quote: Do my assertions need to fit a higher standard than yours?
Nope. But they also don’t get any higher credibility than mine. Equal playing field here, I don’t find your explanation convincing, and thus I disagree that you’ve “established pretty well” that the impact of sexual imagery and violent imagery is categorically different.
quote:
"Violence is heroic" is not a true statement at all, in my view, any more than "Sex is fun" is actually a true statement in yours.
In my view, “sex is fun” is a true statement. If I’d said, “all sex is fun” or “every possible expression of sex is healthy,” or “everyone should go out and have as much sex as they possibly can” those would not have been true statements. And fun is, of course, a subjective category. But, in general, I think most people agree that sex is pretty fun, so I have no qualms about asserting it.
quote: What I disagree with is your lumping of all violence into a single category, and attempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Ah, but I’m not throwing anything out. I go to see movies and plays with both violence and sex in them and, depending on the context, I think both can have redeeming social value. What I disagree with is the idea that sex is somehow such an all-powerful trigger that seeing something sexually arousing is dangerous to a person’s chastity.
quote:What does worry me about violence in movies and video games is much more subtle. What if they encourage people to be more likely to look to violence as a solution to problems? What if even “good guy” games that let the user play a hero make the player more likely to think of heroes as people with guns and less likely to see people who excel at mediation and diplomacy as heroic?
I think that games and other entertainment can reinforce these ideas, but really I think that the fact that some violent figures are portrayed as heroic in games is really more a symptom than a cause. Our culture--and the cultures that we grew out of--have always glorified righteous violence. Consider some familiar heroic figures: a WWII veteran (at least, this is how they are usually portrayed in current media), a Knight of the Round Table, Achilles. All of these are figures of violence. It's not a new thing.
Of course, this doesn't speak to whether or not violence should be portrayed as heroic, just that it always has been.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Tom, I wasn't addressing the issue of sin at all in the latest round of essays.
Scott, most comedy is based on pain of one kind or another.
Storm ...
quote:From the perspective of the individual, I wouldn't call it a safety net. Quite the opposite, in fact.
...
I think that's true for some people, but I think a lot of them rein them in because they know they're wrong.
I think you're missing my point. We have social constraints, some of them very powerful (the law, the police) and others based on culture or personal morality, which hedge against violent acts, while sex is much less restrained in Western society, both by law and (more recently) by culture and personal morality. Sexual imagery has more freedom to alter human behavior because human behavior is less constrained by other factors.
quote:Depending on locale, we have laws that govern an extremely large variety of sexual behaviors, from what people can wear, to who they can sleep with, to whom they can live with, to whom they can marry.
I submit that public control of sexual behavior is in the decline in our society, while public control of violent behavior is remaining constant or climbing. Sure, there are reactions to this, some of them very public and threatening to proponents of the decline, but a rough comparison of modern sexual attitudes compared with those of twenty or thirty years ago reveals a trend much more pronounced than, say, global warming over the same time period
I am not even attempting to argue about whether this decline is "good" or "bad". All I'm saying is, the list of things for which a personal receives public censure is shrinking.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:In my view, “sex is fun” is a true statement. If I’d said, “all sex is fun” or “every possible expression of sex is healthy,” or “everyone should go out and have as much sex as they possibly can” those would not have been true statements.
You know, those extended quotes are exactly how I wrote my original post, and then I edited it because I thought you'd get the point without picking me apart for my word choice
The point WAS that the fun of sex and the heroism of violence are both dependent on context. We more often use the word "sex" to refer to the healthy, consensual act, so it is easy to say "Sex is fun!" and not give any negative connotations, despite the fact that throughout time, there has been a lot of horrific and non-fun sex. Basically, it's a tautological statement. You feel free to say "Sex is fun!" because you largely define the word "sex" to include only the fun versions.
With the word "violence" we have no such connotative shorthand, so I can't say "Violence is fun!" or "Violence is heroic!" without someone bringing up a million counterexamples. However, just as sex in the right context is fun, so also is violence fun or heroic or healthy to experience within certain contexts.
quote:Ah, but I’m not throwing anything out. I go to see movies and plays with both violence and sex in them and, depending on the context, I think both can have redeeming social value. What I disagree with is the idea that sex is somehow such an all-powerful trigger that seeing something sexually arousing is dangerous to a person’s chastity.
