And then there’s zombie culture’s disturbing legitimization of the desensitized extermination of others — with confusion as to just who those others happen to be. That is certainly a worrying phenomenon. If you conscript a bunch of ordinary men or women, put them in uniform, take them to a distant country and tell them, “I want you to go over there and try your best to kill a bunch of people in different uniforms,” the majority who aren’t psychopaths won’t want to do it. We find that an alien thing to do. But if you ask them to kill a virtual enemy … well, that’s no problem. Nobody cares what happens to all those zombies in the shoot-’em-up games, because they’re not real. If you get humans to kill a thousand or 10,000 virtual enemies, and then put them in a real combat situation, it is quite likely that they will become desensitized to the idea of killing, especially with countless virtual walk-throughs. Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters. Because of the complexity of our situation, we cannot predict what things will be until they happen. It’s just part of our responsibility as people in the modern world to do our very, very best to deal with them, and think them through, as they occur. While I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish, I have played a couple of computer games — until I realized I was being bloodied with adrenalin over something that wasn’t real. At the end of a couple of hours of very addictive play, I may have procured the necessary amount of mushrooms to save a princess, but I also wasted hours of my life that I’ll never be able to get back. This is the reason I am not on the Internet. I am aware of its power as a distraction, and I don’t have the time for that.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 15:36:00 +0000
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