Patrick wrote an interesting post about an event that happened in a Cyberpunk 2020 game I was DMing. It's about morality. It's a really well written piece that you should all read. But it got me wondering about things that have gone on in games I've been involved in, and whether those things have had real-world consequences for my own sense of myself as a moral person.
I was brought up by Christian parents (a Christian mother, more accurately - my Dad mostly humoured her), and my mother always tried to instil in me the notion that things that we watch, read, or listen to do actually affect our 'souls'; when you watch a violent film it is actually bad for you in some sense. It is corrupting.
I still think I agree with that, to a certain extent, although I wouldn't frame it in terms of the soul or sinfulness - except perhaps in the illustrative sense. I agree with it insofar as I think that movies, music and books can have a coarsening, hardening, and cheapening effect on the way we view the world: the more violence and badness you absorb in fiction (particularly visual fiction), the less you can empathise with others. It's why I'm in favour of some level of film censorship and why I think that films like the Saw and Human Centipede franchises are actually quite dangerous - not because I worry about copy cat-ism, but because I worry about the cumulative effect of all this cruelty on our collective unconscious. I'm aware this is a controversial view that some people reading this blog will not agree with.
But for whatever reason, the games I run are pretty amoral affairs. (I would use the term 'morally ambiguous' but I always think that is a pretty cowardly euphemism.) And I never, ever find myself sitting there as a DM, or later on that night, or the next week, thinking about what went on in the game - the brutal slayings, the casual theft, the complete lack of compassion demonstrated by everybody involved - and fretting about morality. Until I read Patrick's post it never even occurred to me that anybody really would think that way. The game is just a game.
But then again, Saw is just a movie. I believe I have found myself in a moral contradiction. I suppose I'm okay with that.
Heh, you seem to have a knack for bringing up topics just as I'm preparing posts about them recently. Although I consider desensitization to be only one of the "effects of shock." Keep eyes peeled ...
ReplyDeleteI just discussed a similar topic on violence and video games, albeit I am someone who proscribes ethical and moral behavior through actions instead of experiences. I think the saturation of fictional violence might be otherwise stemming a human tendency toward real violence, and that there may be evidence to support it (such as the dramatic overall decrease in national crime rates in the last twenty years). Violence in film tends not do desensitize so much as to remind us of how disturbing and awful it is; it is harder to commit violent acts when you are reminded of what they entail. Our expression of violence in media may be acting as a buffer against real violence, by virtue of preventing us from forgetting or ignoring what violent acts and their consequences entail. Just some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI'm wary of seeing correlations between two things and attributing causation when there are so many potential causing factors. For a start, I assume you're talking about the US - the very first thing you would have to do would be to check whether crime rates in other countries where violent films are watched have also gone down in the last twenty years. That's for starters.
DeleteYou'd then also have to try to isolate it from all the other possible factors - better policing, economic growth, fewer opportunities for violent crime because people stay at home on the internet more, the rise in abortions (as the freakonomics author believes), an ageing population...
It is not remotely possible to prove causation in social science, so it's impossible to tell. Then again the same goes for my opinion, so they are just as persuasive as each other's!
I've seen it argued that violent video games like GTA do cause a reduction in violent crime, through the sheer amount of time people spend playing them. I don't know, I'm sceptical there is much of a causal link - most violent crime is caused by a small number of criminals, and the biggest driver of its fall in the USA is likely the very high incarceration rate.
DeleteWell, there is a lot of research showing that playing violent computer games, in the short term, facilitates aggression and aggressive thoughts in other contexts. But very little research showing what, if any, disinhibiting effects it has in the long term. In other words, shooting people in a game may make you more "angry" but does it also desensitize you to what might be "disgusting" about violence? This is actually a topic I want to do serious, academic research on in my field, and have a grant proposal I need to write in order to do it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said "it is not remotely possible to prove causation in social science", I probably should have clarified I mean it's not possible to really prove anything at the societal level (like "increased video game playing has had an effect on crime rates"). I think you can certainly indicate the effects of things like this at the experimental level, although I'm always dubious that enough replication gets done.
DeleteI'd be very interested to know how you're going to do your research.
