it have on ordinary attitudes or thinking and does any role the players must assume in it alter, confilct with, or enhance them as a consequence?
I'll put it to you quite bluntly that violent human conflict is by no means a "normal" or everyday ocurrance. Neither is resolving issues by employing deadly force or criminal behavior. Nor do I think it is particularly healthy to make light of or encourage that perspective, even and especially in a game.
We are faced with a rapidly advancing technology that amongst other things has the potential to make our worst nightmares into a genuine reality.
For those whose fortunes and careers can be further enriched by seeing those nightmares come true, providing games that will implant the kind images that can give those nightmares is a small price to pay to insure on that outcome.
The only way to prevent that is to "see through" these games and collectively refuse or allow anyone to simply play along.
Great post as usual, Jeff.
I have always found casual connections between the gaming industry and the government but here is a case in point I can now use to put a firm leg under my theory. What is most significant for me is how this "solid" bit of evidence now moves a tin foil hat-sounding theory into the category of actual evidence being ignored and minimized because it sounds conspiracy-ish.
To me, this is far more terrifying than current and more obvious goverment assaults on its own society.
The insidious and nefarious nature of the Pentagon influencing public opinion by way of video games is only the SHORTEST of hops from the most wicked of orwellian nightmares.
The only thing that could possibly shock me more - and has - is the fact that NOTHING will be done about this. There will be no mention of it outside of conspiracy style news forums, no outrage and certainly no protest.
And even if there were sometihng done it's shocking to expect, but I do, the Pentagon would quickly offer and apology and a promise not to do it again and that would be that. Something along the lines of "Ooops you caught us spying on some anti-war Quakers. We are sorry and we won't do it again, we promise." It would be funny if that hadn't already happened.
What is worse? that the Pentagon has used that apology strategy time and again or that it actually works so well?
Think about it - a governemnt agency is using the tax payers money to influence the tax payers to think a way that furthers that particular agencies ends and desires.
What is patently more anti-american than that? This is an acusation that can only be answered one way...and I wonder if that way is already closed to us as an option.
It appears the Pentagon has already stepped down a slippery slope. I am an optimist but it appears there is something horrible in our future. It seems that, for now, a lumbering bureacracy has not yet slipped into the most evil of modes. But that slip, even for this optimist, seems inevitable.
Human nature seems to prefer procrastination so I guess we will wait until shit is real bad before we tackle this problem. The pain now would be considerably less than the pain later in dealing with this but we all know that that is no motivation at all...
As far as the Bono bashing goes here on RI - it always seems odd that people hate when celebrities use their celebrity to further their own goals. Somehow, when you become famous you have to sign off your rights to anything of social conscious this people seem to assume. I can't imagine why people fell you shouldn't talk about or try to change things if you are famous...
Imagine, however, if Jeff's career arc had followed a different path. Suppose he had become a Dean Koontz style success and decided to promote all of the "crazy, conspiracy" stuff he does here. Would you bash him for bringing this stuff to the forefront after he was famous just because he was a celebrity?
I'm not saying that Bono is perfect, unsusceptible to outside influences or even in Jeff's class but a closer scrutiny of his goals and motives might be in order rather than linking how much you like his artistic efforts to his ascribed goals.
And at the very least he is trying to do something about problems he thinks are important. He could EASILY sit back upon his tens upon tens of millions of dollars and do nothing except bitch about how bad things on the way to or from his various mansions...
But it might be too much to have people look into what the lead singer of a rock and roll band is doing to help the world if they can't even read the article differentiate Chris from Chuck.
No offense to Jeff, btw, who also made the mistake of confusing the two.
Illumigotti said...
Shrubbageddon, your posts don't normally strike me with such discord: "There will be no video games in my home, period." That strikes me as conveniently reductivist. Very O'Reilly-ian. Do you agree foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds? What you stated sounded startlingly close to textbook censorship (upon reflection, a perfect primer for your children's future) and authoritarian determinism.
Shrubageddon's retort:
You certainly have a point there, but I would have preferred Stalinesque versus O'Riellyian. Bill, like Bono, is a phoney, but Papa Joe was the real McCoy. Seriously though, I do have a Stalinesque dimension to my character. It helps to balance my Pink Floydism. Point being, I am both rigid and flexible, tolerant and intolerant, misanthropic and gregarious, ill-tempered and non-combative, mute and outspoken………you get the point, I hope. I'm a shapeshifter whose shape is topically and/or situationally dependent. In an effort to mitigate moss accumulation, I roll my stone….around and around in the same old circle.
Unlike Stalin, though, I stop short of dictating that the sheep can't have video games in their homes. See. here comes my misanthropy. They can have their bread and circuses in return for their higher cognitive functioning, because I firmly believe in their unfree choice. If they unfreely choose to hand over the key to their brain's circuitry to a bunch of slimey spooks, then I'll hold the door open for them, whilst I kick their behinds on the way through, however, not my children, under my watch. I refuse to sacrifice my children on the alter of conventional wisdom. Abrahamism is not one of my character's dimensions.
All that said, I do agree with you that video games are the way of the future. My little stand will not effect the momentum of things. I often ruminate, and sometimes lament, over what we are now, and what we will become. Are we prepared for this bold new future? What is this bold new future? Are we teetering on the precipice of an evolutionary leap? Joel Garreau does a decent job of outlining this issue in his book Radical Evolution. I thought the following quote from the aforementioned book was quite intriguing. I will quote it, and perhaps someone can tell me who wrote it. You will be quite surprised.
First let me postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligence machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.
If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would not be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more an more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.
On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite---just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they will most likely not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.
I found this postulation not only plausible, but excruciatingly profound and troublesome.
Once again, any takers on who penned it?
