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by Arthemus Black

Created on: November 22, 2009   Last Updated: November 23, 2009

Real life violence and video games. Do these terms mean what we think they mean? This is the first question people must ask themselves, when talking about these two things in the same sentence. Are violent video games any less real, than the stuff we see on the evening news?

Is real life violence any more real, than the pixelated blood and gore we see in those games? As technology advances, it is becoming more and more difficult to see the difference between a well animated headshot in Call of Duty 4 and a shaky, covertly circulated camera footage from Iraq on which some random guy is shot in the face.

Yet, somehow we do have the ability to tell the difference, no matter how well animated or designed the video game, or how shaky and blurry the footage really is. This is not an innate, natural ability, this is a learned trait, that we acquire growing up, and that learning process has been disrupted for some time now.

To be able to tell apart real and simulated violence, we must experience both of these in order to learn the differences between them. That's how our brain works. The more we experience these, the more we are able to tell the difference.

In the 90's movies were blamed for violence, because they contained simulated aggression and gore, just like now video games are blamed for the same thing. As kids, we experienced those movies with a very underdeveloped sense of reality.

As soon as we were able to walk and talk, we saw John Rambo mow down an entire army of soldiers in the bloodiest ways possible. We saw aliens bursting out of peoples' chests, we saw Predators skinning humans and hanging them upside down from trees and rooftops. We saw slasher movies and gore flicks chock-full of blood, tearing flesh, mutilation and agonizing death-screams.

We saw people getting maimed, tortured, humiliated and killed in almost life-like and in totally impossible ways. We read comic books, violence, anger and frustration leaking from every page. We played out these experiences using action-figures and role-playing games, and we invented our own stories using these experiences.

By the time we reached the end of puberty, we experienced death, destruction, blood and violence in levels difficult to comprehend. But with pure common sense, education and guidance from our peers and family, we were able to process these experiences and learn to handle them, to put them on the right shelf, so to speak.

We knew the things in movies weren't real, we knew those people didn't really die, and we knew Predators and Aliens don't exist. But we learned this by being exposed to these experiences, the blood, the violence, and all the other sensory sensations and emotions connected to them.

We needed to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, covered in cold sweat, after watching a scary movie. We needed to see naked people getting humiliated, tortured and killed in Clockwork Orange and we needed to see the unimaginable horror of war in Platoon.

We needed to have these monsters under our bed, so we could conquer these fears and learn to handle them. We saw what violence, anger and the dark side of human nature is capable of, and with some help from our peers, we learned to understand these impulses and their consequences.

We learned not to act on these impulses, because we learned what could happen if we do. We are all adults now, and the great majority of us turned out to be alright, despite of the sheer amount of violence and extreme emotions we experienced as kids. Or maybe, in spite of?

Like our immune system, that needs to encounter germs, bacteria and other nasty things in order to develop anti-bodies to fight, conquer and eventually be resistant to these germs, we need to experience violence, blood, anger, nudity and other nasty stuff to be able to handle them.

Scientists say, that we need to consume a certain amount of dirt and grime for our immune system to function properly. The same goes for our mental and emotional wellbeing. We need to experience the whole spectrum of emotions and experiences we could encounter in our lives in order for our mental and emotional "immune system" to work at all.

Studies show, that anti-bacterial soaps, detergents and disinfectants are in fact more dangerous to our health, than they seem. By neutralizing common germs and bacteria, that in greater numbers could cause a real health risk, it undermines our immune system, because it needs constant training in order to keep us resistant.

By taking away our immune system's "target practice", it grows weaker and weaker, and if it encounters a large wave of these bacteria, it wouln't have the proper weapons (anti-bodies) to fight the infection. But today's entertainment and media takes away our mental "target practice" by rigorously restricting content.

The number of people diagnosed with certain allergies, asthma and immune disorders nearly doubled since the 90's, since disinfectants, anti-bacterial detergents, and efficient cleaning materials and tools became widely available. Surely, our homes became much cleaner, but as a result, we are getting much sicker.

Since the birth of ESRB and other rating boards, violent acts associated with entertainment media also skyrocketed, and these rating boards are getting more and more heavy handed in their decisions to try and defend themselves. Movies like Clockwork Orange or Robocop in their original form wouldn't even get the green light now, much less get into the box office.

These boards try to shield us and our youth from violence, brutality, nudity and every other experience and emotion on the extreme side of the spectrum. But not just them, every other entertainment corporation, the government and also the parents do the same. Anything that contains "disturbing" images or sounds is rigorously restricted, so the children and the faint of heart would not be subjected to them.

