Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Hasta La Vista Homer
As Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger used arguments similar to Plato's in The Republic to restrict the use of violent video games for minors. Even though the law was eventually ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, is such a law morally justified? Examining ONE of Plato's arguments. Can a case be made to prohibit video games? Or is the argument flawed or not applicable to video games? Is the argument more valid as video game technology improves and the simulation of reality more seamless? Is there any form of entertainment that should be kept out of a teenager's hands (or minds)?
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Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to pass a law to restrict the use of violent video games for minors, similar to Socrates restricting poems and books in Plato’s The Republic. Such a law is not morally justified because it is restricting people’s use of technology in a non-beneficial way. This law would be harming kids more than benefiting them because though it could be said that violent video games exposed to minors leads to violence in the real world, this statement has little to none valid proof as to the correlation between the two. It could also be said that violent video games actually benefit the user, so they could get out their frustration and anger in the video game and not in the real world. Socrates argues that Homer should not be included in education because it portrays the gods in ways that are not true, including that they change their appearance and more things considered complete fiction by Socrates. Socrates did not want to include the misrepresentation of his gods in the education system, so that students would not learn something incorrect about their religion. This argument does not relate to minors’ use of violent video games because Socrates was arguing against his religion’s misrepresentation in the education system. People could say that the misrepresentation of religion could be similar to the misrepresentation of the world as very violent in the minors’ video games, but the cases are very different. One case has a video game played in kid’s spare time and is not very likely to be considered true, and the second case is a book or play of Homer’s The Odyssey acted out in a school. Since the video games would not be played at school, they would not be considered part of the education system or something real, and the kids should be able to play them whenever. I would say that considering this argument, no forms of entertainment should be kept out of teenager’s hands, but in the education system, kids should not be playing any kind of video game. Socrates’s and Plato’s cases against Homer in the education system have no correlation to minors’ use of violent video games in their spare time.
ReplyDeleteIn Plato's 'The Republic', Socrates discusses Homer's tales of horror, which include murderous tendencies, serial rapes and flawed gods. Socrates argues it is wrong to teach Homer's tales to the youth, especially given they are immoral and unethical stories. Governor Schwarzenegger agreed when he attempted to introduce legislation that would limit violent video game exposure to youth. Studies have shown that a person under the age of 18 has an underdeveloped brain, along with having high impulse-reactions. Socrates believed it was wrong to teach such violent stories to young, impressionable brains. Today, people under 18 still do not have developed brains. It is important to be conscientious and careful of what we feed the brains of our youth because any small detail in a child's life can contribute to character development and irrational impulses.
ReplyDeleteToday, the role of technology in a child's life has increased, along with the use of violent video games. Minors who participate in online gaming that includes violence, often develop a tolerance to these fantasy-like games. By routinely playing games with missions to kill, steal and destroy, immoral actions becomes a usual occurrence in their life. Young people without the complete understanding of right and wrong, in addition to high impulses, should not be routinely exposed to violence and taught it is reasonable. Furthermore, overexposure to violence and over-charged negativity can lead to desensitization and blur the lines between right in wrong, especially in a developing brain. Whether it be Homer or 'Mortal Kombat', ethics are still the same and the difference between right and wrong remains the same.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates discusses his belief that tales of Homer should be banned because of their poor depiction of the Gods and what he believes is the promotion of poor moral attitudes and behaviors. A modern day parallel can be drawn between this and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to limit youth exposure to violent video games. Both agree that exposure to mediums depicting poor choices and behavior should be prohibited due to their supposedly harmful impact on the children that consume these products. However, does the censorship of these benign items really help the youth or lead to more unintended consequences? Socrates would would no doubt be on Schwarzenegger's side on this issue. He thought that exposure to dangerously immersive materials would make people enact what they saw or experienced in the real world. However, it seems, at least with the current technology, that censorship of video games would not be helping anyone. The first problem with these proposed limitations is that they promote a narrow-minded view through which to view the world. Socrates believed that Homer should be banned from his ideal community because he wanted to herd their thoughts in a direction of his own design. The proposed video game ban is essentially the same in that it discourages people from experiencing different things. Not all "violent" video games are just first person shooters, some taking place in fantasy worlds and promoting things like exploration and socialization with friends and other players. Even "violent" first person shooters like Counter Strike can have their benefits as they promote strategy and team play. However, the expansion of a person's horizons and thought are not the only reason modern video games should stay. Children who play video games like these might be enacting crimes or performing violent actions in the game, but this immersion allows them to stay away from more serious vices by channeling all of their stress into the game as opposed to their real lives. Video games in the modern era are just not graphically realistic enough, taking place on a computer screen, to actually allow people to blur the lines between what they are doing in the game and what they do in real life. The distinction between virtual reality and real life is perfectly clear. Sure, as Socrates suggests, children are very impressionable from an early age. However, video games with their strategy and promotion of expanded thinking actually allow children to grow and develop into healthy adults because of their ability to release their stress into the game instead of channeling it into more harmful activities. Maybe, if in the future, there was an ultra-violent and ultra-realistic, with near life-like graphics, that promoted only killing or harming others, then technology in video games would have gone too far and a ban of something like that could be talked about. However, even at the current trajectory of virtual reality technology, nothing so harmful is being introduced as to stop video games from being a perfectly normal and beneficial habit. Video games in the modern era, even those deemed "violent", should obviously be allowed in society because of their clear upside as well as their lack of real harm to children.
