I don’t know if any of you guys reading have ever been part
of a nationwide conspiracy that includes staging shootings in multiple states,
spoon-feeding the story to the media, and using a ton of Black Ops and bribes
to cover it all up each time an investigator puts two and two together.
I imagine it gets expensive, though.
At least that seems to be the logic behind one of the latest
conspiracies to spring up in the wake of the recent tragedy I was discussing in
my last post; these guys are claiming that many of the families, news
reporters, victims and in some cases even the perpetrator are all actors hired
by the government to play roles in staged tragedies and massacres. Apparently
the major conspiracy that controls the entirety of the USA is trying to keep
costs down by re-using these actors in different places.
The lovely folks have Snopes have traced the origins of this
theory to Wellaware1, a site that, amongst other things, has claimed
that both Hitler and Walt Disney were characters portrayed by the son of US
President Theodore Roosevelt. And that Jack White was the real perpretrator of the Aurora shootings, amongst others. So clearly they know what they’re talking about.
Others have taken this nuttyness and run with it since then,
however; this video uses a photo of the Two and a Half Men actor Angus T
Jones from when he was around eleven years old (he’s nineteen now, by the by)
to claim that he portrayed one of the victims of the tragedy just a few weeks
ago. Oh, and apparently Fox News, CNN and many other news sources are all under
the control of Obama as part of a conspiracy to destroy the Second Amendment
and take away the guns.
Obama’s even more cunning than we thought; he’s using Fox
News’ frequent and excessive criticism of him as a smokescreen for the fact
that they secretly do his bidding, the diabolical bastard.
I know I’m not really giving this thing a fair trial but
honestly, what else am I supposed to do? The people spreading this particularly
noxious brand of shit aren’t just paranoid as hell, they’re insulting the real
people who were affected by this tragedy, insulting the memories of the real
victims. It’s deplorable.
Seriously, if such a widespread, quasi-omniscient conspiracy
existed you’d think they could afford to hire more actors.
“Psychological studies purporting to show a connection
between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not
prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.”
- Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia, majority opinion in Brown v. EMA/ESA
Merry
‘Insert-Whichever-Holiday-You-Happen-To-Celebrate-At-The-End-Of-The-Year’ and a
Happy New Year to you, dear readers. Sorry for the truly atrocious rate of
updates for this thing; I am trying to get stuff written, I swear.
With that said, let’s get stuck right into the topic at
hand.
So, confession right off the bat; I’m a fan of video games,
and have been since I was a kid. I grew up on games like Mario and Sonic, the Half-Life
series is nothing short of magnificent (give us Episode 3, Gabe), and I think
they’re an exciting, ever-expanding form of entertainment with opportunities
for audience interaction unparalleled by any other form of media.
I’ve also never murdered anyone, either.
Strange that I should have to add this, yes, but in the news
frenzy that tends to follow on from senseless tragedies I’d forgive many people
for being led to believe otherwise. I’m going to avoid addressing the
aforementioned tragedy directly; you know the one I’m referring to, it’s been
discussed, and repeatedly bringing up such a travesty only helps to exacerbate
the problem. In the wake of such events, it’s understandable that many seek an
explanation as to what could cause something so awful to happen. This is only
natural; we are pattern-seeking animals, after all, and we desire a reason for
an act.
Yet this understandable phenomenon can very often take a
nasty form, namely the labelling of some form of media as the cause of the
tragedy. It’s happened time and time again. When John Lennon was shot and his
killer claimed he was inspired by The Catcher In The Rye, people called
for the book to be banned. Hip-Hop is often blamed for violence amongst young
people.
And when a mentally disturbed individual walks into a public
place and starts firing, people often blame the video games.
Now, commentators far wiser, well read and wittier than I
have already covered this very topic, and their rundowns of the issue are
pretty damn comprehensive (I’ll link them at the end, and you guys should
really consider checking them out), so you might think that someone like me
writing about this is a little pointless. But given that just a few days from
now the town of Southington, Connecticut intends to collect together violentvideo games and likely burn them (because nothing says calm and rational like
a bunch of townspeople getting together to destroy things they don’t like), I
do feel the need to make known the colours I fly and let people know why folks
making the correlation between violence in video games and violence in real
life are wrong.
Correlation does not equal causation, people.
The idea of video games being linked to violence is not a
new one. It’s been around for many a year, and in those years many a study has
been conducted. Thus it’s safe to assume that if a link between violence in
video games and violence in real life was indeed a thing, we likely would have
found it by now or at least have an inkling of its existence. Yet consistently,
the studies thatare wortha damn (that is to stay,
properly-conducted studies with decent control and whose authors didn’t set out
with an agenda already in mind) have shown that no such link exists. In fact,
as the ESA note in one of the links, “violent crime, particularly among the
young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s. During the same period
of time, video games have steadily increased in popularity and use, exactly the
opposite of what one would expect if there were a causal link.”