I'm beginning to think that everyone is just reading into my essays what they expect to hear from a Mormon I'm not trying to argue whether or not sexual imagery leads to sin. I only used the word "sin" in my initial essay because it was the word Tom was already using. That post would have meant the exact same thing without the word, and the later posts have nothing to do with the subject.
My point is that we all observe the way that sexual imagery affects the human psyche, leading to an altered state of mind, feelings of desire, and somewhat "imitative" behavior, if you can call it that. Some people try to make the analogy that therefore, violent imagery also leads to "imitative" behavior, based on the same principle. My point is that the two function in completely different ways in the human psyche, and that the analogy is deeply flawed. Violent imagery does not cause a lust reaction in normal humans, and therefore, its effects must be studied as a distinct phenomenon from those of sexual imagery. I then went on to suggest what I thought those effects were.
At no point have I tried to make this about whether or not sexual pornography is bad. We've had that argument before, and I'm bored by it. I'm much more interested in quashing the endless accusations, based on faulty premises, which are made against the game industry, saying that we cause violence in children, when in my view, this could not be further from the truth.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I don't think these games "cause" anything. (Except maybe ADD and obesity when overused, but that's the parents' fault.) However, I don't think violence in games is healthy or wholesome, and I think it's an expression of an unhealthy society and "the world". As the LDS card was played in this subject, I think we should note that while individuals who are LDS have differing opinions of this, just as they do of R-rated movies, our prophets have specifically asked us to limit our exposure to such explicit media as much as possible. I don't think the medium makes a difference.
quote: "Do my assertions need to fit a higher standard than yours?"
Nope. But they also don’t get any higher credibility than mine. Equal playing field here, I don’t find your explanation convincing, and thus I disagree that you’ve “established pretty well” that the impact of sexual imagery and violent imagery is categorically different.
I guess I was just frustrated that your response seemed to be "Well, you haven't proven it to me yet, so I don't believe you, and I think THIS ..." without much of an actual attempt to refute my argument. I mean, if you want to argue past me, that's fine, you can do that without posting [that last comment was in jest, I'm not actually suggesting that you should stop]
I mean, I never said sexual arousal is a bad thing. It would be a bad thing if something similar to sexual arousal happened in response to violent imagery, and encouraged violent behavior, but it doesn't. So when you responded with your "sexual arousal isn't a bad thing" post, I felt like you had completely missed the point of my argument, or were refusing to refute it. So I made my claim of having "established" something to point out to you what I thought the main, unaddressed point of my argument was
Anyway, so, in that post, you said that you found the promotion of the idea of violent heroism disturbing. I'm curious, where do you expect us to get our soldiers, our police, our secret service, if we never promote the meme that valor through risking one's life in a violent situation is something to be admired?
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I think I usually say that when either (1) I'm really saying something that I think is common knowledge, like "Sharks have blood lust," or (2) someone hasn't refuted a point I've made, and I want to use that point to bolster another.
If you disagree with something I think I've "established", feel free to say so. I don't mean to sound imperious or anything ...
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Well, I've established that blood, killing, and murder don't invoke a hunter's bloodlust response like that we see in sharks.
quote: Static violence involves images of sadism, flayed bodies, blood spatters, spasming corpses ... the stuff that would turn on a shark. This kind of imagery fills humans with revulsion, though sometimes we conquer that revulsion with a desire to appear brave, or with a curious fascination with the macabre. Humans who have a shark-like desire to kill might get some strange satisfaction from these images, but most humans react with fear, disgust, or with a defense mechanism against fear and disgust.
The market for what you call "static violence" seems to be large enough that you can't simply label everyone who enjoys it abnormal.
Not having played Punisher, I can't say for sure, but it seems using powertools on your opponents seems to be crossing the line into "static violence". So are your terms dependent on the idea that it takes some cognitive function to appreciate the danger in "active violence"? Whereas "static violence" is viscerally horrifying on the limbic level?
