Book: On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

[LOKNLOD]

What desensitizes the rest of the world?

Actual violence? Getting birthed into a 3rd world kittenhole?

[Odin Bravo One]

Actual violence and death is good for desensitizing people to violence and death. Killing does a good job of desensitizing people to killing.

I'm simply trying to sort out the video game theory......if video games are evil and the cause of desensitizing our society to death and killing, and those don't exist in the rest of the world......yet, they bludgeon and stab and rape people to death at rates and in numbers incomprehensible to the western world...........how can it be the video games? How can one honestly believe that this mythical aversion for man killing fellow man actually exists?

That aversion expired with Cain and Able.

And some people are just crazy.

[Slavex]

Bbbbut it's written in a book, it must be true!

I had a discussion with Grossman about this after his lecture up here a few years ago. He got a wild eyed when I told him I disagreed with him. I mentioned things like what we see overseas. His answer to me was "Have you been there, do you understand that our fascination with violence has spread around the world? We are breeding killers right now, and letting them get their training in for free in front of the family TV", that's not word for word, but damn close.

[Tamara]

He got a wild eyed when I told him I disagreed with him.

Dude has built his whole life around this stuff now. It's as central to his identity as Catholicism is to the Pope's.

On a side note, the guy selling morale patches at the 1500 had an appalling amount of "sheepdog" themed ones.

(Also, someone needs to contact Milspec Monkey and let them know it's spelled "Deus Vult" and not "Dues Vult".)

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The video game as a direct cause of violence is not really supported and there is a big debate in the journals about it. There are failures to replicate and indications that the effects are short lived. The dependent measures of induced aggression may lack ecological validity.

What probably happens is that for individuals with underlying serious mental pathologies, violent media, games, studying rampages like Columbine or VT aid in channeling their actions. Such folks study past rampages. Also, media coverage of rampages serve as vicarious reinforcement as they image the damage they will cause. This is important as many rampage folks do plan to commit suicide so they won't see the damage but they get off on the fantasy before hand.

So a general increase in societal violence because of games, media, etc. or pushing a normal person over the edge who engages or watches such stimuli isn't happening. They do channel the small number of extremely pathological individuals.

The idea of desensitization is that we have a natural inhibition for face to face direct violence. It has to be overcome to engage in such. Military or fighting training in part is to do such. In my limited experience as psychologist-FOG in classes, I've seen a self-proclaimed martial artist freeze solid in a scenario and get knocked on his keister. I also saw two women intersect, one froze and the other opened fire. Grossman claims the video game aids in removing the inhibition BUT to go on a rampage you need the twisted mentality first. The game or video isn't causal.

The skills implied in the games - most rampages are close up shots and there's a study somewhere indicating the untrained are reasonable accurate close up and then there is a drastic fall off as distance increases. Might have it at work. I don't think you need the games to have the skill in the average work place or classroom. Shooting little kids hiding in the rest room is not long range shooting.

That's my take on the rampage/media/game literature. The area is confounded with ideological positions and studies that try to make a political point. However, counter arguments are out there.

For your interest, there is a study showing how Biblical passages the invoke the Lord to justify killing induce more aggressive priming than simple prose discussing the same violent action. Of course, the dependent measure is some lab measure and not real violence. But banning religious prose might be suggested along with banning guns, games and media. That study was in the vein of why religious folks who proclaim peace and love happily kill those who believe in a different version of supernatural entity.

[LOKNLOD]

That aversion expired with Cain and Able.

I was going to reference that but didn't have time to write a more detailed reply last night. First set of brothers ever, and one killed the other one. Humans are not adverse to violence. Or any other form of depravity, really. They are inherently pretty vile. We only perceive it as an aversion because we living in a long-standing well-developed society of where our cultural norms inoculate those aversions into people from the beginning. And there are still plenty of folks who find their way outside of those norms...

I think the entire concept of "desensitization" to violence is a mistake based on viewing the history through the lens of our experiences in modern western civilization. What is being observed and incorrectly attributed to individuals being desensitized, is really that the vast majority of our society has been so hyper-sensitized to violence by a general lack thereof and relative safety. Humans have been positively monstrous in killing the ever-livin' kitten out of each other since the earliest annals of recorded history. We are so spoiled by a living in what is probably easily the the safest, securest, softest, most prosperous environment in the history of the world, it is very easy for a large chunk of society to never be exposed to much real violence in any form other than what they see in various media.

That's not natural. And by bucking that natural order, we contribute to the problems. And the problems are many...

[KevinB]

It's all a Malthusian check.

[Tamara]

The parts of the world we refer to as "The West" from the latter half of the 20th Century on are practically unique in the history of the human race in that for the first time, most people living there will never see a dead human outside of a clinical or funerary setting.

Extrapolating the behaviors of people living in such a highly artificial environment and supposing them to be the norm is like assuming that a lab chimp's day is just like the day of a chimp in the Congo.

[John Hearne]

In my research, I was amazed at how adaptable the human animal is to its environment. It is wired to survive - period. We now know that children raised in a "resource constrained" environment will act differently for the rest of their lives - especially in terms of risk taking and impulsiveness.

The really interesting area, but without a lot of data yet, is the importance of what happens when a person is a fetus. There is some evidence that you can tweak someone's character and personality based on what they get as they develop in the womb.

I don't doubt that you may have to train some Westerners raised in the poshest environment in human history to kill fellow humans - with that said, it is not the natural state of man. Think - nasty, short, and brutish.

[Odin Bravo One]

Bbbbut it's written in a book, it must be true!

I had a discussion with Grossman about this after his lecture up here a few years ago. He got a wild eyed when I told him I disagreed with him. I mentioned things like what we see overseas. His answer to me was "Have you been there, do you understand that our fascination with violence has spread around the world? We are breeding killers right now, and letting them get their training in for free in front of the family TV", that's not word for word, but damn close.

This is the premium example of over-educated, and under-experienced.

Well, that........and his entire book.