ARE we becoming too remote from reality?
 

elsewhere there is a discussion about the way some of us received the news of the attack o 9/11.

this makes me wonder about the affect of us all being so exposed to wars and earthquakes, floods etc etc.

WHen the war in IRAQ started our televisions showed us close up pictures of what was happening.

I believe we become innoculated about so many tragedies that are shown on TV and in many ways somehow separate ourselves from the tragedy. we become immune.

Years ago there was a programme showing how Japanese youth who watched or played violent games on PLAY station etc were becoming aggressive and actually reenacting the parts of aggressors.

I do believe that watching or playing many of the violent games definitely affects those who indulge.

How do they separate fantasy from reality.

Violence begets Violence.


there was a recent experiment shown on tv where young children in school were shown certain types of videos or games, one type pretty innocuous, the other more violent.

The test was to see how those children would react in certain situations.

Simply, when the individual child was interviewed, the "teacher" accidentally on purpose would allow a book to slip to the floor. would the child pick up the book and return it to the teacher?


THe general outcome was that the child who had watched a non violent film or played non violent games-- would bend down to return the book, but most of the others ignored the book and carried on. In other words-- they did not care about the fallen book or think they should have picked it up.

I believe in certain circusmstance we do become isolated and removed and too easily lose our sense of what is right or what is wrong and the feeling of helpfulness disregarded.

THis may sound like an odd experiment-- but we all can become anaesthetised against reality-- so unlikely to intervene if really we should go and help somebody in trouble.

Subconscious is very powerful and the MEDIA uses it to an enormous extent.

I suppose it depends on the amount of TV you watch? I really don't watch it that much.

I believe it depends on the kind of person you are; what kind of life you've lived, and what kind influences you are exposed to. Subconscious dealings only have a general affect on people and do not affect everyone to the same level.

I don't have time to type much, at the moment, but psychology intrigues me immensely.

Haha, yep, psychology is interesting to me too. Isn't it fun finding out the ways our minds work? I find it absolutely thrilling. What you say about it depends on the kind of person you are, the life you've lived, and the influences you've been exposed to. Let's go with what you're talking about.

the human mind is endlessly fascinating.
There is the subject of nature versus nurture. In the case of those who are brought up as adopteess or similar where they grow up with a family with no genetic connection to themselves.

How dominant is the human gene?

I feel it is very dominant but all too easily we can be influenced by outside event-- whatever we are exposed to.

WHen I was a child, the wireless was only heard for the ten minute news broadcast. We did not know what was happening in the outside world. Most of us did not have a telephone--- we were more conscious of our own local circle of life--not the outside world-- apart from the war and the bombings of course.

In a way we were protected by the lack of information. Nowadays we are bombarded with so many other influences.


the person we turn out to be has been moulded in a way-- but how do we remain independent with the ability to go our own way--make our own decisions.


THe media these days influences us in so many ways.

How do we not follow the crowd and remain our own person.

When we see some tragedy on the TV-- does it effect us as much NOW as it would have done before so much exposure to these happenings around the world?

While I agree with the premise, I am not entirely in agreement with the assessment of this experiment's results. There are those who become desensitized and would ignore something such as the fallen book, but there is another cause and effect to consider. Those who have been besieged with violence (media or otherwise) can also develop the opposite response - one of heightened sensitivity which could make a student overly cautious of others. In such case the child may have been wary of doing anything other than the response they saw from the authority figure - the teacher. The teacher ignored it, so outwardly they did the same rather than risk disapproval.

Neither of those causes, when taken to an extreme is a desired human response.

I think you will be interested in this documentary dogsbody.

Its called "Militainment Inc"

Militainment, Inc. – Militarism and Pop Culture | Watch Free Documentary Online

I think so. Everryday I see atleast one example of how addicting texting in all of it's forms have become.

Yes, I do worry the negative behaiviours I see, (from myself as well) seem to come from TV or the internet.

