Censorship in Illinois

#61 Well-put, Jeff.

especially

Quote:
No, games and movies have ratings on them so that the respective industries will be perceived as making a good faith effort to rate games, thus avoiding government intervention. The industries themselves probably (in general) rank the resultant impact on child behavior rather low on their lists of priorities.

#62 "Personally, I think wise parents will allow no (as in none, ZERO, zilch, nada) television or videogames* until a certain age (12?), then strictly vet what games they do play after that age and prior to a certain level of maturity (16 or so). Kids are busy learning about reality, that's their main job in life, there's no need for them to go learning about virtual realities at the same time.

* by no television I mean no network/cable, just vetted DVDs/VHS, and by no games I mean no severe games - stuff like Tetris and Chess is okay.

edit 4:
I reread my post and figured I should expand a bit. I regard the entertainment industry (television, film, music, and games) as essentially an open sewer vis-a-vis children. It is simply evil. I also hold public education in similar esteem. I think the foremost goal of any parent is to insulate their children from this open sewer until they are most of the way matured. Then, having the tools of life formed, they can be exposed to these things (or rather, able to make their own decisions about these things)."

Alrighty then. I'd love to see how your children turn out, granted that you take your own advice.

Sheltering children will not help anything, and quite honestly, non-gratuitious violence can carry a very strong message. More to the point though, not letting a child see TV or video games until they are 12 years old will only lead to shock and humiliation upon contact with the real world. Afterall, crime is a good bit older than TV, video games, or just about anything else along those lines.

And NO! There should be no government mandates for a strict enforcement of what people of what ages can (edit: Get changed to use) what products! What you are asking for is a totalitarianist government! Material may be impressionable, but people have a right to read Marx and Neitsche. If we simply cut off media of certain types, we are no better than the Nazis burning books. I honestly find it appaling how anyone can ask for such a thing. Practically begging for a 1984 style government.

Now, I live in Germany. Pornography is on public television, they have access to all of the same violent content we have in America (Let me clarify... I'm an American citizen within Germany), they have no legal drinking ages (though you do have to be 16 to buy bear... as opposed to 21 in the States), Absinthe is a perfectly legal substance, and Amsterdam is right around the corner (or if you are feeling overly exotic, you can get to Asia in a little over 3 hours). Iv'e yet to hear of a school shooting here and more to the point, they have a lower rate of crime than America by far. Can you honestly blame the media for all of the violence that occurs in America? I'll tell you what... Germany's school system is far more opressive than America's. (The basic drift is that your future is decided when you leave 5th grade. You will go on the vocational, collegic, or middle route right then and there, and you usually won't be moving up on that food chain, though down is quite common. Then you have a one shot exam for entering college called the Abitur... anyway, you get the point).

Germany's government has far less control over its people than America's... very few cops roam the streets, the military presence is infinitessimly small in comparison to America's, and they let people do pretty much whatever they want to. Perhaps its America's audacious effort to place prohibition on everything that really causes all of this violence rather than violent video games and movies.

Let the parents decide what their children are mentally capable of and hold them responsible... don't censor the whole world.

#63

Quote:Sheltering children will not help anything, and quite honestly, non-gratuitious violence can carry a very strong message. More to the point though, not letting a child see TV or video games until they are 12 years old will only lead to shock and humiliation upon contact with the real world.

Sheltering will help something, it'll help children develop in a healthy way before being exposed to the cesspool that is the entertainment industry. If sheltering children doesn't help anything, then how would you feel about children taking field trips to porn studios to see how production works?

Quote:Afterall, crime is a good bit older than TV, video games, or just about anything else along those lines.

What does this have to do with anything? Warfare is older than Hiroshima too, so what?

Quote:And NO! There should be no government mandates for a strict enforcement of what people of what ages can (edit: Get changed to use) what products! What you are asking for is a totalitarianist government! Material may be impressionable, but people have a right to read Marx and Neitsche. If we simply cut off media of certain types, we are no better than the Nazis burning books. I honestly find it appaling how anyone can ask for such a thing. Practically begging for a 1984 style government.

You should use a quote so I know if you're adressing me. For now I'll assume you aren't, since I haven't suggested government intervention via censorship (I advocate family-oriented censorship, where parents exercise a modicum critical thinking - to recognize the t.v. as what it really is, a device that works more for evil than for good - and discipline - to wake up from the mass consumer stupor and unplug the damn thing from the wall for the good of their kids).

Quote:Now, I live in Germany. Pornography is on public television, they have access to all of the same violent content we have in America (Let me clarify... I'm an American citizen within Germany), they have no legal drinking ages (though you do have to be 16 to buy bear... as opposed to 21 in the States), Absinthe is a perfectly legal substance, and Amsterdam is right around the corner (or if you are feeling overly exotic, you can get to Asia in a little over 3 hours). Iv'e yet to hear of a school shooting here and more to the point, they have a lower rate of crime than America by far.

You forgot legalized prostitution. :)

America and Germany are apples and oranges, comparing the two doesn't make your point (not by a long shot).

I repeat, the arrow of causation here is anything but clear. Do societies make laws that reflect and complement their characters, or do laws generate societies of certain characters? I think the assumption should be that the former is reasonable, and the latter is rather silly.

