Jack Thomson needs to be silenced.
If he knew what he was talking about, I'd be happy to let the media continue to rely upon him as an 'expert' on the issue of video game violence and censorship. As it is, he's more of an "extremist,." to the extent that he has already likened video gaming moguls to Nazis. And good old Jack is our hero, our saviour, in the "trenches", slugging it out with the Nazi's. A very rich fantasy life, you might say.
And yet, there he was, last night, telling CNN that since the NFL wouldn't "allow" MIdway to use their name on their upcoming game Blitz, "that tells you something."
Sure, it tells us something. It reaffirms our belief in the legal agreement between the NFL and EA games, which have an exclusive contract on the NFL licence. Blitz is, in fact, sort of Midway's answer to that turn of events. "Won't let us in on the party? OK Fine, we'll take our toys home."
It doesn't tell us a damn thing about the game's content, although obviously I think the NFL would have an issue with having their names and players associated with as true and harsh a depiction of the state of the game of Football as Blitz has become (drugs, money, and whores).
Thomson should read Starship Troopers. It's a good read. It's a bit Sci-Fi, and because of that I think Thomson and his ilk are unlikely to ever partake, but it has a strong and important philosophical undertone throughout. The society is responsible for the citizens it creates, as much as an owner of a dog is responsible for its behaviour as an adult.
It's an ever-towering pyarmid of blame, pointing back to our forefathers, and to end it we need someone today to make a new root, a new pinnacle of fault, from which elements of blame are constructed only from people who are, and are only allowed to through careful checks and balances, interested in preserving the public even at the expense of their own lives.
Thomson doesn't have that quality. He has, does, and will continue to act in his own self interest...proceeds from the class action suits he has filed against video game companies who produce "murder simulators". He's not interested in protecting anyone, and you can tell, you can detect his bullshit. Count the times he has used Sophism, just like the above remark about the NFL, to counter an argument steeped in fact.
Facts like the FBI's report on crime in 2004. Check it out. We are the proud mothers and fathers of the best behaved, in terms of violent crime, children the US has known in a very long time. The rate of violence in our youth has reduced since the release of the PS1, and has reduced in the face of the GTA releases.
How does our society repay them for good behaviour?
We send them to jail for eating french fries.
Pre-teens are strip-searched to uncover $10.
I don't have a link, but I recall a story about a high school student who enjoyed Skeet shooting...he made the mistake of leaving his shotgun in the gun rack in his truck, plainly visible, when dropping off friends at school, and got jailed, then ultimately expelled, for taking a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. The community uprising turned it about for him, he went back to school with a little more care for remembering to put his gun away.
The problem is that America doesn't have a justice system. We have a legal system. The law is laid out, by people older and wiser than we, or so we're told, and the law contains the truth of What Must Be Done should certain events unfold. It is the law that allows someone to get recompensed when they burned themselves with coffee bought at McDonalds. It is the law that allows, I am keenly aware as an ex-lifeguard, a person to sue a lifeguard for saving their life but leaving them crippled.
These things are not justice. Justice is not the totalitarian application of the law. Justice is serving law against miscreant intent. That's an important distinction.
It's not enough that your brakes went out and you went careening out of control into an intersection...that can happen to anybody, although we hope that car safety measures keeps its frequency low. To be guilty, to have justice weighed against you, you have to have been trying to ram someone with your vehicle, intending to cause them harm.
Applying laws to the innocent isn't justice.
It''s transparent to anyone from outside that it's not the will of executives to "train children to murder" as Thomson continues to argue. It's far more believable to be a simple urge to make money, the same thing that drives Thomson today. He doesn't care. He's looking for laws to help him win legal battles, justice isn't his concern.
I wish someone in the media would realize he's a loon and remove his voice. It's getting tiresome.
The center of all morality is simply this; Put the welfare of the group ahead of yourself.
In Heinlein's world, it was called a Democracy, but not everyone had the right to vote (called "franchise" in the book). You had to prove that you put the state's livelyhood ahead of your own life. That you were willing to sacrifice anything for the state. 2 years service in the military. In 2 years, quite a number of people would die, either during training or in combat (even in times of peace, there is still combat). Every element of the system tried to encourage people not to start or complete their 2 years, but service was a right, not a privelege...they couldn't turn you away.
That's possibly not the only way around that pickle, not the only way to detect a track record in people to tend to prefer results that advance the condition of those around them rather than focusing specifically on their own agendas.
But it's not a bad start. Would you give up 2 years of your life, your career, your plans for the right to vote? If not, are you worthy of that right?
