As a child, I loved going with my family to the Museum. I could spend hours perusing the trains, cars, and airplanes that littered the giant warehouse of wonders. I can still remember details of some of the steam locomotives, and quite a few of the airplanes they had neatly lined up beyond those low rope barricades. A lot has changed since those days, but many of my memories are intact.
I was reminded of one of those memories today, a particularly vivid one. At the time, there was a children's area set up in an otherwise empty section of the floor. They must have had coloring books and puzzles and various other things to touch and play with. What I particularly remember are the computers. This was before my family even thought of purchasing our own computer, so these were something of a curiosity for me. Of course I had to spend at least a little time sitting in front of one.
They had them set up so that children could play an early computer game. The game involved driving construction equipment which also piqued my interest. I was just starting to get the hang of pointing and clicking and generally playing the game when one of the virtual hosts in the game instructed me to drive a steamroller over a pile of pop cans or some such thing. I dutifully put the thing in gear and off to work we went. To my horror, I had barely flattened the first can when the other virtual host character shouted in dismay that I was crushing his prized collection of cans!
I felt terrible. I had only wanted to have fun driving the construction machines around for a while; I didn't want to destroy anyone's property, let alone their prized collection. Yet the game would only allow me to continue operating the machinery if I would continue to destroy this poor character's cherished belongings. Soon I couldn't take it any more. To this day I still feel bad for destroying those virtual cans and whatever else they wanted me to do. I know it's only imaginary, but it just doesn't seem ok to have fun destroying things in which others, even virtual others, place value. Why couldn't they let me actually build things with those construction machines, or at the very least just let me drive them around a field. I guess we have to teach our children that being constructive isn't allowed to be fun.
6 comments:
Your mom and I were just talking about this feeling. I shared with her some articles about the empathy spectrum.
Maybe we feel most comfortable with the people who fall within close range of us on the empathy continuum. Sadly, researchers now claim that functional psychopaths are more likely (than individuals who feel deep empathy) to excel in business and be elevated to leadership roles. If you want to raise a future CEO, be sure to provide your child with lots of violent video games.
OK, I'm being sarcastic. It's more likely that violent video games simply reinforce traits that players already possess. Some children also grow up wanting to be the game characters who perform the heroic rescues. Some prefer just wearing the costumes.
I've heard of that research about psychopaths. It makes a lot of sense that you'll end up in places of power if you don't care about the feelings of others.
What's interesting is that I have played violent video games that haven't bothered me as much as this. I was certainly older and more mature when I played them, which explains some of it. I think the rest is rationalization based on the virtual opponents being presented as 'bad guys'. It's a lot harder to be mean to someone who isn't a virtual danger to virtual you.
Very good post. I'm dealing with a few of these issues as well..
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This website was... how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I've found something
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