Quote:Can you honestly blame the media for all of the violence that occurs in America?

Again, I don't know if you're addressing me but I'll respond anyway. No, I can't blame the media for all the violence that occurs in America, nor have I. If you were addressing me, well, have fun with that strawman.

Quote:I'll tell you what... Germany's school system is far more opressive than America's. (The basic drift is that your future is decided when you leave 5th grade. You will go on the vocational, collegic, or middle route right then and there, and you usually won't be moving up on that food chain, though down is quite common. Then you have a one shot exam for entering college called the Abitur... anyway, you get the point).

I wasn't referring to the "opressiveness" of the American school system, I was referring more to the endless litany of lies and obfuscations that is pumped into the heads of schoolchildren with taxpayer money.

#64 Continued:

Quote:Germany's government has far less control over its people than America's... very few cops roam the streets, the military presence is infinitessimly small in comparison to America's, and they let people do pretty much whatever they want to.

Except speak their minds of course. Perhaps you should look into the area of free speech before you criticise American laws. Remove the mote from your own eye and all that. Germany's dedication to free speech (and most of western Europe's, for that matter) is non-existent. In Europe they ban political parties for their (non-violent) platforms for God's sake. On the other hand, they do have the parliamentary system in most of Europe, rather than a two-party monopoly like in America, so such things become necessary (from the p.o.v. of an eminence grise that is).

Quote:Let the parents decide what their children are mentally capable of and hold them responsible... don't censor the whole world.

I agree.

note: sorry if I repeated a post umpteen times, I just found out that refreshing duplicates a post (and I can't see the reposts).

#65 "What does this have to do with anything? Warfare is older than Hiroshima too, so what?"

Plenty. Youth crime isn't some freakish occurence that started with the games industry, nor any other kind of crime for that matter.

"America and Germany are apples and oranges, comparing the two doesn't make your point (not by a long shot)."

So what you are saying then is that Germany's people are better than America's? They are both capitalist, democratic republic nations with a widespread immigration. They are both economically very high in the world. They are also both country's with a very high variety of unique areas and social conditions. Having lived here, I can vouch for the similarities and differences between the country's, and it certainly isn't comparing apples and oranges. People are the biproducts of their raisers and the societies that harbor them.

I wasn't really addressing any of it at you in particular so much as to people who are saying that this is the fault of the media/games industry.

"You forgot legalized prostitution. :)"

Quite right... that I did.


"Sheltering will help something, it'll help children develop in a healthy way before being exposed to the cesspool that is the entertainment industry. If sheltering children doesn't help anything, then how would you feel about children taking field trips to porn studios to see how production works?"

That cesspool is inherent in all of humanity. And as I said... Germany has pornography on public television, so I should rather doubt it would have that much more of a negative impact. However, showing things as taboo definitely leads to curiousity, just as mentioned prior with the subject of prohibition.

Quite simply though, if you never let your children watch TV until the age of 12 and not let them see violence until the age of 16, they will undoubtably develop social complexes that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Children who are sheltered far less than that are already unaccepted in schools, so I highly doubt that a High Schooler who has never seen anything more violent than Sesame Street on TV... well, you get the picture. Of course, home school can always be accounted for, but that comes with its own demerits as well of course.

#66

Quote:So what you are saying then is that Germany's people are better than America's? They are both capitalist, democratic republic nations with a widespread immigration. They are both economically very high in the world. They are also both country's with a very high variety of unique areas and social conditions. Having lived here, I can vouch for the similarities and differences between the country's, and it certainly isn't comparing apples and oranges.

Yes, they're both capitalist, democratic republics with "widespread" immigration and high per capita GDPs. So? They're still apples and oranges in this context.

Quote:They are also both country's with a very high variety of unique areas and social conditions.

You're agreeing with me in all but name here, unless you have a very different definition of "unique" than I do.

Quote:People are the biproducts of their raisers and the societies that harbor them.

Prove it. I say people are products of nature and nurture. A man is not some tabula rasa for other men to write upon.

Quote:That cesspool is inherent in all of humanity.

No it isn't. Every society does not generate the same sort of anti-culture that the American media produces.

Quote:And as I said... Germany has pornography on public television, so I should rather doubt it would have that much more of a negative impact.

You're equating mandatory school field trips to porn studios to the fact that Germans broadcast pornography on t.v., which parents may or may not let their children watch? Huh?

Quote:However, showing things as taboo definitely leads to curiousity, just as mentioned prior with the subject of prohibition.

I don't mind if my future kids end up very curious about television, as long as they're mostly matured by the time they're (fully) exposed to it (I say "fully" because I know they'll be exposed here and there, at a friend's house, etc.).

#67

Quote:
Quite simply though, if you never let your children watch TV until the age of 12 and not let them see violence until the age of 16, they will undoubtably develop social complexes that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Erm....I know a lot of people who don't watch tv/movies/etc (basically, they don't catch up with the media). As far as I can tell since I've know them, they don't seem to have a complex different than anyone else who does watch.

