I've heard a lot of talk over the years (writes the nineteen year old), about the excessive and increasing violence in our culture. As a history major, it's my firm belief that that argument is, as far as I can tell, entirely, absolutely and completely wrong.

Are video games violent? Television? Movies? Absolutely. Only someone who lived in a cave wouldn't know that. The thing is, it seems that the increase in violence in those industries is a independent of a decrease in violence in our everyday lives.

Sure, I could be murdered, mugged, or otherwise attacked, but the odds are, I won't be. Even more impressively, it's entirely possible, if I desire it, that the closest I'll ever come to actual physical danger is playing a video game. You don't have to go back that far in history to find eras where literally no one had the sort of protections that we take for granted. Kings were executed, emperors deposed, popes killed, or banished and for the ordinary people, the great masses, their lives included violence on an almost daily basis, from enemy aristocrats in wartime and from their own aristocrats in peacetime.

I'm not saying that violence in video games has taken the place of violence in real life, but speaking historically, except for MAYBE the last century, almost everyone would experience violence far more graphic than anything in video games, in their own lives.

All this is not to say that there aren't games which go too far, or that there shouldn't be more games without violence. Personally, one of my favorite games was, and is, "The Incredible Machine" which had no violence at all. Consider "The Sims" for another example of games without violence.

In other words, we have a rating system for games, we should enforce it and relax, just a hair. Historically, if your kid reaches eighteen without dying of disease, famine, violence, then you're way ahead of the pack.

Learn more about this author, Evan Carden.
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