Video games and violence, a connection?

With another surge in school violence recently, there has been more of that talk about how playing games like Grand Theft Auto ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_(series) ) can lead to violent behavior. Because this is simply a way to assign blame, it ends up being a way to erase guilt in causing these tragic shootings. First and foremost, blame has to rest on the parents of the shooters, but it doesn't stop there. Blame also lies with the victims of the shootings because their actions had helped to cause the brain malfunction that would lead someone to go on a shooting spree. Sure, chemical imbalance may be a part of it; but many people have chemical imbalances and only a small percentage of them open fire on their peers. The root cause cannot be singled out because there are many root causes. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Klebold ) were social outcasts who spent most of their free time playing violent video games together and being generally outside the main society of Columbine High School.


There will always be social outcasts; even in Brave New World where everyone is genetically engineered to fit into their role in society ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world ), the main character is an outcast because he desires monogamy in a polygynistic society. Because of his unique views he is mocked and eventually leaves society altogether to live with the "savages". He does not act out violently against his antagonists, but many people would. Hell, I've done it a number of times. I got in trouble in elementary, middle and high school numerous times for fighting or getting back at people that had upset me, and I was definitely not a social outcast. Now imagine what it would be like for someone who feels out of place in society, who is never accepted and who faces daily trauma to their self-esteem. If you faced daily torment would you crawl into a hole and withdraw from society, or would you fight back?


The simple fact that anyone would actually open fire on innocent people (many of the victims of school shootings are not the people the shooter originally intended to kill) is a sign that they are not fit for society. Violence is the only real crime in my mind, the others are just crimes of law...violence is a crime of man. Rape, murder, assault, they are all the same in my book, just at different levels of atrocity. I even feel that robbery has roots in the inequality of man and can generally be justified (except in cases where the rich is robbing the poor, but that is not as common as some people would believe). But violence against others is something that should be prevented through good parenting and proper attention paid to chemical imbalances. None of the school shooting cases had a popular jock as the shooter, it is always someone who is somewhat outcast from the mainstream.


Now conformity is not anything I would ever advocate, everyone should be their own individual self (why else would someone want to live unless they were themselves? What's the point of life if you're living as someone else?"), but the parents should be able to sense something wrong with their child when he's withdrawn and obsessed with violent video games. Obviously there is a sign that the kid is suffering from some social problems if he's always alone (or with the same single person all the time) and spends his spare time listening to angry music and designing levels for Doom and other violent games as Harris and Klebold did. I'd never let my own child go down a path like that, even if it meant that I had to be more involved in his life. The problem lies in the lack of responsibility that most parents take for their children's actions. Everything starts at childhood, and if the child is a loner as a teenager, mistakes were made whilst he was growing up.


The fundamental problem with these shootings is not just about the shooters. The people who exclude others from their group are directly responsible for causing animosity towards the "popular crowd" and can take some of the blame for the shootings. At the Santana High School shooting ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Andrew_Williams ), the shooter was tormented by jockish bullies...I actually know a guy who admits to having bullied this kid...and retaliated against his tormentors. Not only should the school take responsiblity for the abuse this kid suffered while on campus, but the parents of the bullies too. Until people learn that exclusion only leads to trouble, there will be at least one major shooting each year somewhere in the US (well, at a white school, we don't hear about the ones that happen in the Ghettos of NYC, LA, Chicago, New Orleans, etc.). Unfortunately it isn't a quick fix, and arming teachers (an actual proposal in the state of Wisconsin) certainly isn't the way to go. Starting at young ages and moving through puberty, all kids should be given psychological evaluations and be properly taught how to accept people for who they are and never to exclude others. But that is a wishy-washy dream that is likely to remain out of the reality of this disjointed world.