That's fine for you as an individual, but when you support censorship what we're talking about is influencing/controlling the minds of a whole population. Kinda, sorta brainwashing them to be more docile.
ReplyDelete>>casual theft
Have you ever read some Conan? He does things that would be unethical in the real world, but don't seem unethical in his setting. This perplexed me for a bit but I think different settings just have different rules.
I don't really see much of a problem with brainwashing people to be more docile, within reason. When people fret about film censorship and call it brainwashing, they generally forget that human society is essentially a grand experiment in brainwashing: we do it in our families, in schools, and in work - we endeavour constantly to make ourselves more docile. That's what civilization is, really.
DeleteHave you ever read some Conan? He does things that would be unethical in the real world, but don't seem unethical in his setting. This perplexed me for a bit but I think different settings just have different rules.
I'm much less concerned about fiction, because I think that visual images have more of an impact, and I think that it is possible to portray things in a much more mature and nuanced way in written media. That aside, I don't think it necessarily matters that different settings have different rules (which they undoubtedly do); I still think violent imagery has an effect, because our society has rules too.
There's a book called "Black Man", by Richard Morgan, about a strain of humanity genetically engineered to throw off the centuries of civilization and thus become better soldiers. The protagonist is one of these, and he's utterly ruthless.
Delete(I came across your blog in a link from some other DnD blog, and have added it to my regular reads. Your gaming material has already enriched my four-session old game)
"I don't really see much of a problem with brainwashing people to be more docile, within reason. When people fret about film censorship and call it brainwashing, they generally forget that human society is essentially a grand experiment in brainwashing: we do it in our families, in schools, and in work - we endeavour constantly to make ourselves more docile. That's what civilization is, really."
DeleteAgree strongly - I don't see many people with your level of insight.
"I don't really see much of a problem with brainwashing people to be more docile, within reason. When people fret about film censorship and call it brainwashing, they generally forget that human society is essentially a grand experiment in brainwashing: we do it in our families, in schools, and in work - we endeavour constantly to make ourselves more docile. That's what civilization is, really."
DeleteSounds like an excellent justification for totalitarianism. Do you make no distinction between "brainwashing" done by societal/cultural pressure (which a person is free to accept or reject or subvert at will) and "brainwashing" done by government edict (which will land you in jail if you disregard it)?
It seems like ignoring that distinction is an easy way to justify erosion of virtually any freedom.
It would sound like an excellent justification without the caveat "within reason" that I put in there.
DeleteAs is often the case with hot button issues like censorship, you're painting my position as more extreme than it is. Why on earth are you talking about jail? I'm talking about film censorship - i.e. either not granting films licenses to be screened at all in the most extreme circumstances, or requiring cuts to be made. There's no jail involved here.
The issue of "erosion of virtually any freedom" is also hyperbolic. Most Western societies accept a level of restriction on freedom of speech, balanced against the harm that restriction might do to society. For instance, in Britain it is deemed perfectly proportionate to restrict freedom of speech to prevent incitement of racial hatred. There have been laws to that effect for many years. I don't think any sensible person would view them as signifying the start of the erosion of freedom. They're a sign Britain is a mature democracy which can be trusted to make sensible decisions to restrict certain of its citizens' rights in some circumstances, for the wider good. The same is true of any other developed and stable democracy you could name.
Of course I don't think you are pro-totalitarianism, and I recognize that reasonable minds can differ about the limits of free speech.
DeleteI was responding to your (to paraphrase) "I don't worry much about [impliedly government] brainwashing, because the function of society is brainwashing more or less" comment. I don't think the reasoning there washes because governmental coercion is fundamentally different from cultural coercion. Governmental coercion should require a significantly higher justification (more than just "well, society does it too...") because government coercion is backed up by force. Perhaps that analytical work is done by your “within reason” caveat. I was skeptical, because I saw the comment as too easily equating governmental and societal pressure. In any event, I think that point has been made.
To respond to two other issues you raised:
I think you should recognize that many sensible people do take the position that hate speech laws are an unacceptable limitation on freedom. I don't see such laws as indicative of "mature democracy" at all. (In fact, I see them as indicative of a society that is not mature enough to tolerate views that are far outside the norm).
