It's an issue that's been discussed before on 2o2p, though perhaps not so eloquently. Tristan examines the "popular thought" toward violence in society and the effect of video games.
It is popular these days for the media to blame video games for violent trends among today's youth. In 2002, when John Lee Malvo and John Muhammad were arrested in connection with the Beltway sniper attacks, much was made about how Malvo "trained" for sniping by playing Halo on "sniper mode" (whatever that means). The implication is that this violent, science fiction video game somehow corrupted an upstanding, innocent young man, turning him into a cold killer. Therefore, we are meant to believe, if we ban these video games, all will be right with the world.
I propose another hypothesis. I believe the dehumanizing effects of modern society are more to blame for this kind of pathological violence than any particular video game. You don't need to spend much time on the internet to witness how easy it is for people to treat each other like dirt when it is only a screen name on a message board or Xbox Live you are berating. It is too easy to stop thinking of that person as a real human being and to treat them as a zero, with no basic human dignity.
We live in a world where despite proliferating communication -- be it web forums, cell phones, or Facebook -- the quality of that interaction is becoming less human. We are isolated from each other in our cars as we curse other drivers in outbursts of road rage. We anonymously say things on message boards we probably would not say in person. This compartmentalization, this separation of humanity from our interactions with others, lends itself to the lack of empathy characteristic of violent sociopaths like John Lee Malvo.
Even the prevailing philosophy of our particular culture says that there really is no such thing as real humanity; everything is merely mechanics with no room for true personhood. As behavioral determinist B.F. Skinner writes in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, "To man qua [as] man, we readily say good riddance." Human beings become a zero. With no philosophical basis for prescriptive, extra-natural "oughts," all that is left is descriptive "is." Like the Marquis de Sade (also a determinist and philosophical materialist), we can only conclude that whatever is, is right. With this loss of humanity, people become either consciously or unconsciously open to both being treated and treating others like machines, as objects.
It's not hard to imagine how this type of subhuman interaction with others could produce horrific results when mixed with existing sociopathic predispositions of individuals like Malvo.
This kind of objectification of people is powerfully depicted in the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange (based on the book by Anthony Burgess), which is quite relevant to this topic. There you have a young man, Alex, who is steeped in the very best of high culture (he is obsessed with Beethoven), and yet commits terrible acts of cruelty ("ultraviolence") with no empathy because he treats people as objects, similar to how the Nazis could spend the day killing families in concentration camps and then at night listen to Schubert's chamber music.
Kubrick highlights this objectification of people in a number of clever ways. He frequently uses the fisheye lens effect to show how the main character sees himself as the center of his universe. The opening scene begins the narration with "There was me, that is Alex..." while it slowly zooms out from a closeup of Alex's face as the center of the screen. Sex is stripped of its personal nature and reduced to mere mechanics ("the old in-out, in-out" as Alex calls it). The furniture in the milk bar in the opening scene is made of mannequins (again, people used as objects). There's even a scene where his gang uses one of their own as a piece of human furniture, having him kneel on all fours while they stand on his back to reach a high window.
Compare these dehumanized relationships to a typical LAN party with friends. Some of my fondest memories are from playing Halo with my best friends from college. It's still the same violent game where you are rewarded for getting a headshot with the sniper rifle, a "killtacular" is cause for smiles and good natured joshing and blood stains are left on the walls after a particularly intense encounter. After an epic battle of capture the flag on Blood Gulch, we would all gather in the kitchen to relive the best moments over pizza and drinks before heading back to the couch for more killing.
So what is the difference between this and someone who shoots his parents over a video game? It's the same violent, M-rated game. The difference is between real human community and treating people as objects. In the dehumanized examples, other people are objects as a means to the end of fulfilling your whims, whereas in the LAN party example, human interaction is the end with the game as a means to that end. Rather than taking the simplistic, intellectually lazy position of blaming video games for the downfall of society, perhaps we should look deeper at some of the dehumanizing currents in society as a whole.
