Welcome to State of Play, a new editorial column from Pixelated Geek. In State of Play, we’ll be dealing with major issues in the gaming community, and we’ll be reaching out to our community for feedback and interaction. Our goal with State of Play is to create a respectful, professional, and insightful dialogue within a group of serious interested parties. Games are serious business, not just the largest moving part of the entertainment economy, but a form of expression where emotionally impactful stories are told throughout communities that grow and bond, and they’re an important educational tool. We take games seriously here, and the goal of this article is to seriously analyze the serious business of gaming.
A massive misconception has been spread among the world’s more fortunate countries that we live in an age of violence and brutality. Invariably, our news media and politicians lay the blame for this condition squarely at the feet of popular entertainment media. But the assertion that violence in our media (be it movies, TV, video games, or music) is responsible for the violence in our culture is one of the most tired and intellectually lazy pieces of politically-motivated propaganda present in modern society.
This opinion is incredibly widespread, as 58% of Americans reported agreement with this concept in a recent Harris poll. However, it’s largely unsupported by the multiple scientific studies done on the subject, based upon both a logical fallacy and an unwillingness to face the truth about the real cause of violent behavior in our society: Human Nature. I postulate that we are violent animals, and always have been, that our success as a species is due almost exclusively to the instincts behind this violent nature, and that the very reason we have risen to become the dominant species on this planet is that very nature that we are now so very reluctant to acknowledge. I am also suggesting that the only way to overcome this instinct is to acknowledge it, because ignoring a truth does not make that truth less true.
Firstly, we do NOT live in a time of greater proportional violence and aggression than ever before. We are currently at the end of the longest streak of productivity and wide-spread peace in the history of the world. Now, I am not saying that violence isn’t present in modern society, nor is there a lack of problems to be solved. Yes, there are conflicts, and yes there are problems to be solved. But if you compare the age that we live in today to any that has preceded it, you will not find one age in which the average quality of life was better, nor the life expectancy, and not one in which the average person lived with less threat to their property, civil liberty, and life. And while it is certainly true that there are still many countries to this day where one cannot walk down the street with confidence, this is hardly a new problem, nor an original problem. This is a problem that mankind has faced every day from our inception as a social animal. It is a very, very old problem, and it is getting better, everywhere.
Now, the US Census tells us the population has increased. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us that violent crime has increased. It is a matter of fact that there are more violent crimes committed with each passing year. So why then are there more crimes, violent or otherwise, with each passing year? The simple answer is that there are more people. It is unrealistic for us to be surprised that there are increases in violent crime, because if the actual percentage of crime remains the same, or even if it were to decrease by any rate less than the population increase, the number of crimes committed would still be greater. This is not a statistic that proves anything past the fact that there are more people in the world. And if that’s the point you’re proving with someone else’s grant money, then God help the donors behind your grant.
Violence has been a part of human nature from our very beginning. Our history is one of violence and competition and brutality, and none of us are exempt from that legacy. If you trace our roots as far back as history or science or literature allows, you will see a pattern of Darwinian Behavior, and here I’m specifically referencing the concept of Survival of the Fittest. There is a reason why we are the alpha predator. There is a reason why we, as a species, are in a position of dominance over every single aspect of the ecosystem, and that is simply because we are the most aggressive and the most competitive species on the planet.
Now, I realize that seems an incredibly gloomy prospect, that we are simply violent animals, and we shouldn’t be surprised when one of us reverts to that natural state of violence. Well, it is gloomy. It’s too gloomy, and it focuses entirely on our base nature, and not what we can be, but what we have aspired to be over the entire course of human events.
These base natures, these crude instincts are what we as a people have fought against from the time we decided to stop being animals and start being human. From the earliest codified law to the Republics of Greece and Rome, to works like the Bible and the Quran, to the Magna Carta, to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, we have proved that we are greater than the sum of our baser instincts. We have defined a moral code of behavior, and that’s something that no other animal of this earth can say. So it’s no surprise that when something like the Boston Bombing occurs, or the Newtown Massacre, or Columbine, or the drone strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq, or 9/11, or the Holocaust for that matter, it’s no surprise that we want a reason.
And God help us, we want that reason to be simple and totally conclusive, we want it to be just that simple. And it’s never going to be. A human action or reaction is the result of thousands of years of genetics plus years of environmental conditioning under the effect of hundreds if not thousands of random variables ranging from a flat tire to a bad hair day to sudden onset of cancer. It’s never going to be simple, because life is not simple.
So is it not, then, inexcusably arrogant and presumptive to blame a violent, heinous, abhorrent action that is beyond our scope of understanding and reason on watching a forensic examination on “CSI?” Or listening to Marilyn Manson? Or playing Call of Duty for 2 hours with your best friends? Or playing Dungeons and Dragons? Or watching any R-rated movie ever? How many of you have done any of the above, or something equivalent?
And there you are. Correlation does not prove causation. And there isn’t even a correlation.
Now this is really the only point I absolutely needed to present today in support of my argument: that simply, finally, and most decisively, there are simply no studies that have ever conclusively proven that exposure to violence in any media creates violent behavior in a person.
There’s simply no proof, there’s no supporting evidence.
In point of fact, the Bushman/Anderson Study published in American Psychologist in the June/July Issue of 2001 (which incidentally is the study which is MOST often cited by the proponents of the Media Violence/Real Violence Link), this study SPECIFICALLY states that: “Comparisons of demographic trends are not proof of any causal relationship between violent media and violent crime.” In addition, both the Ferguson and Rueda ‘Hitman’ Study at Texas A&M, and the Bushman and Geen Study at the University of Missouri came to the conclusion that there is ‘no conclusive connection’ between media violence and violent behavior.
So, given the established lack of supporting evidence, where does this misinformed argument come from? Well, the impulses to connect these behaviors to violent fictional media are not completely off base. I know that’s a surprising point to admit given my aim here but the truth is that these violent fictional mediums are very closely connected to the violence in our culture, they’re just not the cause. So what is the connection?
Our media doesn’t define us. We define our media. It’s an absolute and abjectly unfortunate mirror of society, and I can understand not liking what we see in the reflection because it is a reflection of the baser nature of humanity, and as a people, I can understand not liking that. But denying it? That’s incredibly irresponsible, and far, far beneath us. Isn’t it awful, isn’t it lazy to lay the blame of these lamentable, detestable crimes, these acts of violence at the feet of something that we made, that we are responsible for, rather than to take responsibility for them ourselves?
And that’s the real point I’m making. Take some damn responsibility.
So how is it that we take responsibility for things we didn’t do? Well, you start with you. You think about what you say. You think about what you do. I don’t think many of us realize the power that we have every day, every single day, the power we have to make a day, to not break a day. It takes one word, one small word, one tiny kindness, you never know what difference that can make. That’s our job, that’s our responsibility, that is the end result of thousands of years of social evolution, and that is how we fight the awfulness that we confront. We don’t blame things that have no connection to the matters at hand, we don’t run to the closest easy answer because it’s easy, we do the right thing. We take responsibility for who and what we are.
I don’t do what I do because I was told to. Or because I was conditioned to. I do what I do because I choose to.