Do we know what is real anymore?

Part of the argument against censoring some of the graphic video games is that people have been reading and seeing movies and television with violence in them for centuries or decades (depending on the technology). Well, yes, and in the Bible there are plenty of slayings and stonings, too.The difference is that reading about real people conjures up mental images of people, real people, based on collected memory of humans like you. Memory is a real thing, visceral, connected to one’s own self-image, tastes, feelings, hurts, fears and dreams. When David faced Goliath, part of that story was about David’s bravery in the face of fear, the real danger of hurt, perhaps the death he faced. When Jim faced down the pirates in “Treasure Island,” he did so in full awareness — an awareness that the words fully conveyed to the reader — that he was in personal, frightful, danger. The terror was palpable.When I was a kid and we watched Palladin in “Have Gun — Will Travel” engage in a gunfight with the bad guys or an honor knife fight with savages, there was no disassociation with the risks involved. We sat in childish admiration at his capability to face down the danger, survive the wounds, win over the enemy. The violence was seen as real to the character, however removed from our own capability, while still being fearful, worrisome, to watch.The human mind is not stupid. Yes it can be fooled. For example the speed of film through a projector is only so many frames a second. Each frame is like a still picture. As they flicker through, our mind accepts the flickering images as a live sequence, we accept the black space as a blink of the eyelid and fool ourselves into seeing a continuous live image. When dealing with these live images as shot on film, we are seeing actors engaged in live action, caught on film. Although not stupid, the mind chooses to see this action as continuous. Similarly, special effects shot on film can show a human dangling from a cliff and we never see the small erasing of the safety wire attached to his belt.With the advent of the blue (or green) screen, special effects entered the digital age. Basically, a scene is filmed with the actor mimicking falling off a building in front of the blue screen and later a computer replaces the blue screen with a shot of the building whizzing by. Our mind sees the person falling and worries, feels the horror, of the fall. That’s part of the entertainment experience. And the better the special effects wizardry, the more entertainment is offered. Of course, at a certain point the mind goes, “Whoa, that’s silly.” But there never is a question of a lack of peril or real feeling from or for the actor. The violence on movie screen or TV may numb the viewer to blood and gore, but it never removes the viewer from the emotion or the director’s desire to transmit the emotion. In entertainment, it is emotion that carries the message.• • •That is not the case with video gaming which is completely devoid of humans, on film or otherwise. In video gaming, like gambling, it is only the sense of victory that carries the emotional charge. Victory replaces feelings and emotion in gaming. Once you replace any sense of feeling, empathy or emotion for the characters, they become merely a tool toward your end goal: a sense of accomplishment, that need, desperate drive, for victory. The player’s emotions here are the same as gambling addiction. When you couple this drive for satisfaction for victory at any cost with increasingly violent video gaming, you enter the realm of desensitization. As with gambling, a desensitized player will take his or her paycheck (even if they know there will be no family food shopping that week) and buy a bucket of coins for the slots, feeding the beast. Similarly, the addicted gamer will sit, hour after hour before the gaming console, sometimes in the audio-fed company of gamers each feeding the beast on the screen, shooting, maiming, killing, ripping apart with bare hands, opponents, zombies, monsters, soldiers, enemies in order to rack up points and gain a victory.Entertainment at the blackjack table can turn to gambling $1 billion on video poker. Entertainment playing video games can warp to higher exultation as the game is taken to the street for real, or to a school near you, where the body count feeds the need to win. Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.