I think the concern I have with immersing oneself in violence is the desensitization that occurs. If something is supposedly frightening on a limbic level, but one gets exposed to it repeatedly, the brain does upregulate. This is good. I'm glad I don't spaz every month the way I first did when I started bleeding regularly. But I don't want to learn to accept the image of someone using a drill on someone's head.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Hmm...What exactly are we trying to figure out here, whether graphic depictions of violence are benign? I can't really see how they can be. I don't think that the images CAUSE violent behavior, but they do send various messages to the viewer: - glorifying it. - desensitizing - encouraging unrealistic expectations (good guys shoot straight, bad guys can't hit anything; you can "die" multiple times; etc.) - violence this way equals glory. Violence this other way equals ignominy. - enemies are meant to be killed - it's best to shoot first in many situations
I mean, really, the list could go on and on. And we could argue a long time about whether those messages actually "get through" and at what age kids (or adults) can be expected to sort out the fantasy from the reality; game from truth, etc.
It is an interesting question about "where do we get our soldiers..."
Hmm...I wonder what would happen if everyone stopped training their kids that these things are noble. I mean are they noble? Is it noble to go off and fight and kill another human because your government tells you that the person is bad? I mean, the average soldier has no direct experience with a person from the enemy camp.
The noble warrior meme has quite a few hangers on in terms of memes. The demonize the enemy meme. The dehumanize the enemy meme. The invincibility meme. The safety of the folks back home meme. and on and on.
When we deconstruct that rather complex emotion, it often doesn't make sense -- at least not to me. Where's the true logic of nobility in fighting Iraqis or Vietnamese communists. In retrospect, our government has come to terms with the Vietnamese communists... Couldn't they have done that before all the death and destruction?
Or is it that we are destined to always square off and fight the other tribe first and then merge or befriend, or at least tolerate?
Is there really a trigger inside humans that puts us into fighting mode so readily?
Compared to all that, I think sex and sexual imagery are relatively simple.
I also think that part of growing up is learning to control ones urges when expressing them would be inappropriate. Sex or violence, or just about any other behavior, occurs in a context. Just as violence might actually be an appropriate response in some situations, sex is also appropriate in some situations. And in other situations these things are inappropriate and not welcomed by society. Whether we're talking actual crime or just misbehavior.
I can see how in some cultures sexual sins are considered the worst possible. I can see how in other cultures, the violent behaviors would be most abhorred.
I don't think it's worth while trying to pin a "this one's worse" label anywhere in this.
The question is, seems to me, whether graphic depictions encourage inappropriate action on the part of the viewer. To a very large extent, the answer is going to depend on your culture's definitions of what is and is not appropriate.
Edit to add: Example: If self-gratification is, for one culture, a grave and horrible sin, then certainly anything that arouses sexual feelings and causes pleasurable sensations in the genitalia is going to be a BIG problem. Another culture that has, one may venture to say, a more naturalistic view of sexual feelings, a stray erection here or there is no cause for panic. And when little Johnny starts spending to much time in the bathroom, the parents are just going to see it as his passing into adolesence and take it as a clue to start being more explicit in their ongoing discussions of proper sexual behavior, how to treat a girl and oneself with respect, how not to end up in a difficult situation, etc.
For a child of that first couple, I can see how a stray breast is going to be a serious issue and one that might send parent and child both into some major angst. The child of the second couple might fantasy about it and act in ways he'd probably not want to discuss in an open forum...but so what? It's not like his parents aren't aware of it, and watching and coaching, encouraging etc.
Kids have to integrate into the culture they are going to be a part of as adults. If that culture includes repressing sexual urges, they have to learn that. If that culture channels sexual urges into safe and naturalistic paths, the kids have to learn that. Nobody wants to raise their kids to be considered sexual deviants in their own culture.
Sharks are a perfectly fine group of species. I'm not really sure what you're trying convey with this "blood lust" stuff, but a shark is just a shark. Popular misconceptions and hollywood stereotypes aren't really good a good basis for analogies to human behavioral triggers.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Geoff, I realized how prententious my last statement was-- honestly, I smirk too when the little badgers sqeak and squawk and run around flailing their arms.
quote:Scott, most comedy is based on pain of one kind or another.
There is a big difference between violence and tragedy, though. And I don't really find slapstick all that funny.
The more I think about this topic, the more uncomfortable I am with my current attitude toward violence.
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