video game violence
polycounter lvl 18
We all know that the argument "video games makes kids violent" is a huge crock of bullshit.
what rarely comes up is the following question, "if it isn't video games, then what is it?"
well, recently i watched a documentary on glasgow gangs.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-QEgYkuVE[/ame]
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwMy4we-28&feature=related[/ame]
what these videos show, is that the recreational violence
clearly is a combination of teenage parents, poverty, and high unemployment rates.
they've got nothing better to do, so they drink, do drugs, and kill eachother.
what rarely comes up is the following question, "if it isn't video games, then what is it?"
well, recently i watched a documentary on glasgow gangs.
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-QEgYkuVE[/ame][ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwMy4we-28&feature=related[/ame]what these videos show, is that the recreational violence
clearly is a combination of teenage parents, poverty, and high unemployment rates.
they've got nothing better to do, so they drink, do drugs, and kill eachother.
Replies
But yeah, I 100% believe that it's the result of poverty+unemployment. Plus the fact that drugs are illegal, so it generates a nice business for a lot of people, which then perpetuates the situation.
Seems to me like you can fix the entire situation by just legalizing drugs. Marijuana at the very least, if you're a person who still believes drugs in general should be illegal. A lot of these people who are now considered hardcore criminals, would actually be entrepreneurs if weed was legal.
yes, you only need to look as far as the alcohol prohibition during the 1920s to see how making drugs illegal fuels organized crime.
Yeah, if by 'fix' you mean create a whole new set of problems by 'solving' one.
They'd still be violent criminals, who kill and maim for entertainment - they'd just be doing it while high (if they're not already), without fear of any legal recourse, if they have any fear of the laughably-ineffectual 'justice' system to begin with.
I said legalize drugs, not legalize murder. Not sure how you got that.
The documentary was about gang violence. How would legalizing drugs do anything to solve that? Do you honestly believe that legalizing drugs would solve poverty and unemployment?
You might want to re-read my post.
Legalizing drugs has nothing to do with those specific kids directly. If they want drugs they can get them now.
Like I said in my first post, it's poverty+unemployment that's the big problem there. Drugs are just an added "bonus", and we can take that edge off.
On topic: Violence against others being recreational for some shows how little humans in general have evolved in the last 7000 years.
Oh well, how can one fix people like this? Fighting violence with violence breeds violence, but you can't talk with these people either. So how about forcing them into a coma via a gas or something? That's not directly violent.. and it removes them from the street. Then when they expire we dump them in the ocean or something, PROBLEM SOLVED
/sarcasm.
omg, really?!
When I see folks playing games and taking glee in finding new ways to kill innocent people I admit that I find it disturbing. I know it's not real, and I know most of these people aren't going to go out and do that in real life, but I can't believe there is no effect on their psyche somehow.
It's a matter of developing games responsibly and for players to enjoy games responsibly. Unfortunately there is no way agree on what is responsible behavior.
I talked to people who really avoid to consume violent contents as much as possible and they find even small degrees of violence (depicted in your everyday CSY-Episode for example) very disturbing. Whereas people that are used to a lot of violence, be it movies or games or what ever, are often not very impressed by contents that I'd rather don't watch.
And the same goas for violence experienced in real life. If you grow up in a district where people get stabbed every other night what are the people expected to act like. It everyday business.
So in general I totaly agree that a major factor for violence is poverty, unemployment and education but an extensive consumption of violent contents will also lower your inhibition threshold for accepting certain degress of violence. Depending on your surrounding (like poverty, unemployment and education of the lack of those things) this can be a problem or mean really nothing for your everyday life and how you act with other people.
And I'm sure that depending on the situation that people are confronted with, their degree of accepting violence will be major factor how they going to solve the problem they are facing.
