I like to think I am an open minded person, and that I am honest with myself, but sometimes, I realize I am full of it. What brings on this sudden jaunt into self-examination you might ask? My stepson has requested a gift for his upcoming birthday that gives me an uneasy queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. He wants an Airsoft gun so he and his friends can go out in the fields and play war games in which they shoot each other with paint pellets while dressed up in fatigues and armed to the teeth with various weapons of destruction. Why should this make me queasy, you might ask? After all I am addicted to playing World of Warcraft, and I love watching action packed adventure movies filled with explosions and car chases! So what is this feeling of unease that creeps up on me anytime I see young children and adolescents begging for toy guns and video games full of war related action? Am I a complete and total hypocrite? In some cases, yeah, I think I am, but I have a justification. Games in which children learn to glorify war and the slaughter of other human beings eventually desensitize them to violence. They have no idea what war really looks like, what human bodies lying in battlefields in various stages of death means. War isn't glorious or glamorous, and it most certainly isn't fun. Just ask any one of our service people who has been forced to experience these things. There is a reason many of our veterans suffer from mental health issues and Post Traumatic Stress.
Why then do I play games like Warcraft? I think I justify it to myself because the story is one of Good versus Evil, and the lines are distinct. There is no distinctly obvious Good versus Evil in Human conflict (well, maybe that could be argued when dealing with psychopathic leaders who engage in genocidal policies). Either way, allowing children to begin to believe that devaluing human life simply because "they are the enemy" isn't good enough. So, no. I won't be buying my stepson an Airsoft Rifle with which he can engage in armed combat with his "enemies", but I will admit you will still be able to find me battling ogres and dragons in Azeroth.
Why then do I play games like Warcraft? I think I justify it to myself because the story is one of Good versus Evil, and the lines are distinct. There is no distinctly obvious Good versus Evil in Human conflict (well, maybe that could be argued when dealing with psychopathic leaders who engage in genocidal policies). Either way, allowing children to begin to believe that devaluing human life simply because "they are the enemy" isn't good enough. So, no. I won't be buying my stepson an Airsoft Rifle with which he can engage in armed combat with his "enemies", but I will admit you will still be able to find me battling ogres and dragons in Azeroth.
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The CookieMomster