Toying
with Death
by Berit Kjos – March 2004See also
Role-Playing Games & Popular Occultism
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Moral relativism and
Cultural Depravity
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“Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City“
“After the Jonesboro shootings, one of the high-school teachers told me how her
students reacted when she told them about the shootings at the middle school.
‘They laughed,’ she told me with dismay. A similar reaction happens all the time
in movie theaters when there is bloody violence. The young people laugh and
cheer and keep right on eating popcorn and drinking pop. We have raised a
generation of barbarians who have learned to associate violence with pleasure,
like the Romans cheering and snacking as the Christians were slaughtered in the
Coliseum.”[1]
“Recently released medical studies indicate that violent video games
damage the brain, possibly permanently.”[3]“Visitors at a beauty spot near Glasgow watched helplessly as three boys
[aged 18, 17 and 15) forced a terrified schoolboy to fall 25ft over a cliff and then
cheered as their victim plunged on to rocks below, a court heard yesterday.”[2]
“Are we training our children to kill?” asked
Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, an expert in the field of killology.
For many years, he has “traveled the world training medical, law
enforcement, and U.S. military personnel about the realities of warfare.” He
contends that point-and-shoot video games actually train young players to accurately shoot and kill
human
targets in spite of their natural, God-given resistance. His statistics validate his frightening conclusions:“The per capita murder
rate doubled in this country between 1957… and 1992. A fuller picture of the problem, however,
is indicated by the rate people are attempting to kill one anotherthe
aggravated assault rate. That rate in America has gone from around 60
per 100,000 in 1957 to over 440 per 100,000 by the middle of this
decade.“Violence is rising
in many nations with draconian gun laws. … There is only one new
variable present in each of these countries, bearing the exact same
fruit: media violence presented as entertainment for children.
“Children don’t naturally kill. It is a learned skill. And they learn
it… most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television,
the movies, and interactive video games.
“Killing
requires training because there is a built-in aversion to killing one’s
own kind… Within the midbrain there is a powerful, God-given
resistance to killing your own kind…. When we human beings are overwhelmed with anger and fear, we slam head-on into
that midbrain resistance that generally prevents us from killing. Only
sociopaths–who by definition don’t have that resistancelack this innate
violence immune system….
“During World War II, US Army Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall had a team of
researchers study what soldiers did in battle…. They discovered that only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen could bring themselves to fire
at an exposed enemy soldier. Men are willing to die, they are willing to
sacrifice themselves for their nation; but they are not willing to kill. It
is a phenomenal insight into human nature; but when the military became aware of
that, they systematically went about the process of trying to fix this
‘problem.’…“The training methods militaries use are
brutalization, classical conditioning,
operant conditioning, and role modeling. … Just as the army is conditioning people to kill,
we are
indiscriminately doing the same thing to our children, but without the
safeguards.”[1]
1. Desensitization & Brutalization
In the military ‘boot camp,’ “brutalization is
designed to break down your existing mores and norms” and cause you “to accept a new set
of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life,”
explained Col. Grossman. “In the end, you are desensitized to violence and
accept it as a normal and essential survival skill…. Something very
similar … is happening to our children through violence in the mediabut instead of 18-year-olds, it begins at the age of 18 months. At that age,
a child can watch something happening on television and mimic that action.
… When young children see somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized,
degraded, or murdered on TV, to them it is as though it were actually
happening.[1]
He gave this example:“The Journal of the American Medical
Association published the definitive study on the impact of TV
violence. It compared two nations or regions that were demographically
and ethnically identical; only one variable is different: the presence
of television. ‘In every nation, region, or city with television, there
is an immediate explosion of violence on the playground, and within 15
years there is a doubling of the murder rate.“Why 15 years? That is how
long it takes for the brutalization of a three-to five-year-old to reach
the prime crime age.”[1]The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation published
another revealing study last fall: “43% of the kids age 2 and younger
watched TV on a typical day and… 26% had a TV in their room. The median
amount of time spent watching: two hours a day.”[4]
Small wonder our elementary schools are changing!
“Temper tantrums are nothing new in kindergarten
and first grade,” wrote Claudia Wallis in a Time Magazine article
last December, “but the behavior of a 6-year-old girl this fall at a school
in Fort Worth, Texas, had even the most experienced staff members wanting to
run for cover.” She described the crisis:“Asked to put a toy away, the youngster
began to scream. Told to calm down, she knocked over her desk and
crawled under the teacher’s desk, kicking it and dumping out the
contents of the drawers. Then things really began to deteriorate. Still
shrieking, the child stood up and began hurling books at her terrified
classmates, who had to be ushered from the room to safety.