Please don’t misunderstand me. There are plenty of things
wrong with video games and the video game industry today. Please don’t get me
started on the shitty business practices of companies like Sony and EA. They
are guilty of plenty of things, but the blame for the recent tragedy and others
like it is not one of them. Simply put, speculation as to what the cause of a
school-shooting might be is an extremely tricky tight-rope to walk; as Stephen
Novella noted in a recent The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe episode,
there are more variables in such an event than there are data points, so anyone
offering up answers like “video games done it” are guilty of massively
over-simplifying the issue.
Whether you personally disapprove of the violence it
portrays, violent media has a right to exist. As I’ve said before, I think such
media can be extremely valuable, powerful and worthwhile. Don’t believe me?
Check out stuff like ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ (one of the few games to really nail
the horrors of war in a truly mature, sincere manner) or Telltale’s ‘The
Walking Dead’. And if it really isn’t your thing? That’s perfectly fine, too,
but blaming it for events we have no explanation for isn’t the way to go about
things.
To quote the guys at Penny Arcade, “it’s a very odd
sort of Patriot that would destroy the First Amendment to protect the Second.”
I really, really should be getting on with this essay, but
this seemed pretty important to share.
In a reflection of the Church of England’s rather depressing
recent decision to block the introduction of female bishops, Bristol
University’s highly evangelical Christian Union has elected to ban women from
speaking at their weekly meetings… unless accompanied by their husbands. One
wonders how many female students in the Christian Union are married?
In an email released by The Huffington Post, president Mat
Oliver states …
“It is ok for women
to teach in any CU setting... However we understand that this is a difficult
issue for some and so decided that women would not teach on their own at our
weekly CU meetings, as the main speaker on our Bristol CU weekend away, or as
our main speaker for mission weeks.
But a husband and wife can teach together in these.”
Naturally, the shit has hit the fan following this group’s
attempts to cater to the more sexist, misogynistic elements of their number,
with condemnation pouring in from numerous societies at Bristol University and
Alessandra Berti, the Vice-President for Welfare and Equality at Bristol’s
Union issuing a statement saying that…
“We have been made aware of a communication from the
University of Bristol Christian Union, and we would like to assure our members
and the general public that UBU and the full-time elected officers are
investigating the issue further in consultation with the groups involved. In
particular we will be making certain that our Equality Policy is properly
adhered to in all cases.”
Given the nature of a University’s Equality Policy (I
confess I’m basing this on the policy at my Student’s Union, though I suspect
they’re not much different), Bristol’s Christian Union, who are affiliated with
the Student’s Union and therefore subject to its policies, are likely to be in
a lot of bother over this one; such policies outlaw discrimination based on
(and I quote) “age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil
partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief (including lack
of belief), sex and sexual orientation.”
All in all, it’s a tad depressing that a Christian Union, which
are in my experience usually full of extremely reasonable and intelligent
students, would choose to enact such a dated and discriminatory policy, but the
criticism that’s pouring in already is pretty heartening. They can only get
away with this sort of thing if they aren’t held accountable for it, after all.
I’ll do my best to follow this one pretty closely, and keep
this post updated if anything new should occur.
I think I may have been too quick to simply summarise this story as 'the shit hitting the fan'; an ungoldy fucking firestorm has erupted in the last few hours, with nationally-distributed newspapers running articleson this story.
It seems that the Christian Union in question, despite advertising Facebook and Twitter as services they utilise and despite their accounts being live just a couple hours ago, have chosen to delete both their Facebook and Twitter pages. To be fair to them, this is likely in the face of an onslaught of criticism and denouncements, with the likes of Richard Dawkins chiming in with his condemnation of their activities. No official statement from Bristol University's Christian Union in regards to this matter yet, as far as I'm aware, but I suspect they're in for a hell of a day when they wake up to all this.
Once again the coursework for this year has buried me in
an avalanche of chapter drafts, essays and enough books to crush a man, so
updates to this here blog have been… sparse, to put it at it’s mildest.
Apologies, guys; I’m almost done with my last essay, so hopefully it’ll be back
to more regular updates for me once it’s out the way.
In the meantime I’ve been reading a lot of old
freethought books and pamphlets as part of my research for my dissertation,
which means I’ve come across some pretty awesome quotes from people in the past
who also didn’t put much stock in the whole ‘religion’ thing. As a fun little
post to get some updates to this blog going again, I thought I’d share some of
them with you.
“I cannot
follow you Christians; for you try to crawl through your life upon your knees,
while I stride through mine on my feet.”
-Charles Bradlaugh, 19th Century British
Politician, Founder of the National Secular Society (NSS)
“Evolution not only clearly indicates the
true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man’s
supreme importance, and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the
illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable
element.”
-Ernest Haeckel, ‘The Riddle of the Universe’, German
Scientist
“I have a very serious quarrel with the
anti-Evolutionists… they are throwing dust in the eyes of the people all over
America and England by mixing up two totally different things in the scientific
world – quarrels about the method of evolution and quarrels about the fact of
evolution.”
-Joseph McCabe, Former Catholic Priest and Key Figure in
the Rationalist Press Association
“It is evident that, for the community and the State, the
ethical ideas of the citizens are of the very greatest importance, while a
man’s religious dogmas should be entirely his private concern.”
-Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian Explorer and Nobel Peace Prize
Laurette
