I just don’t understand this rationale…
Why is it so much more acceptable to play games with violent “virtual” killing - embracing these aggressive tendencies because “explosions are cool” etc…and “Winning is fun” but virtual sex is immoral when one is simply doing the same thing…“doing” but not really “doing”…
I simply can’t see where either one is healthy…
Peace
James
Alright, consider it this way:
How close is a virtual sexual presentation to the real thing? Not terribly, but it still invokes the same drives and can cause the same feelings that real sexual immorality can. Watching a virtual naked person doing stuff, depending on the intensity of the presentation, and watching a real naked person doing stuff both are wrong for the same reason and both could cause arousal - which is totally inappropriate. Arousal is appropriate in one setting only, and must be avoided outside of it. On the most basic level, it is bad to watch pornography for the same reason it is bad to go to a strip club for the same reason it is bad to have sex outside of marriage.
How close is the kind of non-graphic violence I’m talking about to real violence? Not at all. I don’t know what drives people who enjoy violence for it’s own sake to commit it, but I can assure you that if I had the same or similar reaction to playing, say, World of Warcraft (where violence is one character hitting another with something that looks like a sword and then that other character staggering a bit) that I would have to driving (or watching someone else drive) a real sword into someone’s chest and pull it out, with screams of agony and blood and guts all other the place, then I’d be throwing up rather than having a good time. I’m fairly certain this is true of most people.
So virtual violence does not have the same effect on us that real violence would have. So why do we enjoy it? The reasons I mentioned above - competitiveness etc. Those things are, used properly, good, and there is certainly no reason why the experience of success or having defeated the bad guy must be limited to certain situations - unlike arousal, which has exactly one appropriate place. There is no reason not to enjoy the things about the sort of tame virtual violence that we enjoy. The virtual violence is not bad in itself (usually, more on that below), the things we enjoy are not bad in themselves, there are no other parts of it that are bad in themselves, and enjoying the things we enjoy about it is not bad it itself.
Now, if you’re playing chainsaw killer 43 where you hack innocent women and children to pieces while they run in terror screaming (hopefully a game which does not exist), then you’re reveling in pain and terror and bad things, and that’s bad. We shouldn’t do that. But in most games I’m talking about, the pain and terror is simply omitted (or if it’s included, it’s included as part of story telling and not as something to be enjoyed for it’s own sake but rather something to be understood and dealt with - as it must be).
But if you’re watching Kung Fu Panda, and are amused when the panda lands on top of the evil tiger and squashes him, generally fights him a bit, then wins and saves the day, well that’s fairly innocent.
There’s probably a line between the two somewhere, and I don’t pretend to be able to specify exactly where it is, but much video game violence is no more than virtual paint ball, or a virtual version of the games me and my brother used to play when we were growing up. Yes they’re mildly violent, yes they’re aggressive and competitive, but the violence isn’t focused around the actual real bad effects of violence, and (controlled) aggression and competitiveness are necessary and even laudable at times. A police officer needs to be able to chase down a criminal. A child needs to be able to defend against a bully. You need to be able to tell that salesman you don’t want the extended warranty.
There is one other reason that virtual sexual things can be immoral - because they can present the idea that sexual immorality is acceptable. But this reason is not a reason to avoid seeing them if you are grounded in what is right and what is wrong (it might be a good reason to avoid supporting the group that made the presentation, but if one is safe from this danger himself then this particular reason does not apply). Many of the standard chick flicks, for example, contain sexual immorality but not explicitly enough to forbid the movie on order to avoid inappropriately encouraging arousal. A person who understands the morality and is not in danger of being confused could watch it, a person who is in danger should not.
The same reason could potentially apply to virtual violence - it could, potentially, present violence as more acceptable than it is. Presumably, a person well grounded in the right and wrong of when to use violence could still watch a movie which presented violence as much more acceptable than it is and as a generally good thing, though I’m not sure why he’d want to. And clearly a person confused about this sort of thing should not watch such a move.
But again, most games and movies of the sort I am referring to don’t do this. If you were being attacked by a horde of mindless zombies which would conveniently fall on the ground and disappear after being whacked with a ridiculously huge sword that somehow was not tiring to use, then there’d be absolutely no problem in doing so. The fact that this course of action is presented as acceptable is fine, because it would be accepatble. Even in games and movies (again, of the fairly mild sort I’m referring to) where violence is used when it shouldn’t be, it tends to be clear that it shouldn’t be - and when it’s not clear from the presentation, we ourselves should know, and a mild amount of this wrongness can be tolerated if we are not confused on morality.
But there are certainly games and movies which go beyond the acceptable. Grand Theft Auto, for example, I think is despicable, not because it is overly graphic but because it involves the player attempting to have fun by pretending to do things which are undeniably bad. But I fail to see a problem with a game like Zelda - Ocarina of Time where you whack evil monsters a few times until they vanish.
So again - look at what it is that we’re supposed to be enjoying, and what drives it uses to make us enjoy it. If we are supposed to be enjoying an action that would be, if real, immoral, that’s a problem. If the drive or desire used to make us enjoy it not appropriate, that’s a problem.
In any case, that is why I think a certain amount of violence is fine movies and games. I know that extreme cases are not fine. It could be that you are only referring to what I am thinking of as intense presentations of violence, but if not I am curious to know why you would think the moderate level of violence is bad.