#68 We have been here in St. Petersburg, Russia for the last 12 years. When we came our kids were 2, 4 and 6.

Twelve years ago it really was much much muuuch safer to walk the streets at midnite in this city of 6 million than in our home city Houston. Then, the state still ran the TV so the best you could do was maybe watching "Dallas" with poor dubbing. Video players were non existent. As were personal computers.

Then a few years after we arrived TV programming, video and computers started to multiple like rabbits.

Commensurate with the tsunami of media from the west the personal safety for aggravated assault has taken a BIG increase. It used to be that all you ever saw in the news was mafia folks bumping off one another with bombs and real RPGs. Now neighbors give us first hand reports of their child being beat to a pulp by a gang.

All videos, games and movies have made deep penetration into the culture here because all stores sell them at basically the cost of copying the media.

Is it the content that makes a person bad? Well yeah, I think it helps the process along by fanning into flame the inherent evil we all have lurking in us like Jekyll is to Hyde. These poor kids in Russia did not know what honestly hit them. They just happened to find themselves being born at a time when the wall to the west came crashing down. They had no role model for Jesus like love in the home so the vacuum has gotten filled with all this other crud that a few elite in the world call "art". And now they don't have the luxury of the iron hand of Communism to keep a lid on the water that boils in all men's unregenerate heart.

Probably less than 1 percent of kids smoked here 13 years ago... now it is hard to find the 1 percent that aren't addicted to that personal curse.

Our kids only watch the videos that are in our acquired library maybe 100 titles. No TV besides that. We treat the videos that we get like gold and share them with friends till all the English speakers we know have watched it too, and vice-versa. We as a family agree that piracy (even though very tempting when you see everything being sold for $3, from Runaway Bride to 3Ds Max and Maya bundled on one disk) is a personal crime against the livelihood of those artists who created the game, movie or song. Yeah our kids are a little different because of having a selective media diet. But it is a difference I thank God for regularly, especially when we visit the states and see the avalanche of decadence in media. What is a parent to do ... just as fast as they try to instill the values the thief is coming in the back door to steal.

< to be continued>

#69

In these later years my wife has been the subject of target practice from a sniper from a nearby window raining BB's on her for live target practice. It broke the skin through her jeans. Things like that never happened before and we are surrounded by just as many people as when we arrived. Odds are we have more people around us than you pass in your car in 15 minutes on the freeway in your city. The reason that aggravated personal crime has skyrocketed is not because the population has grown.

So what is the difference between that FPS having target practice shooting at my wife and my son who loooves to play Vietnam? My son does not show signs of wanting to hurt people carelessly.

My point is to say that inherent evil in each of us is always smoldering waiting to be fanned into flame by the fuel we take in through our eye and ear gates. If a kid does not get his values in order to love my neighbor is more important than loving myself ... he is fair game to be swept away by bad media, dwelling on bad thoughts, etc. With out the internal values we are at the mercy of the catalyst that bad media can produce in our lives. Why? Because there is no filter in place in our heart/mind to determine right from wrong. Many today will say there is no right and no wrong, who is to judge. I ask them to put up or shut up. Walk across Central Park at night alone and test your theory. Relatively speaking your epitaph will say, "He died of a virtual stab wound. Killer acquitted for lack of evidence that any harm was done." People are to be valued over personal agenda.

My challenge parents is this (because it may be too late for us) ... if you have a child who is an aspiring artist. Tell him/her that he/she has a choice of how to invest there God given talent. I would tell my kids this example because it is clear in their minds from what the have witnessed here on the streets of St. Petersburg..."You can use your talents for a lesser purpose like those girls with short skirts and guys with big smiles who used to hand out free cigarette samples to all the kids as they left the subway till all the kids were hooked ... or instead think out side the box and find creative ways to use your talent to fill kids with adventure for celebrating the lives around them. Few artist ever take that challenge but the ones who do leave an indelible legacy on lives long after they can't lift the paint brush or move the mouse any more. Momma, train your kids to be artists.

Bob Achgill
St. Petersburg, Russia

#70 Here's what I say. Adults can drink as much beer as they want, as long as they know their limits to how much they can drink and will stop at that limit. Children should know that video games with violent content is bad for them. I'm not saying that video games are bad, im just stating that there should not be a ban. They should know what to play and what not to.
But it's harder for parents to supervise their children full time. Just last year a friend of mine told me that he bought Halo without his parents knowing. Whenever they were out at dinner or at work and he was alone, he would play. He beat the game, too....
Then, five months later, just the January that passed, his parents found it in his shirt drawer. He was grounded for two months and had the game sold on Ebay.
Woah, offtopic. In conclusion, there shouldn't be a ban...just make sure kids know their limits.

#71 This is ridiculous, I was being sarcastic about banning the media.

The problem is the parenting, not the media.

Personally, I have a lot of violent tendencies, I play violent games and watch violent movies
to alleviate the frustration at not being MORALLY ABLE to kill whoever I feel like. I was raised
by my mother to not hurt people and not to do anything I wouldn't like to be done to me.

It's not hard, just spend some time with your kids and they'll learn more from you than from
anything else.

It also works the other way, don't spend time with them and they'll learn from everything else.