Can't help but think that perhaps this post is timed in response to the events of the week.
And it reminds me of a thought I had in the midst of the madness: that is, we invade countries for apparently no reason, maiming thousands of our own troops and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. We celebrate violence in movies, music, TV, and games. We have been in a pressure-cooker since 9/11, with a constant, ever-present anxiety about terrorism. We have had a tanked economy for nearly 5 years with massive unemployment and near-constant financial stress for many.
On top of all of this, we have a media that lives for opportunities to incite fear and endlessly highlight the actions of the worst human beings on the planet.
Then, when someone loses it, everyone looks around and asks "what's the matter with that guy?"
It can certainly be argued that FPSes are a drop in the bucket, reflection of society, etc. as some comments on this thread have stated. But, I don't blame the OP for not wanting to risk being a contributor to the problem.
Have we ever had a single era in history without violent entertainment? The most enduring sports in human history are various forms of fighting. The world's literature has always portrayed violence, war, and death.
Violence is also a constant presence in world history. No society has ever fully eradicated violent crime, and no era has ever fully eradicated warfare.
The news media is popular entertainment. Yellow journalism has also been a constant. It's far more cost-effective than honest journalism.
As I've gotten older I've found it's nice from time to time to disengage from the darker parts of reality and enjoy innocent things. But the appeal of violence is an essential part of the human condition.
> Violence is also a constant presence in world history
Actually, it's not constant. It's decreasing.
Check for Steven Pinker on violence. The further into the past you look, the more violence you find —of any kind. Go back to the period where we lived as hunter-gatherers, in Harmony with Nature, and suddenly nearly 2 men in 3 die at the hand of fellow humans.
So, while History does show an everlasting presence of violence, it also shows that this is not hopeless: slowly, steadily, we are making progress. I'd keep an eye out, though: we're not there yet, and each death still is one death too much.
It's a constant presence, but I never said it occurs--in reality--at a constant level. In fact, if anything it serves Pinker's thesis that people are handwringing and agonizing over how terrible violence is, how even imaginary violence is an unthinkable evil one should refuse to contribute to, when for most of human existence it was an everyday fact of life.
Humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 men out of 1,000,000 dies at the hands of another. Hell, humans are never going to be so perfect that 0 out of 1,000,000 doesn't deserve it, either. And I don't even want to live in a world where people are above enjoying a good boxing match or a bloody movie.
I'm not sure the second paragraph is hopeless. Sure we probably don't want a world where we're so perfect, but we also may not need one to prevent violent death. We could for instance imagine something like mechanical guardians that simply prevent any fatal move to ever occur (like, nano-machines in the walls that just spring up to save your life whenever needed).
That does suppose a level of technology that is extremely risky by itself, but provided we solve a few problems, such as Nanotechnology and Friendly AI, it could happen. Heck, we could even reinstate blood sports, only without the "death" part. (Okay, those problems are faar from solved. But I haven given up hope yet.)
I think the actual violence committed for whatever reason - invading countries, blowing up weddings and children with remote drone strikes, keeping prisoners without legal framework in gitmo - these things are several orders of magnitude worse than violent games and movies
Games and movies are merely ways of processing these real world events - all violence begets violence. Those kids we blow up today with drones, one of their brothers, sisters, or even just friends will eventually come back to us. For example, to senselessly kill innocent people at a marathon.
Boston bombings are a good example - the chechen war / rebellion was a bloodbath, fought ruthlessly and largely off the cameras. It just came back to us.
Violence begets violence, throughout the history of humanity. Its up to us to stop the cycle. We cant do much about conflicts in faraway countries - except maybe to stay out of them. But we can do things we are directly responsible for - CIA operations come to mind, and of course the drone war.
I forgot to say - the violence we commit on others affects us just as much as them, the perpetrator is as much a victim as the victim.
I recently read the story of the most efficient sniper in the US military, a man who killed well over 200 people in various US wars around the world. Who shot and killed two armed would be carjackers in Texas in a way that would be fit for a dirty harry movie (shot them with his back turned to them). The cycle was complete when he was himself shot and killed while taking friends shooting. Could it ever have ended another way?
But most of these cycles are much longer, spanning generations.
And it reminds me of a thought I had in the midst of the madness: that is, we invade countries for apparently no reason, maiming thousands of our own troops and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. We celebrate violence in movies, music, TV, and games. We have been in a pressure-cooker since 9/11, with a constant, ever-present anxiety about terrorism. We have had a tanked economy for nearly 5 years with massive unemployment and near-constant financial stress for many.
On top of all of this, we have a media that lives for opportunities to incite fear and endlessly highlight the actions of the worst human beings on the planet.
Then, when someone loses it, everyone looks around and asks "what's the matter with that guy?"
It can certainly be argued that FPSes are a drop in the bucket, reflection of society, etc. as some comments on this thread have stated. But, I don't blame the OP for not wanting to risk being a contributor to the problem.
It starts with one.