Brutalizing Society

A 17 year old was convicted in the British Midlands for the brutal murder of a 14 year old today. An extremely violent and depraved video game was behind the killing. In this game, you are a convicted murder trying to murder people in the most horrific way possible with hammers and knives, etc. The video game company had warnings that the game could promote copy-cat killings, but the British board of classification still allowed it onto the market, albeit with a rating of “classified 18”–as if that would prevent kids from getting their hands on the game. The game has been aptly described as a “murder simulator.”

I think it is a no-brainer that this game is influencing kids to murder each other in gruesome ways (the 14 year old was beaten to death in the park with a hammer, just like in the video game). My question is, why would this game be suitable for adults? Why prohibit children from playing this game but let adults? Adults are far more depraved than children. Sure, the argument goes that adults have a mature capacity to tell right from wrong. But what about the scores of child rapists and murderers. Being an adult merely gave these offenders the capacity to commit their atrocities; it didn’t endow them with a higher sense of right and wrong.

Can anyone be amazed at the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? When a society is raised on violent video games that glorify torture and murder and on a steady diet of pornography, then is it any wonder that given a modicum of power and enough of their own leash to act how they wish, these individuals are going to act out the filth they see on the interet and in their video games? We miss something fundamental if we think that these things have no negative externalities: the long-term effect of a society nourished by the objectification of the human body and the drive for pleasure, whether it be through a prurient interest in sex or the bloodlust of a society addicted to violence.

Finally, I just want to point out a disastrous irony: it seems to me that those who oppose the death penalty–philosophically claiming that it brutalizes society and that society doesn’t have the right to take that kind of action against its convicted killers–are the same people who defend the “free speech” right to peer at perversions on the internet every night and to play these ultra-violent video games. This, to me, seems like a fundamental inconsistency, to claim that the death penalty brutalizes society but to defend the right to view endless hours of brutal violence in the media and video games.  

Headlong

 
Apparently there are few in the blogosphere who list Michael Frayn’s Headlong as one of their favorite books. They’re missing out. Headlong is a masterful novel that exploits historical ambiguity surrounding some of the artist Breugel‘s work. Frayn brings the period to life, digging deep into the politics and complexities of the Dutch Revolt and Philip II‘s Grand Strategy.

One of Frayn’s strengths is identifying and using historical ambiguities as a stage to express his ideas. He has very insightfully examined our perception of ourselves and others through the lense of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Copenhagen, a play with only three actors and one prop, that exploits the historical ambiguity in the meeting of Heisenberg and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1941. On the backdrop of the charged political climate of occupied Denmark and a top German scientist shadowed by the Gestapo, Frayn reveals his philosophical take on the applicability of the Uncertainty Principle in human relationships. Essentially, Frayn suggests that, like particles in an atom whose location can only be determined through the interaction they have with other sub-atomic particles, we can only see ourselves through the eyes of those with whom we interact, or whose paths we cross. 

My wife and I saw Copenhagen in London in 2001. We got a lot out of it at the time and were very pleased to be able to see it performed recently at BYU in May 2004. It’s hard to beat London, but the BYU company held their own and the ideas came through very poignantly.

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Jumping on the Bandwagon

Well, I thought it was about time to jump on the blogging bandwagon. I sure have enjoyed blogging over at Times and Seasons. I also love reading Jordan’s blog over at Life According to Jordan. Another interesting blog for me so far has been all-encompassingly. Other blogs that I like to check in on when I can are BCC, the Wump Blog, and the Book of Jordan.

This is all new to me and will be very experimental. I plan to blog about life, family, literature, law, and religion in English, German, Spanish, French, Catalan, Danish, and even Yiddish, if I ever get around to having the keyboard installed. I might give Dutch a try too, if I can get myself comfortable with it.