“Just a bad day at school? More like a bad
season. The desk-dumping incident followed scores of other outrageous
acts by some of the youngest Fort Worth students at schools across the
district. Among them: a 6-year-old who told his teacher to ‘shut up,
bitch,’ a first-grader whose fits of anger ended with his peeling off
his clothes and throwing them at the school psychologist, and hysterical
kindergartners who bit teachers so hard they left tooth marks.
“‘I’m clearly seeing an increasing number of
kindergartners and first-graders coming to our attention for aggressive
behavior,’ says Michael Parker, program director of psychological
services at the Fort Worth Independent School District.'”[4]The child-advocacy group Partnership for
Children confirms this observation. A preliminary report of its study “shows
that 93% of the 39 schools that responded to the survey said kindergartners
today have ‘more emotional and behavioral problems’ than were seen five
years ago. More than half the day-care centers said ‘incidents of rage and
anger’ had increased over the past three years. ‘We’re talking about
childrena 3-year-old in one instancewho will take a fork and stab
another child in the forehead.'”[4]
“Violence is getting younger and younger,” said Ronald Stephens, director of
California’s National School Safety Center. “Initially, it was high schools
that created these schools [for disruptive students], then middle schools. Now it’s elementary. Who
would have thought years ago that this would be happening?”[4]
Actually, Col. Grossman did. He cited a study by
Journal of the American
Medical Association (June 10, 1992) on the impact of TV violence:“Hundreds of sound scientific studies
demonstrate the social impact of brutalization by the media. The Journal
of the American Medical Association concluded that ‘the introduction of
television in the 1950’s caused a subsequent doubling of the homicide
rate, i.e., long-term childhood exposure to television is a causal
factor behind approximately one half of the homicides committed in the
United States, or approximately 10,000 homicides annually.’ The article
went on to say that ‘… if, hypothetically, television technology had
never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each
year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer
injurious assaults.”Of course, if children spent less
time
in front of the TV screen, they would have more time to learn about God and
the wonders of the real world. Consider these sad statistics:
“More
than half of 2-to-7-year-olds and 82 percent of 8-to-18-year-olds live
in homes with at least one video game console.”[5]
“The average child watches 27 hrs of TV each
week.”“The average child gets more one-on-one
communication from TV than from parents & teachers combined.“60% of men on TV are involved in violence…. 11% are killers.”
“20% of suburban high schoolers endorse
shooting someone ‘who has stolen something from you.'”“After TV was introduced to a Canadian town
in 1973, a 160 percent increase in aggression, hitting, shoving, and
biting was documented in 1st and 2nd graders.” No change was seen in two control
communities.“15 years after introduction of TV in USA, homicides, rapes and assaults
doubled.”[1]
2.
Classical ConditioningYou may remember Pavlov’s dogs.
Week after week, those four-legged Soviet laboratory specimens were fed at the sound
of a bell, and eventually they learned to associate the ringing bell
with their tasty morsels. Once conditioned, they would salivate whenever the bell
rang. This studytogether with the Hegelian dialectic processhelped lay the foundation for Communist brainwashing. Col. Grossman explained its relevance today:“What is happening to our children is
the reverse of the aversion therapy portrayed in the movie A Clockwork Orange.
In A Clockwork Orange, a brutal sociopath, a mass murderer, is strapped to a
chair and forced to watch violent movies while he is injected with a drug that
nauseates him. So he sits and gags and retches as he watches the movies. After
hundreds of repetitions of this, he associates violence with nausea, and it
limits his ability to be violent….
“We are doing the exact opposite:
Our children watch vivid pictures of human
suffering and death, learning to associate it with their favorite soft drink and
candy bar, or their girlfriend’s perfume.
“The result is a phenomenon that functions much like AIDS, which I call AVIDS–Acquired
Violence Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS has never killed anybody. It destroys
your immune system, and then other diseases that shouldn’t kill you become
fatal. Television violence by itself does not kill you. It destroys your
violence immune system and conditions you to derive pleasure from
violence.”[1]3.
Operant ConditioningOperant conditioning is
based on the simple psycho-social formula: stimulus-response, stimulus-response…..
A modern example of this procedure is the use of flight simulators to train pilots.
“An airline pilot in training sits in front
of a flight simulator for endless hours,” wrote Col. Grossman. “When a particular warning light goes
on, he is taught to react in a certain way. When another warning light goes on,
a different reaction is required. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response,
stimulus-response. One day the pilot is actually flying a jumbo jet; the plane
is going down, and 300 people are screaming behind him…. But he has been conditioned to respond reflexively to this particular
crisis.”The reverse of this principle is
used to train both our soldiers and our police force. According to Col.
