Do we so easily sacrifice our morality at the altar of entertainment?
What does it profit us as a community if our children practice immorality as they develop their minds?
In America, it is accepted that our children can revel blindly in the crossroads of adrenaline, liberty and an immorality unheard of even twenty years ago.
- How does empathy die? How is empathy’s development stunted? How do our smart children go wayward with their ‘teeth set on edge?’
- In an era mass shootings can we separate what and how we invest our energy and fathom not that our investments bear fruit into and that which becomes our society?
The number one selling video game of all time has reportedly made over a billion dollars in its first day of sales, and in its latest installment, the graphic circumstances of mayhem unrestricted are released with such visual technicolor and geographic exactitude as never seen before. Though it has been in circulation for almost twenty years, Grand Theft Auto, a video game that allows the main character to access unlimited ammunition and guns, even grenade launchers without restriction leaves questions as to what kind of mental training is being imparted to the hapless developing child playing the video game. This is not the ‘Legend of Zelda’ from the original gaming console, ‘Nintendo’ of the 1980’s, but a visual masterpiece of excess allowing the the video game player to enter a world where it is the norm of the game to traverse a the city of Los Angeles on a killing spree allowing players to operate without impunity, including law enforcement officials, women and elderly people walking the street. Nothing is out of bounds in this game. The main character can ride off after a gory battle scene and, if able to put enough distance between them and trailing law enforcement, enjoys newfound freedom again. It does not matter that the person controlling the character just demolished three patrol cars, killed multiple officers at point blank range and then proceeded to drive away in a stolen vehicle. Given time, the video game has a way of resetting the conditions back to ‘normality.’
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When I was younger, my grandfather and I would play chess. I would visit him at his home and he would have me bring the wooden board out with the specially crafted pieces. I must have played him hundreds of times, losing every game. He had an uncanny ability to create board dynamics which went beyond my ability to unravel and breakthrough to place him in checkmate. I would ask to be driven to his home on school days and weekends on the off-chance to see if I could get the better of him in a subsequent match-up. He would just laugh in his calm, confident self, like a villain, gently mocking and teasing my constant bad moves before bringing out a knight, pawn ambush which would sideline part of my game. His bishop would create a ‘block,’ allowing his queen to finish me off. A student (through book study) of renowned Chess Grand Master ‘Capablanca,’ my maternal grandfather’s gift to me was his time and intellect. The time we spent together across each other is seared into my heart and mind. I was like the apple of his eye. I remember playing so much chess that I soon was thinking with a ‘chess mind’ thought my daily life. It is a strange, but altogether interesting mental model. One begins to entertain multiple perspectives, paths and possible endings to everything. It is as if a mindfulness captures the imagination, propelling it to think through its choices and placing it in a state of thoughtful calculation, like a surfer letting some waves pass over as he or she sets themselves at the right place to catch their chosen wave. The ‘chess mind’ is something to covet. The developing child’s mind benefits from the ability to think big and inter-dynamically.
That in which we invest our mental and physical energy into begins to set thinking patterns which place weight on our decision making process and overall daily perspective.
Many years ago, a young one I knew recounted how after playing the other best-selling video game of all-time, ‘Call of Duty,’ the young one began to dream of being a sniper. This person had been playing the game so much that it permeated and overwhelmed his thinking, and yet, the young one, smart and well-raised, made mindfulness of it and realized what was happening. This person eventually stopped playing the game. It was not in this person’s nature to ignore the relevance of the dream as a mere dream, but to see it as a harbinger of what the mind was swimming in. The gravity of this reality becomes ever so much more powerful with younger people, than with full-grown adults. This young one was able to self-drive themselves out of this immersion, but what of other children?
- Can every child who plays a video game as this have that epiphany and be able to walk away from it?
- Do we leave children to their own devices and trust that they can make the right decisions on such matters, even as they are forming their sense of what is right and wrong?
- What is the social impact upon the developing mind that grows up playing such graphic, realistic violent video games?
- Does killing law enforcement officers in a game like Grand Theft Auto shift the perspective of children on how they see real-life servant leaders who serve and protect?
- What message is sent to the developing child’s mind and heart who plays a video game where they control a character who has unlimited and unrestricted abilities to kill innocent people?
- Do we strengthen or void the ability to feel empathy for others in assuming such roles in these graphic games?
- Does a culture that is indoctrinated to not value human life at its conception finds it easier to devalue life at all other stages?
- What are we saying to one another as to the kind of society we want to live in when we uphold through outspoken voices and in silence the devaluing of human life?
These are real issues. In America and throughout the world, video games have largely become the ‘thing to do’ for many children, especially those who live in urban areas. Video games are not evil, but Grand Theft Auto is. It is an incredible game unlike any other. The profits created from it surely have given power and position to its creators, establishing them as pseudo-geniuses in the worst way possible; destruction of our children from the inside out.
These are the ways to bring down a nation. Place profit and entertainment first and social responsibility last. These are the steps and these are the paths that lead to social degradation: Stop and distort empathy from an early age. Dehumanize one another. Make this process trivial. Dismiss those who sound the alarm and watch over us.
Their is a real spiritual and intellectual battle in this land and across the world for the kind of direction we want to move in. The United States of America, a country made up of many peoples, sets the moral compass, for better or for worse, for the rest of the planet. We then find ourselves lately at a constant crossroads where we are choosing through mindful awareness, as much as through silent unconsciousness, the kind of world we want to live in. Our country does not have to be perfect, but what we do towards the protection of the minds and hearts of our children will have far-lasting consequences into the future. Empathy matters. Social responsibility matters. Respecting one another matters. What we put into our minds and practice with our hearts matter. Not all lawful things are expedient and best for us. Though the video game, ‘Grand Theft Auto’ is rated for adults, parents can purchase the game and allow their children to play it. The children demand it. The liberty of critical thinking sinks for the liberty of unrestrained immorality as we look the other way. Again, developing minds are not powerful enough to choose wisely for themselves and are at risk of having seared consciousnesses and indifferent moral compasses through the practice of such time investments. I question how cop-killing in a video game skews the mentality of a child as they see these servant leaders in the community? Does it desensitize children to valuing the police officers life less? Do these servant leaders become expendable pigs? Is this what we want to to raise up for children? Is this the community of individuals we are raising?
As a whole nation, the United States of America could do nothing more to sink itself if it gave a copy of this video game to every child. Instead of learning how to exercise liberty and freedom, the enjoyment of liberty without any ethics becomes an anchor bringing down minds that should be immersed in healthier and appropriate time investments. Parents and teachers are on the front lines of defending the liberty and freedoms we enjoy. This is done through critical thinking. The people who express themselves in written and spoken word articulately are at the forefront of the national conversation that directs our nation. Parents and teachers are tasked as the very instruments that raise up our children to strengthen freedom and liberty. We do this in using our intellects critically and consistently participating in our democracy. It is not something fought for in the American revolution over two hundred and fifty years ago, or only on the fields of Afghanistan today, but something that must be fought for daily right in our very communities. Each person’s voice matters. Especially since so few are raised up to be magnanimous forces of freedom and liberty. The American flag is de-threaded in leaving the children to their own devices like this, and our hearts weaken and do not reach full-growth when the collective message we are purchasing at the cash register and though our silence to such matters is to ‘keep calm and carry on.’
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