On the influence of modern computer games: Don't teach children to kill

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Retired Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman co-authored a book with Gloria de Gaetano entitled Don't Teach Our Children to Kill. We will declare a campaign against violence on TV, in movies and computer games. " After hearing the colonel speak at the "Shock Violence" conference sponsored by the New Jersey Psychological Association, Air weekly reporters interviewed him.

- Let's start with your book with a rather provocative title - "Don't Teach Our Children to Kill." Please tell us a little about it and what prompted you to take it.

- To do this, you must first remember about my first book. It was about how to make killing psychologically more acceptable … not for everyone, of course, but for the military. At the end, there was a small chapter, which said that the techniques used in the army to train soldiers are now replicated without any restrictions for the children's audience. This aroused very, very great interest then. The book began to be used as a textbook all over the world: in law enforcement agencies, and in the army, and in peacekeeping programs.

Well, then I retired and returned home. This was in February 1998. And in March of the same year in our town, two boys, 11 and 13 years old, opened fire and killed 15 people. And then I was just conducting a training in a group of psychiatrists, and I was asked to take part in the interrogation of teachers. Hot on the heels, so to speak, just 18 hours after they were at the epicenter of the worst school massacre in American history.

As a result, I realized that it was no longer possible to remain silent, and spoke at several conferences dedicated to the issues of war and peace. And then he wrote an article "Our children are taught to kill." She was received surprisingly well. This indicated that people are open to discussing this topic.

So I conceived a new book by hiring Gloria de Gaetano, one of the leading experts in the field, to co-author. A year later, when the Littleton High School massacre took place, the book was ready.

- In the first chapter of your book, it is unambiguously made to understand that all any serious medical and other research carried out over the past 25 years shows a close connection between the exposure of violence in the media and the growth of violence in society. Could you tell us more about this?

- It is important to emphasize here that we are talking about VISUAL images. After all, written speech by a child under 8 is not fully perceived, it is, as it were, filtered out by reason. Oral speech begins to be truly perceived after 4 years, and before that the cerebral cortex filters information before it reaches the center that controls emotions. But we're talking about VISUAL images of violence! Their child is able to perceive as early as a year and a half: to perceive and begin to imitate what he saw!That is, at a year and a half, aggressive visual images, no matter where they appear - on a TV screen, in a movie or in computer games - penetrate through the organs of vision into the brain and directly enter the emotional center.

The composition of the research groups is amazing. At the end of the book, we list the discoveries in this area in chronological order. This issue has been addressed by the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Mental Health, etc., etc. There is an extensive study by UNESCO. And last week I got hold of materials from the International Committee of the Red Cross showing that the pervasive cult of violence - especially the terrible, barbaric methods of waging modern warfare - is directly related to the propaganda of violence in the media. A 1998 study by UNESCO also found that violence in society is fueled by violence in the media. The accumulated evidence is so compelling and so abundant that arguing with it is like arguing that smoking does not cause cancer. However, there are shameless specialists, mostly paid for by the same media, which deny the obvious facts. At the closing meeting of a conference in New Jersey, one such guy stood up and said, “You can't prove that on-screen violence leads to increased violence in society. This is not true, there is no such evidence!"

Let me remind you that the conference was hosted by the New Jersey Psychological Association, a branch of the American Psychological Association, whose central council decided in 1992 that the debate on this topic was over. And in 1999, the Association expressed itself even more clearly, saying that to deny the effect of screen violence on domestic violence is like to deny the law of gravity.

Influence of computer games

- Now let's talk a little about computer "shooters". I was shocked to learn from your book that the computer simulations used by the US military and most law enforcement agencies are virtually indistinguishable from some of the more popular games.

- Here we will have to make a small excursion into history. During World War II, it suddenly became apparent that most of our soldiers were incapable of killing the enemy. Unable due to flaws in military training. The fact is that the soldiers were taught to shoot at painted targets. And at the front there were no such targets, and all their training went down the drain. Very often, many soldiers, under the influence of fear, stress and other circumstances, simply could not use their weapons. It became clear that the soldiers needed to be taught the appropriate skills. After all, we do not put the pilot on the plane immediately after he has read the textbook, and we do not say: "Fly." No, we will give him first to exercise on special simulators. Even during World War II, there were already many simulators on which pilots practiced flight techniques for a long time.

