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Another post of opinion.
Apr. 19th, 2007 05:11 pmSorry if I ruffled a few people with my last post n.n;; But hey, I wouldn't be me if I didn't open a can of worms every now and then. It gets people talking, and that's the important thing. And anyone who can put forward their point of view in a civil and intelligent manner gets my full respect, whether or not I agree with them :) So, thanks everyone who commented.
I thought I was done with the whole Virginia Tech thing, but I do have one more very small rant to tag onto it, if only because it keeps cropping up everywhere I look. Gamers and movie watchers saw it a mile away... of course violent video games and films have been accused as the culprits for the actions taken by the shooter. And in sense, they have some backing. The correlation between violent video games/movies and certain types of behavior is in fact stronger than the correlation between passive smoking and lung disease and several other scientifically accepted links. HOWEVER, the link is just that. A link. A weak link. It does not in any way mean that people who watch violent movies or play violent games are more likely to go out and commit homicide. It merely means that video games and movies can influence us.
The human mind is incredibly complex. It can be influenced by a huge array of things, including video games and movies. BUT (and the main point is here), the MAJORITY of people will not go on a shooting rampage because of influence from media. It is VERY possible that media affected the shooter's actions... he is seen posing movie-style and even wielding a hammer from a particular movie he is hypothesized to have been familiar with. This important thing to distinguish here is that although his ACTIONS may have been influenced by things he had seen (and that is still only a hypothesis), those things were NOT the root cause of his mental disturbance. He was already mentally unbalanced.
To strike an analogy... some people may have epileptic fits after seeing strobe lighting or flash photography. The lighting triggers the fit, but the lighting is NOT responsible for the underlying condition. Strobe lighting and flash photography do not CAUSE epilepsy, and it would be entirely unjust to blame the lights for the person's underlying condition. The condition is there already in this small percentage of people, and the lights just happen to trigger it. Would we ban all flashing lights from everything just because a tiny minority of people are affected by them? Of course not. We put warnings on movies and rides that have flashing lights, just like we put warnings on movies and games with violent scenes. Of course, warnings don't stop every person with epilepsy from ever seeing flashing lights (many aren't even aware of their condition until it's triggered!), and warnings won't stop every vulnerable or damaged mind from watching violent scenes that might influence them.
Those who commit atrocities MAY have been influenced in their methods by violent games and/or movies, but the media itself cannot be blamed for the underlying psychosis that allows the person to blur the line between behavior that is acceptable, and behavior that is not. We can't censor the world on account of the tiny minority who have mental illness and will copy what they see in movies and games. If you remove the media influences, those people will be influenced by other sources. That's the nature of many mental illnesses... the mind will cling to anything tangible. And it is clear that this young person was perfectly capable of creating his own dark world in his own imaginings.
So, to those who say there is no link between violent media and abnormal behavior, I say that scientific study would disagree. But I also say that the link between the two is not of concern regarding the vast majority of people, and that those who would be affected more severely by such influences are unwell mentally in the first place. We would be foolish to assume that violent media has no effect whatsoever on our minds... but as of right now, there is no evidence to suggest that healthy persons are going to start going on shooting sprees because of what they see in fiction.
I thought I was done with the whole Virginia Tech thing, but I do have one more very small rant to tag onto it, if only because it keeps cropping up everywhere I look. Gamers and movie watchers saw it a mile away... of course violent video games and films have been accused as the culprits for the actions taken by the shooter. And in sense, they have some backing. The correlation between violent video games/movies and certain types of behavior is in fact stronger than the correlation between passive smoking and lung disease and several other scientifically accepted links. HOWEVER, the link is just that. A link. A weak link. It does not in any way mean that people who watch violent movies or play violent games are more likely to go out and commit homicide. It merely means that video games and movies can influence us.
The human mind is incredibly complex. It can be influenced by a huge array of things, including video games and movies. BUT (and the main point is here), the MAJORITY of people will not go on a shooting rampage because of influence from media. It is VERY possible that media affected the shooter's actions... he is seen posing movie-style and even wielding a hammer from a particular movie he is hypothesized to have been familiar with. This important thing to distinguish here is that although his ACTIONS may have been influenced by things he had seen (and that is still only a hypothesis), those things were NOT the root cause of his mental disturbance. He was already mentally unbalanced.
To strike an analogy... some people may have epileptic fits after seeing strobe lighting or flash photography. The lighting triggers the fit, but the lighting is NOT responsible for the underlying condition. Strobe lighting and flash photography do not CAUSE epilepsy, and it would be entirely unjust to blame the lights for the person's underlying condition. The condition is there already in this small percentage of people, and the lights just happen to trigger it. Would we ban all flashing lights from everything just because a tiny minority of people are affected by them? Of course not. We put warnings on movies and rides that have flashing lights, just like we put warnings on movies and games with violent scenes. Of course, warnings don't stop every person with epilepsy from ever seeing flashing lights (many aren't even aware of their condition until it's triggered!), and warnings won't stop every vulnerable or damaged mind from watching violent scenes that might influence them.
Those who commit atrocities MAY have been influenced in their methods by violent games and/or movies, but the media itself cannot be blamed for the underlying psychosis that allows the person to blur the line between behavior that is acceptable, and behavior that is not. We can't censor the world on account of the tiny minority who have mental illness and will copy what they see in movies and games. If you remove the media influences, those people will be influenced by other sources. That's the nature of many mental illnesses... the mind will cling to anything tangible. And it is clear that this young person was perfectly capable of creating his own dark world in his own imaginings.
So, to those who say there is no link between violent media and abnormal behavior, I say that scientific study would disagree. But I also say that the link between the two is not of concern regarding the vast majority of people, and that those who would be affected more severely by such influences are unwell mentally in the first place. We would be foolish to assume that violent media has no effect whatsoever on our minds... but as of right now, there is no evidence to suggest that healthy persons are going to start going on shooting sprees because of what they see in fiction.