This. There is always something deeper under the surface; it's too easy to use the media and/or other things as a scapegoat for whatever is going on instead of actually finding out why this happened. I play "violent" videogames.The first game I played was Mortal Kombat, and I was four!!! The only thing it did for me was get me interested in martial arts, though even at that age, I knew that you can't rip your face off and blow fire at people. XD XD XD

What some people are too ignorant to see when it comes to games at least is that we play them because, if it is something like GTA, we are quite aware that we will get arrested if we do the great majority of the stuff you can do in those games. Hell, you can even get arrested in GTA!!! XD Also, I'm sure most people playing mafia related games know that it's probably not as glamorous or whatever in real life, and it's not something they actually want to be involved in either.

Basically, the media has nothing to do with it, rather the person's morality; in the end, it is your choice whether you actually do something or not.

Actually... I disagree.

The media doesn't have nothing to do with it.

Though you are correct when it comes to people having a conscience and can tell the difference between real life and a video game.

The biggest thing media does is desensitize us to violence. It's easy to dismiss this finding when comparing carjacking someone in GTA and a regular day at high school. But what about when it comes to the large grey area that is life?

Let's say you have a stressful day at school/work. Let's say you see your ex-gf with your best friend.... or just imagine something that might stress you out.

Now of course you aren't going to go on a shooting rampage and kill the people who have caused the stress (though of course this has happened before) but because you are desenstized to violence in general.. a somewhat violent response is more likely if you have been playing violent video games or consuming violent media.

dude. if you were actually worried then you would know that violent crimes have dropped 50% !!!! 50%!!!!!! since 80's amongst youth in big thanks to violent video games. biggest school killing ever didnt include guns! show me a violent teen who doesn't have a pc and ill show you a guy playing wow in his basement grabbing his penis who isnt making any problems for anyone.

and what do you expect? bad news sell so theyll show us blood and violance because thats what public wants so stop pretending with this "holier than thou" attitude that everyone is made to feel greatest compassion for someone on the other side of the planet getting beaten up or killed.

look at it this way.there is 7 billion of us. maybe when people see someone killed they feel more special. no one cares in animals/resources that are wildly available. diamonds are rare - so everyone wants them so its natural to want to feel more special - the less of us there is the more special we become.
kids arent dumb and they can see the difference between reality and fantasy. everyone of you make me sick - lets find things that caused kids to go shoot up school and etc....what the hell happened with plain old crazy? a? you think everything is soooo connected like "ai..he had an xbox - thats what caused him to kill people"!!!!! WELL ITS NOT!


o!!!! 665 people have died and thousands injured because of football. so maybe we shouldn't ban video games, huh? because real ones kill more off than fantasy.

In Spain they did another experiment some years ago and they discovered that people were more willing to help a woman that fainted if it happened in a non-crowded area than if it happened in a crowded area (the centre of Madrid).
I think that when people live in a crowded city and/or are surrounded by a lot of information their getting “anesthetized” is a defence mechanism. Feeling deeply others’ suffering all time would be unbearable.
However, there are differences among individuals (originated genetically and educationally) and sensitive people are more conscious of what happens around them and are more empathetic, capable to put theirselves in others' shoes, to understand others' feelings, to treat others as they would like to be treated.
I’d like to know the opinion of Darwin about it.

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.

I think you put it together quite well, Sangetsu.

I don't think it is the media that desensitizes us to violence, but violence desensitizes us to violence. Although we have access to violent and realistic video games, very few are not able to distinguish the games from reality.

Compared to many civilizations throughout history, ours is pretty violence free.

Probably since these days when you get mad you can simply put in SSBB and FALCO, PUNCH! a dude 50,000 times

^_^

I would agree that it is not the media, only to the extent that the media is only dramatizing what is already in society. They are to blame for their part in the increased saturation levels and glorification of it.

