This is hardly concerning video games at all even though they are the impetus of my ire currently. My question is a simple one; how the hell do people think that humanity became the dominant species on this planet? Don't bother answering, I'll tell you. Sex and violence in copious amounts. Plain and simple. We did not barter, negotiate or hold hands and sing happy joyful songs with all the other animal species. To be blunt, we killed and we fucked constantly. It gets no more complicated than that.
We get pleasure from watching things burn. It thrills us to tear down that Lego house, more than we got from sitting there and working all the little pieces together bit by bit. We go crazy and get completely stupid over sex, with whomever it is, and there is a reason for this. It. Feels. Good. No more justification is needed, because this is ingrained into our DNA.
To say that there is some external stimuli we can point to and say "There! That is what did it! That is the source of all of our violent tendencies and should be utterly destroyed!" is at the very least, ludicrous and ridiculous. Would you like the culprit? Look beneath your skin. Deeper. Deeper. No, you can't borrow my electron microscope, but you'll need it none the less. What makes us violent is our very nature, our core. Those little things we call genes. That is the monster. It is what allows Tom, the mild mannered bank clerk, to turn around and wrest the weapon from a man three times his size. It's also, when twisted, what turns a picked on little kid into a mass murder of frightening proportions.
Genetics alone aren't to blame. That's only the tip. Were they the be all and end all of the equation, we would all be ripping into each other but for our need to be social. Another part of the problem is instability in a mental sense and herein lies the fundamental problem, the crux as it were.
A person who's mentally unbalanced will come unhinged for potentially any reason. Politics, books, movies, games, music, chihuahuas, you name it, it will trigger someone somewhere. Recall the case of Mark David Chapman. Yes, the man who shot Lennon. People at the time believed that the book Catcher in the Rye was the cause, including Chapman himself. I've read the book, have a copy sitting and looking at me right now in fact. It's depressing, it's slow, and it's boring. Sure there's a couple of witty lines that can be pulled from it, but really, to me the book just sucked.
Initially Columbine (how I loathe that word with every fiber of my being) was blamed on music such as Marilyn Manson. Again, his music sucks. I can count on one hand the number of songs I would bother giving a repeat listen to. His stage persona is bullshit, boring, and the dead horse of all rock music. Another scapegoat was found in violent video games, which continue to be a predominate whipping boy for people who are shocked and outraged.
Ok, so we have Chapman and those two retards in their school. So let's ban books, music and video games and the world will be safe, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. About 16 people dead at that. Charles Whitman shot 48 people in one day, killing sixteen of them, two at home, and fourteen at his school. His reason? He didn't have one other than just being crazy, depressed and suicidal. So he didn't have the inspiration of horrible books, horrible music, or virtual murder to blame. Nothing set him off and he went off anyways.
So what's the lesson in all this? Simple, my friend, very simple. Unbalanced people will do terrible things. There is nothing that can be done about this. We could ban all creative mediums and people who were coming off their hinges would still come off their fucking hinges regardless of laws, morals, or the outrage of the public.
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