We can already see the extreme measures some of these "shields" take, like in Germany (green blood anyone?) or Australia (we are not releasing THAT!). But these "shields" do not realize the damage they are causing by being over-protective, by taking away these experiences from our kids.

More often than not, the parents themselves are the last line of defense. More and more parents are getting enraged, screaming at the media and the government openly, if their child, by chance, sees a naked human body or someone getting hurt in a video game or on TV.

It is a natural reaction to protect the offspring from harm, but being over-protective is not good. Nowadays, graphic, all-out violence, harsh language, shouting and swearing, blood or clearly visible injuries are all but absent from movies, sexual acts are censored or only off-screen, merely suggested.

The PG-13 became the golden standard, because parents want to protect their children from "harm", and so do the rating boards, so entertainment companies need to conform to this purified, clean and bland standard if they want to sell anything at all. They are doing the exact same thing to our children's minds what disinfectants do to the immune system.

The rating boards, governments and parents are all trying to be their mental immune systems, but they do not realize the excessive amount of harm they are doing. No matter how protective the parents are, they simply cannot guard their children all the time, it's impossible.

From the real world, violence, brutality, nudity and other explicit content slowly seeps through the cracks, and our children are wholly unprepared to handled them, because of the over-protective nature of their parents, rating boards, government and whatnot. By taking away their chance to confront these things in a protected setting, we are making them vulnerable.

These "shields" are trying to deal with the problem by procrastinating, trying to evade it, hide from it. For God's sake, that's the very definition of NOT dealing with a problem. They know all to well, these kids will experience the nasty stuff sooner or later, but their choice of solution is to try and shield them from "harm" as long as possible, not talking about it, procrastinating, rather than trying to teach these kids to cope with and handle these things.

It's wrong, very wrong, and we are already starting to see the result of this mistreatment. More and more kids are diagnosed with all sorts of mental illnesses and disorders, slapping stickers on everything like "childhood trauma" or "emotional scarring".

While I do believe, that a certain percent of these diagnoses are a legitimate result of mental problems, I think that the vast majority of these are a result of, for a lack of better term, "bad parenting", from parents and every other board, government and company refusing to deal with this issue.

Like the immune system, you need to teach the kids to properly handle real and simulated violence, nudity, gore or any other explicit stuff. If they are not confronted by these in games or movies, they will be in real life sooner or later.

If you leave them to their own devices, kids will seek out the closest source of information on the subject, like other kids, who don't know anything about the stuff either, or the TV, Internet. They will experience nasty things, no matter how the parents or anyone else tries to avert it, and sooner than they expect. Ratings don't matter.

If these kids can't get their 18+ bloody-shooty-sexy games and movies in the store, they will find other means of getting it, kids are crafty like that. Even if these "shields" succeed in purging the entertainment media of all explicit stuff, those kids will grow up, and they will face these mental and emotional challenges. And if they go totally unprepared, disaster could happen.

They will be flooded by a tsunami of explicit images, sounds and emotions, that if not handled, will find their way onto the "wrong shelf" and will cause a myriad of problems, some of which we are starting to see now.

The booming rise in diagnoses like childhood depression, social anxiety, panic attacks, inexplicable phobias and other mental disorders and emotional mis-development, that could've been averted with proper education and parenting.

These "shields" scream the gospel, that video games, or "murder simulator" as they call them, are the cause of all these problems. Wrong! Video games are the very solution! Because it lets kids experience these strong images, sounds and emotions in a protected setting, where it can't hurt them and it doesn't have real consequences.

It let's them put these into context, and it allows the parents and peers to explain and guide them through these experiences, tell right from wrong and real from simulated, so when they are next confronted with these situations, they will be prepared to handle them the right way.

But if these strong emotions and sensations find themselves on the "wrong self", it could create wrong and possibly harmful associations in their minds, and lead to disaster, like going on a murdering spree because of Grand Theft Auto.

There is nothing wrong with violent video games, or movies for that matter. They are harmless fun. The problem is with parents and officials failing or outright refusing to handle the problem and sticking their head in the sand. I don't like to quote the Bible, but there is a passage in it that just drives this point home.

Give the man a fish, and he is fed for a day, teach him how to fish and he will be fed for the rest of his life. But what if you are not there to give a fish to the man every single day? If he doesn't know any better, he will die, right? If you shield your kids from violence and explicit stuff, they will be protected for some time, but you can't be there every minute of the day.

However, if you teach them how to cope with and handle these things, they will be able to protect themselves. Video games are a prime instrument to help this process. Think about it...

Learn more about this author, Arthemus Black.
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