I think the numbers of children who cannot distinguish between the appropriateness of violence as a response, or means to an end increases, as the age and socialization levels decrease. Unfortunately younger and younger children are being babysat by video games instead of interacting with people, so there is less and less input from other non-violence sources.
The result is the violent, hitting and kicking fits I witness from children from 4-8 yrs old in the hall outside my office when they are told "no" when they scream till their voices give out for candy from the vending machine. Years ago you might see and hear that once in a while, but these days its the norm. When they don't get their way they resort to what little violence they can extert. There size and strength seem to be the only limiting factors - not discipline, not rationality. We are talking the old "terrible twos", these are children we once considered "old enough to know better".

Just who and when are they going to be taught that the entertaining destruction of people and property they are amused by daily is not acceptable in real life. The lesson is being taught later and later in life - if at all.

I'm sleepy and it's late, so forgive me if I've missed the point a little. It sounds like you're saying that from what you've seen in children the increased exposure to violent games has left them more violent, and whilst I would agree that children are more violent, I disagree that it's the exposure to violent media. Kids 4-8 aren't going to (usually) be playing Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto, or watching Halloween or Saw. . . they play Pokemon and watch Twilight and (at the risk of sounding old) whatever else kids today watch ;)

As a general reply to some of the other posts, I think violence in children and adults is a result of society and the expectations we have. Media may desensitise us, but it doesn't influence us. I don't play violent games, but I've watched horror films since I was twelve and haven't once commited a single violent act, and students I've taught are obssessed with Twilight, and not one of them has wanted to sparkle in the sun or fall in love with a vampire :P Media and entertainment have very limited effects in my opinion.

Every generation sees younger generations going to hell in a handbasket. Are 4 year olds playing violent video games?

I am not sure where you work, but public meltdowns by young children is nothing new. Brain development in children has not slowed across the generations, but has gotten quicker. Girls are starting their "cycles" younger and younger.

A recent showed that college-aged people that play shooters were better at making quick rational decisions than those that didn't.

And although I think the number of children that are "babysat" by video games is higher than it was a generation ago, what was the last generation babysat by? The TV set. It wasn't like all these kids were doing volunteer work for homeless people, and then video games came along.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with all you say, Taln, just inserting a different perspective.

It's nice to finally see people agreeing with me. I read a comment from another site that doesn't involve videogames or TV; it involved an incident at a school where they were supposed to be showing the benefits of donating blood, but... well, read the comment I am going to paste here. The reason why I'm posting it is because it can be applied to every instance of finger pointing:

"This isn't news. This also isn't a lawsuit worthy event. Twenty years ago people would have gotten outraged and the employee would probably have been fired. That would have been that. Now it's all about the money you can milk out of people for supposed 'trauma'... because they were subjected to gay porn for 30 seconds? Seriously? This is exactly what is wrong with America today, too many babies wearing adult bodies."

Mind you, Australia is worse than the US when it comes to restrictions, and the UK isn't that fantastic either. What's curious is that the way people tend to feel towards games(and TV, and movies), is the way that people felt when comics first came to existence(in an attempt to get rid of comics, somebody accused Batman and Robin of being homosexuals @_@).

These are people who don't like certain things, and because they don't like them, they do what they can to get rid of it, including using it as a skapegoat rather than doing something to correct the actual problem(or focus attention on something that merits attention, there are rating systems for a reason). Again, it's too easy to blame something/someone you don't like.

I don't seriously think the majority of kids have a problem with video games or the violence in the media. At least they are not seeing the sort of things we saw in the 70s that was almost live broadcasts of real massacres. Thankfully, most of the violence is fictionalized, not "action" shots from the front lines.

Even so, while excessive exposure to violence (even fictional) has risks, I think those who are placing most of the blame for violent behavior on the media are simply choosing a more comfortable scapegoat instead of admitting their complicity.

When the latter part of my generation decided to stop showing respect for anyone but themselves, some of them perpetuated it in their offspring. Impatience and outbursts from a toddler is expected, but you are also expected to grow out of it. It just seems those negative traits have increased on a parallel to that increase in reasoning speed and dexterity.

Thanks you for the post.