ReplyDeletePlato argues that society should ban works such as Homer’s because it can corrupt the youth, but this argument fails when discussing modern-day video games because of their significant differences from Homeric poetry. Plato says that one does not simply read Homeric they perform it, and representational narrative, dialogue spoken from the viewpoint of a specific character, fills the works. In order to read Homeric poetry properly, the reader/performer must embody the characters in the poem and convey their dialogue as if the character was actually there in real life. Plato argues that the embodiment of villainous characters actually makes the performer take on villainous qualities in real-life. While this is of likely no concern for adult performers, particularly in today’s world, there is still a significant risk for younger performs, argues Plato. However, playing video games today is quite far from performing Homeric poetry. In today’s video games, the player is much more removed from the characters in the game compared to the performers in the Homeric poetry. In video games, one does not have to embody the character, understand the motivations, and, most importantly, play out the character how the developer wrote it. In Homeric poetry, however, the performer must play out the character how Homer (or whoever the author was) intended the character to be played out because it is entirely scripted. Because of this, society should not censor video games under a Platonic model. Even as video game technology advances through virtual reality, the argument that society should not censor them still holds. Even with advanced technology, players would still not be embodying the characters in the games, and they would not be attached to the motivations of the characters. Game developers would still give the player plenty of free choice to lead the character away from villainous actions. Ultimately, whether Plato’s argument is sound does not matter because the same analysis applied to Homeric poetry cannot be applied to modern-day video games.
ReplyDeleteA law to restrict the use of video games for minors can be morally justified and is similar to arguments in Plato’s novel, The Republic. In Plato’s book, Socrates insists that poems written by untrustworthy sources like Homer should be banned for all readers. Socrates argues that the majority of poems created are both inaccurate and immoral. The poems consequently set a bad example for society. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used similar arguments to restrict violent video games for minors. Governor Schwarzenegger’s decision to restrict violent video games for minors does have a valid case. Many people believe that violent video game characters are not role models for teenagers. Adults believe that young adolescence are still developing and need guidance. If a teenager believes in an immoral role model from a video game, the teenager will attempt to replicate the behavior of the character. A video game can occasionally be so violent and inappropriate that it should not be release to the public, especially to teenagers. There is also almost no positive benefit of the creation of severely violent video games. As game technology advances and the simulation of reality becomes more seamless, teenagers will have to opportunity to make decisions that seem more life-like. Disturbing video games can give some immature teenagers a platform to gain confidence and do something that is considered illegal or bad. In my opinion, I believe it is not necessary to censor all teenagers. Teenagers are becoming young adults and therefore should have the freedom to act as one. Some teenagers believe that video games give them the freedom and opportunity to explore something different. It also allows teenagers to make decisions that they never would in real life and see their outcome. If a teenager is mentally unstable or unfit to violent video games, I think that they should not be allowed to play violent video games. A person needs to be mature and understand that violence does outside of a video game is rarely acceptable in real life.
ReplyDeleteSocrates’s argument is that anything bad, or that sends a bad message to a child should not exist because it might alter the child’s mind into thinking that this “bad message” is the moral and right one. He uses Homer’s depiction of God and religion as these “bad messages”. He states that, “Any spoken words or composed works will have to conform to the principle that God is not responsible for everything, but only good” (Plato 380c). In this case, all video games would only promote goodness. Though Socrates does has a great argument for what the possible effects on young children of promoting negative ideas, he does not go into further detail about the mental states of said children. Whether the children are capable of differentiating reality from lies and falsehoods, is an important point to discuss in this situation. The question is, Is it possible that one child might have the ability to know the difference between his game and his real life and another child may not? If it is possible, then banning all video-games would do little to nothing in society. In a non-perfect world, where every person is raised differently, the question of whether exposing a young child to a violent video is relative to the quality of his or her life prior to playing the game. As video games evolve to be closer to reality, is where Socrates’s argument becomes more and more relevant (because the gap between game, and real life will be smaller).
ReplyDeleteArnold Schwarzenegger’s argument to ban the use of violent video games is similar to Socrates’s argument to ban Homeric text for the education of the guardians in Chapter Four of Plato’s Republic. While Socrates’s argument for censorship is strong, there is a flaw in Schwarzenegger’s argument. Specifically, Socrates restricts Homeric text because they portray the Gods as flawed. Specifically, he claims Homeric texts portray “gods fighting and scheming and battling”—similar to the characters of a video game (378c). Socrates assumes if a guardian heard these Homeric stories and he were “to commit the vilest of crimes…he wouldn’t be doing anything out of the ordinary, but would simply be behaving like the first and greatest gods” (378b). The guardians, not to say anyone, reveres and strives to embody these “greatest” gods; for that reason, Socrates censors Homeric texts to prevent the guardians from becoming the immoral criminals that are the Homeric gods. However, young children playing these violent video games do not revere nor strive to take up the characteristics of their character, no matter how violent and similar to the Homeric gods the character is. The children do not worship the characters as they have been taught to worship the Gods. Video games, according to Socrates’s argument, do not harm children’s moral development because they do not look to the characters as role models, but strictly as people to control with a joystick. Speaking broadly, as long as children and teenagers do not admire nor revere the characters committing immoral, wrong crimes, any form entertainment is nothing more than a way to pass time.
ReplyDeletePlato and Schwarzenegger believe that any content that displays immorality should be hidden from young, impressionable minds. In Plato's time, this referred to the Homeric texts, and Schwarzenegger was concerned about violent video games. Both agree that the impact on children would be that this content would cause them to exhibit similar traits later in life. However, this is incorrect because in order to exhibit such traits by way of imitation, one would already need to have some kind of mental tendency towards blindly imprinting the content you see onto yourself. If students were to grow up learning exclusively heavily censored material, they would never have an example of what NOT to do, and therefore, the possibility for further immorality would actually be opened up. In conclusion, people need a well-rounded array of influences to be able to choose morality for themselves, which would give them a truer sense of morality in their heart and mind.
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