Regarding my comments about jail -- how else does a censorship agency enforce its decisions? If I make a film and screen it without getting a required license, I assume the agency will somehow try to stop me …
Glad to see the recent spate of posts.
The threat of jail exists in the same sense that it exists with every single thing the government does to regulate anything. Parking tickets, for instance: what happens if you refuse to pay fines and continue to park wherever you want? Sure, you ultimately end up in jail after every other avenue of sanction has been exhausted. The argument is completely divorced from reality, though, because it never happens in practice. In the same way, linking film censorship to custodial sentencing is divorced from reality: it would never be a relevant consideration in practice. (And indeed, it is never a relevant consideration in practice. We're not talking about pie in the sky here - the BBFC currently acts as a censor already when it comes to sexualised violence, for example. Custodial sentencing never enters the picture. My argument would be that the current guidelines should be somewhat tightened.)
DeleteYou're loading the dice with language, I think, in using words like "coercion" which sort of call to mind the use of force, and "pressure", which calls to mind active governmental policy which citizens actually encounter on a regular basis. Neither of those words is appropriate for what I am talking about here, which is merely censoring extreme violence in films. I think a sense of perspective is important in these things.
I do recognise that many sensible people take the position that hate speech laws are an unacceptable limitation on freedom. However, I think you should also recognise that those laws exist and have not resulted in any significant erosion of freedom or slippery slope towards totalitarianism anywhere in the world, that judges tend to balance proportionality relatively effectively in most circumstances, and by and large no abuse goes on.
Re: the threat of jail -- yes, governmental regulation is powerful because it is backed up by force. The same consequences do not exist with societal pressure. The reason I can't park anywhere I want is because the police would probably take my car and stop me by force from getting it back. Similarly, the reason British filmmakers don't show whatever films they want is because the government would (I'm guessing) levy crippling fines that would put them out of business, or obtain court injunctions requiring them to stop showing the films on pain of contempt. The fact that responsible people rarely encounter that force does not make the threat of it any less real or effective.
DeleteI'm mildly amused that you object to "coercion" and "pressure" but not "brainwashing." ;) I'm happy to use whatever term you prefer, though, for the state preventing people from doing what they want.
I'm not sure what your point is about people not encountering government speech policy on a daily basis. Any restriction on movie making or importing or broadcasting is not going to be directly felt by most people, because most people don't do those things. But any restriction has an impact on everyone in that it restricts the universe of movies you can watch.
I agree with you that alarmist "slippery slope" arguments that the sort of speech regulations extant in Europe is the first step towards London becoming Pyongyang-West are generally not helpful. I wasn't trying to make such an argument, but I must have expressed myself inartfully.
Perhaps your reading was clouded by your all-consuming hatred of freedom. ;)
So what are you saying, Ivan? That you think the ultimate sanction of either taking your car by force or jailing you if you continue to park wherever the hell you want is "coercive"? If so, then okay, fine, we'll call it coercion, and censoring very violent films is coercion. But are you then making the argument that "coercion = bad"? Are you going to try to argue that people should be allowed to park wherever the hell they want..?
DeleteI think the key to this argument is this sentence:
But any restriction has an impact on everyone in that it restricts the universe of movies you can watch.
My honest, genuine reaction to that is something along the lines of "boo hoo, diddums". (My reaction in general I mean, not to you specifically.) Having the universe of movies that people want to watch being vaguely restricted in some way is really not something which excites me to paroxysms of fury about lost freedom. If anything I think arguments like that detract from, and smokescreen, genuine concerns about freedom and start to give the very concept of rights a bad name (which it is already starting to get in the UK - a not entirely unrelated discourse).
I do want it said that I'm not an authoritarian person. When it comes to the economy, health, education and so on I generally lean towards having government intervene as little as possible. My ideal solution to the problem of ultra-violent, sadistic "torture porn" films would be to have film makers behave more responsibly and morally. Unfortunately they've proven they won't, so in lieu of that, I favour a moderate degree of censorship - which is one of the most minor of all government interventions.