Come now, Shrubageddon, that's not even challenging ;-)
The quote is from Theodore Kaczynski's Unabomber Manifesto published in the New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995.
Ray Kurzweil also used that quote in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines.
The Wachowski Brothers even represented it visually with The Matrix Trilogy.
Of course, Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Terminator, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc. were all about this topic.
So Kaczynski's thoughts weren't exactly original.
You are correct, Atem, in not only your answer, but in your assessment of the degree of difficulty in answering it.
As your prize, you get a year's supply of Blue Pills and a weekend with Keanu Reeves, all expenses paid. ;-)
I agree that his thoughts were not exactly original in that others thought and expounded on the same subject, however, a more poignant question would be whether Kaczynski was aware that others had. For example, did Kaczynski read Dick? When was his Manifesto created, or was it a work-in-progress for quite some? I guess my point is, it may not have been original in that others had thought the same thing, but it may also have been original in that he arrived at the same point mutually exclusive from the others.
What was interesting to me was the juxtaposition of the concept with the source, the infamous Unabomber. I have never read the entire Manifesto, so I'm not sure, as a whole, if he comes off as a lunatic, but that little excerpt is far from lunacy. Unfortunately, considering the debauchery attributed to him, anything he says will fall on deaf ears for the majority of the populace. I think that was Kurzweil's point when he quoted him.
Orz said...
buying a serial killer costume, possibly for halloween, possibly not.
a serial killer halloween costume!? uh, what?
Isn't that the joke from the Addams Family, where Wednesday is dressed as normal because "they look just like anyone else' (can't remember exact quote)
Nah Im talking about something else. Micheal ventura wrote a piece for the LA weekly, dated november 3 1989. It was called "The Toy from Hell".
I read it in a book called "Letters at 3 am". It chronicles his slide into suicidal depression against the backdrop of the first iraq war and bush seniors administration.
Heres a paragraph or two. (Written nearly 17 years ago)
"So I am in Woolworth's one day and I feel a sort of final horror as I watch a boy buy a psycho-killer toy so that he can pretend he's an unstoppable maniacal murderer. What is so horrible is that this boy is doing this instinctively, for his very survival. In order to live, in order not to go mad, this boy is acclimatising himself to the idea of the killer maniac, because killer maniac energy is so present in his world. He's trying to innoculate himself through play, as all children have, everywhere, in every era. He thus lets a little of the energy into him - thats how innoculations work. too little, and he is too afraid of the world - its too terrifying to feel powerless amid the maniacal that's taken for granted around him; to feel any power at all he needs a bit of it inside him. But if he takes in too much, he could be swamped.
How horrible that he is forced to such a choice. You'd think it would be enough to stop the world in it's tracks. But it's not. And so he chooses. And what can we do for him? Struggle for a different world, yes, but that won't change whats already happened to him. What can we do for that boy, except be on his side, stand by his choice and pray for the play of his struggling soul?"
Obviously seeing the kid buy a toy was traumatic for him.
"The set and setting of a game--the context--is the child's mind. Deepen and complexify the context through exposure to great art. Read, read, read to them and their minds become deeper and more complex than the minds of those who would manipulate them. Then you can let them play what they will and attempts to frame reality will become counterproductive. They will play the games, for what they are worth, while remaining openly contemptuous of the shallow and ham-handed propaganda."
Right on. Exposing young people to the best in human culture is ultimately what enables them to control and ameliorate the worst of human culture.
Silverfox is wise.
S.
Were I truly wise anonymous, I might find some better way to genuinely improve the state of things when it comes to war or "playing at war" or killing and "playing at killing".
All that can be learned from either is being better at making war... or perhaps being better killers while we're at it.
As it is, I can only hope that my own thoughts on this matter might assist others, even if it's only to the extent that they know they are are not alone with their own sense of frustration over it.
"War" is considerably more than just a physical event. It's physical condition is merely a reflection of an irrational psychic one that will quite willingly subvert, destroy or completely obliterate even the best and brightest of all human hopes and aspirations in it's cause; for no sacrifice is seemingly too great.
No one has to actually be physically touched by war to sustain the kind of ruinous psychic injuries or scars it spreads well beyond any physical limitations. No one is ever beyond the reach of that.
We may treat our fears as if they do not exist. We may even convince ourselves that we can conquer them by weaving them into the fantasies and fabric of our entertainments and amusements, but all we are really doing is reinforcing them and the growing ignorance that they feed upon.
Children and young adults currently sit at screens and manipulate virtual images that hunt down and destroy the virtual images that represent other human beings or the places they inhabit.
Just how large a step is it before they might find themselves manipulating very "real" robots to do the same thing in reality?
What is the "real" difference between a virtual image that man can now make as real as "real" versus any "real" one that a camera might relay to a person who sits before the screen?
How can conscience possibly discern a difference if the eyes themselves can't make the distinction?
What can we truly say about any consience that would ever fool itself about just how equally abhorent both visions truly are in the first place?
These days people dont want to accept that they have aggresive and violent tendencies somewhere in their psyche . Games are just a harmless outlet for these fantasies. Moreover not all games are all blood and gore . Games like The SIms etc are ll clean.
Games are just a harmless outlet for these fantasies.
sheesh.
HELLOOOO, McFly!!! (raps knuckles on posters skull...)
.........................
Ever watch the G-4 channel? I call it the "Kill channel"- everytime I surf by it some FPS is killing somebody or something. Sarcastic and dismissive "hosts". Even their stage sets are darkly lit...
And now revealing game "cheat" codes are standard practice- what's that say to your plump, snot-nosed kid sitting mesmerized in front of the "Telly"?
And a big "Oy" about Bono- As Ian Hunter might say- "Shades Off, Wank." Just how they got to him we'll probably never know...
(If South Africa could take back her Gold mines she could feed her country X-times over...)
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