Accordingly, the need arose to create simulators on which soldiers would learn to kill. Instead of traditional targets, silhouettes of human figures had to be used. Such simulators have proven to be extremely effective. The Marine Corps received a license to use the Doom game as a tactical simulator. The ground forces have adopted the "Super Nintendo". Remember there was such an old game of duck hunting? We replaced the plastic pistol with a plastic M16 assault rifle, and instead of ducks, figures of people appear on the screen.

Now we have several thousand of these simulators around the world. They have proven to be effective. In this case, our goal is to teach soldiers how to properly respond to a threat. After all, if they cannot open fire, they panic, then terrible things can happen. The same applies to police officers. Therefore, I find such trainings useful. Since we give the soldiers and policemen weapons, we must teach them how to use them.

However, there is no unanimity in society on this matter. Some people are shocked by the rehearsals of homicide, even when performed by soldiers and police. What then can we say about the unlimited access of children to such simulators? This is much worse!

When the McVeigh case was being dealt with, I was invited as an expert to the government commission. The defense tried to prove that it was military service and the Gulf War that turned Timothy McVeigh into a serial killer. In fact, everything was exactly the opposite. According to the Bureau of Judicial Statistics, war veterans are much less likely to go to jail than non-veterans of the same age. Which is not surprising, because they have serious internal restraints.

Murder simulators

- What kind?

- Firstly, we put adults for such simulators. Secondly, the military discipline is severe. Discipline that becomes a part of you. And here murder simulators are given to children! For what? Only to teach them how to kill and instill in them a passion for murder.

The following circumstance must also be borne in mind: skills in a stressful situation are reproduced automatically. Earlier, when we still had revolvers, the police went to shooting ranges. From a revolver, six shots could be fired at a time. Since we were reluctant to collect the spent cartridges from the ground, we pulled out the drum, poured them into our palm, put them in our pockets, reloaded the revolver and fired on. Naturally, in a real shootout you will not do that - there is no time for that. But can you imagine? And in real life, after the shootout, the policemen's pockets turned out to be full of spent cartridges! And the guys had no idea how it happened. The training took place only twice a year, and six months later, the cops would automatically put empty cartridges in their pockets.

But children who play aggressive computer games do not shoot twice a year, but every evening. And they kill everyone who comes into their field of vision until they hit all the targets or release all the cartridges. So when they start shooting in real life, the same thing happens. In Pearl, Paducah, and Jonesboro, all the juvenile killers first wanted to kill one person. But they couldn't stop! They shot everyone who caught their eye until they hit the last target or they ran out of bullets! Then the police asked them: “Well, okay, you killed the one you had a grudge against. And why others? After all, there were your friends among them! And the children did not know what to answer!

And we know. A child playing a shooting game is no different from a pilot playing a flight simulator: everything that is downloaded into them at this moment will then be played back automatically. We teach children to kill, reinforcing the murder with a sense of pleasure and prizes! We also teach you to rejoice and make fun at the sight of realistically depicted death and human suffering. The irresponsibility of game makers supplying children with army and police simulators is terrifying. It's like giving each child a machine gun or a pistol. From the point of view of psychology - no difference!

“Do you remember the 6-year-old killer from Flint, Michigan? You wrote that this murder was unnatural …

- Yes. The desire to kill arises in many, but throughout the history of mankind, only a tiny handful of people turned out to be capable of it. For ordinary, healthy members of society, killing is unnatural.

Let's say I'm a ranger. But I was not immediately given the M16 and transferred to the category of superkillers. It took me many years to prepare. Do you understand? It takes years to teach people how to kill, to instill in them the necessary skills and the desire to do it. Therefore, when faced with child murderers, we must answer very difficult questions. Because it's new. NEW APPEARANCE! In Jonesboro, boys aged 11 and 13 killed 15 people. When these children turn 21, they will be released. No one can stop this, because our laws are not designed for murderers of this age.

And now also a six-year-old. They there in Michigan thought they had insured themselves against the unexpected by lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 7 years. Even 7-year-olds, Michigan authorities decided, should be held accountable to the law as adults. And then take it and appear a 6-year-old killer!