I find it amazing, for instance, that most left-liberal types in the UK would probably be against film censorship but wildly supportive of our nationalised health system, the BBC license fee, having a national school curriculum, etc.
"I think you should recognize that many sensible people do take the position that hate speech laws are an unacceptable limitation on freedom."
DeleteI certainly don't think Britain is a free country, or that our speech-crime laws are reasonable, or proportionally enforced - the biggest issue seems to be the current police & court enforcement of what constitutes a "racially aggravated public order offence" under the 1986 Public Order Act, in light of their accepting the MacPhearson Report's redefinition of what constitutes a 'racist incident'. This is what leads to women going to jail for 6 months for drunken rants on the Tube or tram; men going to jail for 6 months for racist tweets on Twitter, etc.
I too am for censorship of extreme violent or sexual films. Without it, we are trusting that industry can effectively self regulate. If you want any proof that industries cannot do this, but will tall you that they can and everything is fine, simply look to the banking industry. 'Freedoms' being lost is a red herring argument here. What sort of person wants to watch 30 years of film makers trying to outdo each other to make a more and more graphic Saw? I'll tell you what sort. A mentally ill one. We are allowing the sickest of people to display their sickness to the world as entertainment and ignoring completely the influence that this will have on our soceity. We do so at our peril.
DeleteOften, when I argue that the Weakest Link, or Eastenders, or Big Brother (or whatever) has a damaging effect on us, I get accused of being pro-censorship. The same people often say that these things have no effect on us, it is all utterly harmless. To which my standard response has become: If the art we look at, books we read, the films we watch, and even the games we play have no effect on us, then there is little point in protecting free speech. We protect free speech because they have an effect on the way we see and understand the world. Doesn't mean that some films don't encourage a 'dangerous' way of seeing the world, and that some film-makers aren't total shitheads.
ReplyDeleteWell, in my view Eastenders (and other soaps like it) have had very, very damaging effects on British society. I don't advocate censoring it or banning it, but I do think the BBC needs to take a long, hard look at itself in what it does with that programme.
DeleteLike you, I think there is something genuinely incoherent about the anti-censorship position: for instance, the BBC has a policy of promoting diversity in its presentership - it tries as much as possible to have people of Afro-Carribbean or Asian descent presenting the news, women presenting science shows, and so on (which is something I support, by and large). And it does so because it believes this will have a beneficial impact on society - it will remove traditional, negative stereotypes.
And yet when it comes to Eastenders, I have no doubt that the response from the BBC to concerns about its coarsening effect on British society would be: "It's just entertainment - it has no effect on anybody, stop being so silly."
So does TV affect society, or not? It's utterly incoherent.
"in my view Eastenders (and other soaps like it) have had very, very damaging effects on British society. I don't advocate censoring it or banning it, but I do think the BBC needs to take a long, hard look at itself in what it does with that programme. "
DeleteI'm pretty sure that the BBC knows what it is doing with Eastenders, at least in general terms. They seem to subscribe to Critical Theory ideas about Deconstructing society through relentless Critique - once everything is destroyed, something nice is supposed to spontaneously emerge from the ruins.
What something nice... yet another episode of Eastenders?
Delete'Society' cannot be deconstructed to ruins through critique, of course. The very idea is nonsense. Eventually, people get fed up of the critics and simply ignore them. It's written into the fabric of our bones to socialise and form communities, to have families; the knowledge of strength of togetherness is intuitive and always at hand. This just goes to show the gulf between theory and practice, the imagined and the real, human intellect and arragance... is as large today as it ever has been and will never change. In other words, if the BBC really does believe in such things, they are idiots. You can deconstruct all you want, but you cannot change what /is/ and what /is to come/.
i believe games are a great way to act out all our "darker" tendencies in a civilised way.
ReplyDeletefor most people, "a game is just a a game". most mature minds wouldn't be seriously affected by consuming "problematic" media (or acting amoral in a game), but with kids you have to be careful.
i think that while certain videogames and movies can be very damaging in the ways you described (if watched too early and regularly), rpgs on the other hand offer kids a great way to test how "being bad" feels (and all the consequences), cause the level of reflection is much higher. they seem to enjoy it a lot and in my experience morality is a big in-game issue for them.
ps: what's so damaging about eastenders? i have never watched the show, so i am curious. :)
I think there's a lot to be said for that argument.