If he knew what he was talking about, I'd be happy to let the media continue to rely upon him as an 'expert' on the issue of video game violence and censorship. As it is, he's more of an "extremist,." to the extent that he has already likened video gaming moguls to Nazis. And good old Jack is our hero, our saviour, in the "trenches", slugging it out with the Nazi's. A very rich fantasy life, you might say.
And yet, there he was, last night, telling CNN that since the NFL wouldn't "allow" MIdway to use their name on their upcoming game Blitz, "that tells you something."
Sure, it tells us something. It reaffirms our belief in the legal agreement between the NFL and EA games, which have an exclusive contract on the NFL licence. Blitz is, in fact, sort of Midway's answer to that turn of events. "Won't let us in on the party? OK Fine, we'll take our toys home."
It doesn't tell us a damn thing about the game's content, although obviously I think the NFL would have an issue with having their names and players associated with as true and harsh a depiction of the state of the game of Football as Blitz has become (drugs, money, and whores).
Thomson should read Starship Troopers. It's a good read. It's a bit Sci-Fi, and because of that I think Thomson and his ilk are unlikely to ever partake, but it has a strong and important philosophical undertone throughout. The society is responsible for the citizens it creates, as much as an owner of a dog is responsible for its behaviour as an adult.
It's an ever-towering pyarmid of blame, pointing back to our forefathers, and to end it we need someone today to make a new root, a new pinnacle of fault, from which elements of blame are constructed only from people who are, and are only allowed to through careful checks and balances, interested in preserving the public even at the expense of their own lives.
Thomson doesn't have that quality. He has, does, and will continue to act in his own self interest...proceeds from the class action suits he has filed against video game companies who produce "murder simulators". He's not interested in protecting anyone, and you can tell, you can detect his bullshit. Count the times he has used Sophism, just like the above remark about the NFL, to counter an argument steeped in fact.
Facts like the FBI's report on crime in 2004. Check it out. We are the proud mothers and fathers of the best behaved, in terms of violent crime, children the US has known in a very long time. The rate of violence in our youth has reduced since the release of the PS1, and has reduced in the face of the GTA releases.
How does our society repay them for good behaviour?
We send them to jail for eating french fries.
Pre-teens are strip-searched to uncover $10.
I don't have a link, but I recall a story about a high school student who enjoyed Skeet shooting...he made the mistake of leaving his shotgun in the gun rack in his truck, plainly visible, when dropping off friends at school, and got jailed, then ultimately expelled, for taking a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. The community uprising turned it about for him, he went back to school with a little more care for remembering to put his gun away.
The problem is that America doesn't have a justice system. We have a legal system. The law is laid out, by people older and wiser than we, or so we're told, and the law contains the truth of What Must Be Done should certain events unfold. It is the law that allows someone to get recompensed when they burned themselves with coffee bought at McDonalds. It is the law that allows, I am keenly aware as an ex-lifeguard, a person to sue a lifeguard for saving their life but leaving them crippled.
These things are not justice. Justice is not the totalitarian application of the law. Justice is serving law against miscreant intent. That's an important distinction.
It's not enough that your brakes went out and you went careening out of control into an intersection...that can happen to anybody, although we hope that car safety measures keeps its frequency low. To be guilty, to have justice weighed against you, you have to have been trying to ram someone with your vehicle, intending to cause them harm.
Applying laws to the innocent isn't justice.
It''s transparent to anyone from outside that it's not the will of executives to "train children to murder" as Thomson continues to argue. It's far more believable to be a simple urge to make money, the same thing that drives Thomson today. He doesn't care. He's looking for laws to help him win legal battles, justice isn't his concern.
I wish someone in the media would realize he's a loon and remove his voice. It's getting tiresome.
The center of all morality is simply this; Put the welfare of the group ahead of yourself.
In Heinlein's world, it was called a Democracy, but not everyone had the right to vote (called "franchise" in the book). You had to prove that you put the state's livelyhood ahead of your own life. That you were willing to sacrifice anything for the state. 2 years service in the military. In 2 years, quite a number of people would die, either during training or in combat (even in times of peace, there is still combat). Every element of the system tried to encourage people not to start or complete their 2 years, but service was a right, not a privelege...they couldn't turn you away.
That's possibly not the only way around that pickle, not the only way to detect a track record in people to tend to prefer results that advance the condition of those around them rather than focusing specifically on their own agendas.
But it's not a bad start. Would you give up 2 years of your life, your career, your plans for the right to vote? If not, are you worthy of that right?
clover:
thank you for responding in my journal. I really enjoyed reading that
fatality:
I thought that you had disappeared. You were gray for a while, right?