Well, a few days after the shooting in Flint, a child in Washington took out a gun from the top shelf, loaded it himself, went out into the street and fired two volleys at the walking children. When the police asked where he learned how to load a gun - they probably thought that daddy showed foolishly - the boy said innocently: "Yes, I learned from the TV."

And if you go back to the child from Flint … When the sheriff told his father, who was in prison, about what had happened, he replied: “As I heard, a frost went through my skin. Because I knew right away: this is my boyfriend. Because my boyfriend, "he added to amplify the effect," just loved sadistic films."

See? Quite a little, and already gone crazy from the violence in the media. And he went crazy because his father sat and watched the bloody scenes, rejoiced, laughed and made fun of death and human suffering. Usually at 2, 3, 4 years old, and even at 5-6 years old, children are terribly afraid of such spectacles. But if you try hard, then by the age of 6 you can make them fall in love with violence. That's the whole horror!

Reaction to violence

Probably, many have seen the movie "Schindler's List". And hopefully none of them laughed while watching. But when such a screening was arranged for high school students in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the film screening had to be interrupted because the children laughed and made fun of what was happening. Steven Spielberg himself, shocked by this behavior, came to speak before them, but they also laughed at him! Maybe, of course, it's only California that reacts like that. Maybe they are all there with greetings. But in the state of Arkansas, in Jonesboro, there was something similar. The massacre took place in a high school, and next to it, behind the next door, high school students are studying - the older brothers and sisters of children who were riddled by murderers. So, according to the testimony of one teacher, when she came to the high school students and told about the tragedy - and they had already heard the shots, saw the ambulances, - laughter and joyful exclamations were heard in response.

Our children are taught to enjoy someone else's death, someone else's torment. Probably, the six-year-old from Lint has already been taught. I bet he played aggressive computer games too!

- Yes, it was reported in the news.

“Do you know why I wasn’t hesitant about the games?” Because he only fired one shot and immediately hit the base of the skull. But this is difficult, it requires great accuracy. But playing computer games is a great workout. Many of them, by the way, offer special bonuses for headshots. Perhaps the case in Paducah illustrates my words best. A 14-year-old teenager stole a.22 caliber pistol from a neighbor. Before that, he had never been engaged in shooting, and having stolen a pistol, he fired a little from it with a neighbor's boy a few days before the murder. And then he brought the weapon to the school and fired 8 shots.

So, according to the FBI, for the average police officer, it is considered normal when one of 5 bullets hits the target. And this guy fired 8 bullets and never missed! 8 bullets - 8 victims. Of these, 5 hits to the head, the remaining 3 - to the upper body. An amazing result! And this is not a retired ranger like me. This is a 14-year-old boy who until then did not hold a weapon in his hands! Where did he get such incredible, unprecedented accuracy? Moreover, as noted by all the witnesses of the tragedy, he stood rooted to the spot, firing directly in front of him, not dodging either to the right or to the left. It seems that he methodically, one after another, hit the targets that appeared in front of him on the screen. How would I play my filthy computer game!

- It seems that you did not succumb to the propaganda of the Initiative Against Violence, whose activists claim that there are children with innate cruelty. And what if they are identified in time, then it will be easy to find the criminals. In Virginia, they even began to build prisons "for growth", increasing the number of cells in advance, counting on the future increase in the number of criminals from this category of the population.

“I’ll put it this way: maybe a tiny percentage of the population is really prone to cruelty. I am not claiming this, but simply making an assumption. But then this percentage should not change over time, from generation to generation. After all, congenital features are something stable. Like any genetic disorder. But when you see an EXPLOSION of violence, it makes sense to assume that a new factor has emerged that affects the natural course of things. And ask yourself: “What is this factor? Which variable changed the constant?"

Such that serious crimes have increased by 2, or even 5 times, in just 15 years, has not been observed at all! This is an unprecedented case. So, be sure to ask yourself what kind of new ingredient appeared in the old “compote”. And understand that we added this ingredient ourselves. We're raising killers, we're raising sociopaths.

When the president of CBS was asked after the Littleton massacre if the media were involved, he replied: "If anyone thinks the media has nothing to do with it, then he is a complete idiot."

So they know! They know what they are doing and still continue to trade in death, horror, destructive ideas. A bunch of people are enriched by this, and our entire civilization is under threat. Let us recall Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the heart of our civilization is the need for protection and security. The foundation will lead - the whole building will collapse.