Grossman,“The military and law enforcement community have made killing a conditioned
response This has substantially raised the firing rate on the modern
battlefield. Whereas infantry training in World War II used bull’s-eye targets,
now soldiers learn to fire at realistic, man-shaped silhouettes that pop into
their field of view. That is the stimulus. The trainees have only a split second
to engage the target. The conditioned response is to shoot the target, and then
it drops. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, stimulus-response….“Later, when soldiers are on
the battlefield or a police officer is walking a beat and somebody pops up with
a gun, they will shoot reflexively and shoot to kill. We know that 75 to 80
percent of the shooting on the modern battlefield is the result of this kind of
stimulus-response training.
“Now, if you’re a little troubled by that, how much more should we be troubled by
the fact that every time a child plays an interactive point-and-shoot video
game, he is learning the exact same conditioned reflex and motor skills….
“This process is extraordinarily powerful and frightening. The result is
ever
more homemade pseudo-sociopaths who kill reflexively and show no remorse. Our
children are learning to kill and learning to like it; and then we have the
audacity to say, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s wrong?'”[1]A report from the
Schiller Institute
in Washington D.C. shows an even more sobering
side of the problem:
“Recently released medical studies indicate that violent video games damage the brain, possibly permanently. Video games may be more dangerous to your health than cigarettes or
alcohol. This national scandal has been covered for the benefit of the $10 billion-a-year video-game industry, of which violent games rated
‘M,’ for Mature, are the fastest-growing segment. Approximately 20 million Americans, many under 18, play these
‘M’ games. The studies, many years in the making, show that repeated playing of violent video games
‘desensitizes’ the activities of the brain involved in reasoning and planning, while activating those functions that respond to violence. The studies include scientific data indicating that these games may actually cause destructive behavior.”[6]
Who can forget the tragedies
that awakened all of America to the dark side of our youth culture? Most
memorable in the string of cold-blooded shooting sprees may be Columbine
High School in Colorado,
where two students addicted to Doom, Mortal Combat and other violent
role-playing games
(RPGs) shot 27 students and teachers.But those who are obsessed with
point-and-shoot RPGs learn more than a killer instinct. Many embrace the occultism
that drive the myth behind the violence. “Peter,” a former occultist who became a committed Christian several decades
ago, helped me to understand this phenomenon. Today, he serves his Lord by warning and equipping vulnerable
youth to resist and overcome the deadly dangers of occult RPGs.
[See Role-Playing Games & Popular Occultism]“Are
you familiar with aviation simulators?” he asked me during a telephone call. “They simulate the inside of a
cockpit in flying a plane. You can learn how to fly a plane in a flight
simulator. But in a simulator there is no risk. All personal danger has been
removed. When you
play these occult games, you’re doing the exact same
thing that you would be dong in a flight simulator. No risk. So why
not try the real thing?Many
players do. “These kids are easily drawn into occult groups through
[role-playing] tournaments,” Peter explained. “When kids transition from
simulationwhen they actually experience the POWER that is available to them
through the rituals they are learning to perform under the guise of ‘fantasy’that power becomes like an addiction and they get hooked. But they don’t see that.”
“I
could walk up to any of these teens who showed promise,” he continued, “and I
could put my hand on their shoulder, look them in the eye and say, ‘If you get a
rush from this, how would like to do it for real?’ No one has ever answered no.”4. Role Models
Children who watch television and
youth who play violent and occult role playing games find plenty of shocking
role models that shape their dreams and mold their values. Britney Spears and
Eminem are among today’s best known pied pipers, but the imaginary heroes
hidden in popular anime, slasher movies and RPGs can be just as influentialif not more so. So can the young killers who win their moment of media fame
through televised fanfare that drill the exploits of young sociopaths into the consciousness of vulnerable and envious viewers. According to Col.
Grossman,“Research in the 1970s
demonstrated the existence of ‘cluster suicides‘ in which
the local TV reporting of teen suicides directly caused numerous copycat
suicides of impressionable teenagers. Somewhere in every population there are
potentially suicidal kids who will say to themselves, ‘Well, I’ll show all those
people who have been mean to me. I know how to get my picture on TV, too.’…
Thus we get copycat, cluster murders that work their way across America like a
virus spread by the six o’clock news. No matter what someone has done, if you
put his picture on TV, you have made him a celebrity, and someone, somewhere,
will emulate him.
