[Sangetsu]

It is nothing new. Violence is, has been, and will always be part of human nature. It is that way because life in general is violent. People have an animal nature which is territorial and competitive, it is a part of the natural-selection process, and such a nature cannot be psychoanalyzed out of us.

Kids have played war games for as long as humankind has existed. I did when I was young, as did my father, grandfather, etc. Modern games are more graphic, but they are not fundamentally different than the games which have existed since people learned to throw rocks and swing sticks. Nowadays kids have it easy, they can sit back and play video games. When I was a kid I often returned from war games with bumps, bruises, and bleeding.

I guess no one here realizes that even the Olympic Games are military in origin, and the early Olympian athletes were soldiers. Even in the early 20th century, many, if not most Olympic athletes were soldiers. The original events were the javelin, shut put, hammer, running, relay, hurdles, and wrestling, which were military training exercises in the time of the Greeks.

In past centuries such play was encouraged, it made kids tough and strong, and in those times it was quite likely that children would fight in a war or battle at some time in their lives; the younger they started learning to fight, the better. As was said of the Romans "they maintained peace by constantly preparing for war".

One might think that nowadays such games are a waste of time because only a tiny percentage of modern children will one day become soldiers, but that isn't necessarily so. Modern life may be relatively free of the wars which plagued earlier generations, but even modern life is extremely competitive (for those who wish to be successful), and the desire to win can be instilled by such games.