Also: I don't see how legalizing drugs will solve this issue. People deal drugs because its easy money. No matter how high unemployment rates are, there is always room for people dealing with drugs. Anyway, Legalizing certain if not all drugs won't change anything. people will still be dealing with those substances that are not legalized. Or they will just have issues with funding their drug addiction. I mean just leaglizing will get you no where. The people are unemployed, poor and uneducated. As if they could afford all the drugs they'd like to use. And if they could how much other issues would arise through this solution.
drugs are cheap to produce, legalizing drugs will cause drug prices to plummet.
also, legalizing drugs means you can tax the drugs, and that tax money can be used to benefit drug addicts. you reduce the chances of STDs being spread through dirty needles,
you decriminalize drug addicts as well, and because of the marked down prices of the drugs, addicts don't have to steal to get to the next shot.
the enormous sums of money going into the "war on drugs" could be spent elsewhere,
and the manpower used to fight drug-related crimes could be used to solve other crimes.
selling of drugs to minors could be controlled similar to how alcohol is controlled,
the heaviest drugs could be prescription drugs only, for people with heavy addictions.
oh, and this: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
He was speaking about Marijuana. If your trying to imply weed increases aggression. Then you need to go back and hit the books before making any decisions.
At least here in the US it could help slightly with Poverty as how many people do we have in prisons or got started in a bad way from pot possession? Those people wouldnt have the stigmatization of a criminal record to move up if pot was legal. We could also have some nice new tax revenue.
(Not a pot smoker)
Using the phrase 'at the very least' implies that Bigjohn wasn't just talking about weed, and no, obviously I wasn't implying that smoking pot makes you more aggressive.
Legalizing marijuana still wouldn't do anything to solve the kind of violent behaviour depicted in the documentary posted originally.
Yeah, I was talking about all drugs. Just an extra emphasis on weed cause it's a hot topic right now. Plus, there are lots of people who are for legalizing marijuana, but still against legalizing the other drugs, though I'm not sure how that logic works, but that's off-topic.
I guess I should have qualified what I said with that I'm talking about the US. I can't really know what's going on in Scotland, other than videos like that. But here in the US legalizing drugs, marijuana especially, would do a great deal to help with gang violence. In fact, I believe it's the number1 thing that will help it.
But yeah, I don't know how effective it would be in the specific example portrayed in those videos. Although I bet it will help in at least some of the cases.
You are right with this one. But beside the effects you've described: Do you really expect the people in the documentary to be high and peacefully?
You stated it your self: Main problem seems to be poverty and unemployment and a lack of good expectations for you own future. Those things lead or at least support drug abuse.
By legalizing drugs you do the second step before the first. You would just leave them with the problems that lead to their drug addiction.
If drugs are so dirt cheap to produce and would be sold at low prices you can't expect to make enough money from it to even partly fund projects which are needed enhance the situations in those districts.
You can talk about legalizing certain (weak) drugs as one little step to promote a change in the situation. But the this alone will not change the issues that lead the people to drug addiction. More important and especially very difficult is to lessen the factors we already stated: poverty and unemployment.
The people in the video don't seem to freak out because they are longing for drugs they can't get their hands on. They even don't fight for territory or access to possible customers for drug deals. They fight because fighting is all they know.
no, and why should i. people are different. drug addicts are people.
SOME drug addicts will stop stealing, SOME addicts will feel its a giant weight off their shoulders not being a criminal anymore. SOME addicts just wants to be a normal person, and not a burden on society.
legalizing drugs is part of a solution, it is not the whole solution.
marijuana on the other had is no worse than alcohol, and right now all that drug money is going into Mexico fueling gang violence.
Drugs being legal or illegal has nothing to do with you getting into a fight with a person using them. People can get them just as easy, or even easier, if they're illegal. Case in point, my little brother who's in highschool is the one that buys weed for us, but I'm the one that has to go buy him liquor at the store when he wants it. Drug dealers don't ask for IDs. And you can't sue them if the stuff you got is bad.
Besides, the point is that prohibition is wrong on two fronts. It doesn't work, and it's immoral.
People said that alcohol destroys people, so they banned it and it gave rise to a black market. It was still available, only the money went into bad people's pockets. Same thing now with drugs and the cartels.
And at the end, what's so wrong with people doing what they want? Seems like people always wish that whatever it is they're not doing to be illegal. They banned alcohol, guns, weed, comic books, porn, drugs, gay marriage, etc, all because the people doing the banning didn't care for the activity. It's the same thing with violent video-games now. I don't see how one can say that "X is fine, but Y, Y is taking it too far."
Gotta respect other people's way of life, no matter if you like it or not. In my personal opinion anyway.
The reality is that the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the law in the US that establishes prescription requirements) is mostly used in order to outlaw competition from foreign drug manufacturers.
We're not all American, you know :P
Highly recommend.
Also, this is a pretty interesting doco' focusing on prescription drug abusers and the industry of 'doctors' who supply them.
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