“The lineage of the Jonesboro
shootings began at Pearl, Mississippi, fewer than six months before. In
Pearl, a 16-year-old boy was accused of killing his mother and then
going to his school and shooting nine students, two of whom died,
including his ex-girlfriend. Two months later, this virus spread to
Paducah, Kentucky, where a 14-year-old boy was arrested for killing
three students and wounding five others.”[1]Resisting
the ViolenceWhat can parents do to monitor
and restrict violent and occult media messages? There are no simple
answers. They certainly can’t trust the video labels. In his article, “Lazy cops on the video game beat,”
columnist Brent Brozell writes,
“Two Harvard
researchers, Kimberly Thompson and Kevin Haninger, recently discovered
that parents of teenagers can’t rely very heavily on the video game
ratings system created by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB),
a self-regulating body….
“A graver problem for parents is that the games that many youngsters
desire and chatter about are not rated ‘T,’ but rated ‘M,’ for
supposedly ‘mature’ audiences. This is the TV-land of ultraviolence,
casual sex and casual profanity best known through the best seller
‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.’
“Rockstar Games, the sleaze merchants behind the ‘Vice City’
cop-killing, woman-abusing fantasy, has a newer game out called
‘Manhunt.’ The goal of ‘Manhunt’ is delivering the nastiest killings for
filming…. USA Today’s reviewer explained: ‘I got plenty of one and
two-star ratings by sneaking up behind thugs and stabbing them in the
neck. Higher ratings are awarded depending on how much additional
carnage you can add to the execution.'”[5]
Such “entertaining”
images mold the minds of children and youth around the world! Do you wonder what
will happen to our nation and culture when these conditioned youth reach
adulthood? Might the civilized world
be following a path to corruption and chaos that makes the decadence in
ancient Rome seem mild by comparison? Even if our own children refuse to participate in this
dark and depraved world of the imagination, will they live in a world
eventually subjugated to barbarians and thugs?
We can only touch the
children in the sphere of influence God has given us. But we can’t afford to be
silent! So here are a few suggestions:
1.
Pray!
Our Shepherd will
show each of us what we can do to equip our personal and our Christian family.2. Put on the
Armor of God.
The greatest weapon against the world’s deceptions is God’s Word. The
Armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) provides an outline of the vital truth that can expose
and resist any of Satan’s lies.3. Be watchful. Explain the danger of RPG’s
to your children. Share the statistics and the horrendous consequences of the
conditioning process. Show them items in the newspaper that provide current and
relevant examples and warnings.4. Understand the
Nature and Tactics of Satan.
Children need to be alert to both his timeless and his current strategies. We
are all engaged in a spiritual warand we cannot close our eyes to the
realities of the foes that assault us.
5.
Keep praising God who gives us the victory.
Know
His Names and count on His
promises. “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may
your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
For more information, read
Role-Playing Games &
Popular Occultism
and
The Power of Suggestion
1.Dave Grossman, “Trained to
Kill” at http://www.killology.com/print/print_trainedtokill.htm
“Youths forced boy to jump over cliff,”
The Scotsman, 3-3-04 at
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=248892004
Don Phau, “Schiller
InstituteStudies Show Violent
Videos Damage Brain,“
Executive Intelligence Review,
12- 27-02,
at
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/new_viol/videos_brain.html. “The lead study
was directed by Dr. Vincent Mathews of the University of Indiana, and presented
at the 88th Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society
of North America in Chicago. Dr. Mathews’ team
conducted brain scans, called functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), of 38
teenagers, ages 13-17. The teens were divided into two groups. One group of 19
had been diagnosed as having behavior problems (Disruptive Mental Disorders),
and the other 19 were “normal.” Both groups were given two video games to play.
One game was a non-violent car-racing game, and the other was a violent James
Bond-type shoot-’em-up. Both groups played the games while having their brains
scanned by MRI. According to Dr. Mathews, the MRI scans measured brain activity
by increased blood flow in the scanned areas. The results showed that both
groups had decreased brain activity when regularly playing the violent video
game. Brain changes were most apparent in those teens who were “heavy
users””those who played several hours a day,” said Dr. Mathews.
4. Claudia Wallis, “Does Kindergarten Need Cops?”
Time
Magazine, December 7, 2003.5.
Schiller Institute,
Brent Bozell,
“Lazy cops on the video game beat” (3-4-04) at
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/printbb20040304.shtml6. Brent Bozell,
“Lazy cops on the video game beat” (3-4-04) at
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/printbb20040304.shtml
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