Some years ago I was listening to the radio on a long distance drive and listened to an interview with a man who had written a book called “Killology”, IIRC the author was former military. He said basically that video/computer games with ultra blood, torture, killing etc are training young people, especially males, to be killers without remorse.
My additional thought - training conscienceless killers and helpless hopeless victims.
I am unusual in that I never watched much TV and very few movies, only had TV about 2 years of my adult life. When I do see images, or especially any kind of moving images, of horrific scenes (very, very rarely, usually by mistake), the horror stays with me for a long, long time and I can feel the ultra negative effect.
It’s just more noticeable with me, but such content affects everyone, to one degree or another. The mind records.
That would be retired Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.
He served in The 82nd Airborne Division. He’s a retired instructor in psychology at West Point. His research centers on human nature regarding the taking of another’s life in battle. Some of his research discusses the impact of video games and other artificial stimulation of the human mind that at times results in the desensitization and heightened ability regarding killing. His website is
http://www.killology.com.
I heard him on the G. Gordon Liddy talk show many years ago and it was fascinating. It was shortly after the spring where there was a rash os school shooting across the nation. Paducah, Kentuckey was one I remember. He compared FBI trained shooters who in a close range gun battle hit their target 1 out of 10 shots (forget the actual stats), and a kill shot to the head maybe 1 in 100. In one incident, I think it was the one in Paducah, the student had a rate of like 70-80% - not hits, but headshots. He attributed the desire and the focus to the new technology in video games - adrenaline-based.
I remember him stating that humans have an innate aversion to taking another's life, and that split second difference was huge in hand-to-hand combat during WWI. Trainers changed training tactics by modifying the image on the tackling dummy used to train rifle and bayonet based combat by replacing the image of a bull's eye target with the profile of a human being. The results were staggering. That was really the beginning of killology - the study of taking another's life.
He also cited the large number of former military technologists involved in the design of video games - in particular British. Many were experts in not just military aircraft, but in particular, the human mind, how players react to flashes of light/sounds frequencies and the impact on an individual's addictive behavior.
It was so fascinating, I wrote Liddy asking him if he still had a copy of the interview. I knew it was a long shot, but never heard back from him. One of the best radio interviews I ever heard.
You've likely heard the parable concerning Sheep, Wolves, and Sheep Dogs. It's a metaphor for how society treats members of the military as heroes during a time of need, but as anything but during times of peace. That was written by Grossman. Here is the story ...
On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs .
Thank you very much. I wonder if the interview I heard was with Liddy; I used to listen to him when I got the chance, years ago. The interview I heard was maybe around 2001, didn’t hear the whole thing as I was on an interstate.