Desensitization: Video Games v. Religion

--The availability of video games has led to many youth being desensitized to death.

--Video games glorify death and destruction. By playing these video games, they are becoming desensitized to death.

You can hear arguments like this all of the time. Any time there is any act of violence committed by I teenager, I can almost assure you that you will encounter this opinion somewhere along the line. Now, I had thought about this before, and it was precisely the sort of thing that I eventually wanted to blog about. So, here it is.

In short, there are deeper societal (religious) causes of desensitization which should be considered long before violence in the media. I am not suggesting that violent media makes no contributions;.I just feel that it is important to recognize that video games are not the sole contributors towards desensitization, and I would also argue that it's not even the largest factor. Simply, most people don't confuse Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty with the real world (unless they are desensitized into the army), while a good portion of people do actively think that there is some brand of special deity waiting to hand out an eternal life filled with all the happiness anyone could ever want. Thus, religion is posing a real world view which could desensitize youth and adults alike.

Firstly, nationalism glorifies death when it's for the 'right' cause. Countries, especially the sorts like America, are constantly using the media to suggest that we have to kill all of these people, or we have killed all of these people in the past, because we are 'better than they.' Through-out the public, however, there tends to be very little note of this. It seems like one murder, possibly due to one video game, is more problematic than 'training' people in the army to mercilessly slaughter hundreds of people.

Continuing, religions also contribute a heavy part to the desensitization to death. Most religions tell the followers that this life is somehow followed by another life, either in heaven or through reincarnation and so on. It suggests that the value of this life is very little, which could cause some to conclude that the loss of one life isn't important because they will just be born again or they will be sent straight to heaven. To reference this to our class, in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says the following: "Nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist . . . So too at the time of death [we] attain a new body." He uses this quote to suggest that Arjuna not be afraid to kill every opposing person, because after all, they will have a new life soon. Christianity, too, has it's part. The primary reward for being a christian is to receive another, even better, eternal life in heaven. If someone held the strong opinion that a Christian would go straight to heaven, they wouldn't need to think twice about killing them because they would go to a better place.