DeleteRegarding Eastenders, my concern with it is that everyone in it just spends the entire episode being miserable and rude and behaving appallingly to one another. It's almost as if it sets the emotional tone for the entire nation, because Britain has become a noticeably more miserable, rude and appalling place in recent years.
The problem with soaps in general is that they need 3-4 hours *a week* of conflict. The budget of soaps doesn't stretch to man against nature, the scale of soaps doesn't stretch to man against history, the wit of soaps doesn't stretch to man against himself, or man against society, so we are left with relentless, endless, grinding, man against man.
DeleteSpeak for yourself noisms, it depends on who you know. Go find some more cheery friends, or just switch the rubbish soaps off and go watch Bargain Hunt or Flogit instead. You'll something more about history there, which is very valuable; without the past, we wouldn't exist... To understand it is to understand the present... and the future.
Delete" I worry about the cumulative effect of all this cruelty on our collective unconscious"
ReplyDeleteI agree - I understand that the American courts basically won't allow censorship for violence, only for sex, but the UK BBFC used to censor for violence and now fails to do so. These films seem far nastier than the 'video nasties' of yore, yet they are advertised on the sides of buses and the London Underground.
I think the BBFC will censor for sexual violence which is included for purposes of entertainment. I forget the exact wording - you can look it up online - but, basically, if rape or sexual assault is depicted in a titillating way, scenes can be cut or the film can be refused certification. I think this happened to the second Human Centipede film, although after cuts it got through on appeal.
DeleteProve it.
ReplyDeleteIt's not possible to prove it. None of this is anything other than unfounded opinion.
DeleteYou tell him! >:)
DeleteAesthetics is more influential than morality on entertainment and art and the masses live through the consequences of this and suffer most heavily for it and I wouldn't have it any other way. Morality is just an "I shall" fig leaf covering a "Thou shalt" cock.
DeleteThe Greeks, and there has been no cleverer population, would have considered our entertainment obscene and a sign of mental illness, but weighing more heavily than that warning is the greater obscenity of stupid women and male feminists who consider fiction, tv and cinema as a morally instructive *opportunity*.
Fuck you, I say to them, but have little interest anyway in anythng published post 1970 except porn, so Im OK.
I say fuck you to them too - I'm not talking about moral instruction, or, at least, I'm only talking about my own kind of moral instruction, which is the best kind.
DeleteFor a phd in law, and a smart guy to boot, you are disappointingly fond of long winded rambling arguments. You prefer endless shallow disputation to deep thinking followed up with a pithy apothegm.
DeleteThink about that sentence. "For a PhD in law...you are disappointingly fond of long winded rambling arguments." Just correlation, or causation?
DeleteI thought a PhD in law would allow you to be a bit more philosophical.
DeleteActually, come to think of it, PhDs seem universally to be considered a timewasting pain in the hole.
They are, but once you've jumped through that particular hoop, a career of relative comfort and decent pecuniary gain awaits.
Delete"once you've jumped through that particular hoop, a career of relative comfort and decent pecuniary gain awaits" - agreed, for a certain value of 'decent'. >:)
DeleteInteresting topic. Like you mention, it is difficult to prove anything scientifically.
ReplyDeleteI simply don't run games the way you do. If the game is about having a group of player's in a sandbox, with dodgy motives, then I am likely to cut it short or voice some disapproval.
It is understood by my friends that play, that I am playing a game about heroes. Usually there are some "big bads" or "something wrong" in the world and it is their job to fix it.
Absolutely, these are the most satisfying of games. Throw in some fairy tale elements, like a (shock) damsel in distress every now and again and you've got some lighthearted good fun, which is what entertainment, at its core, really is about.
DeleteGaming is both art and entertainment, and art can be about more than lighthearted good fun.
DeleteOh, and I'm not necessarily talking about "didactic" gaming with a moral or a focus on real world issues. There is also the expansive sense of wonder (see Burke's Philosophical Enquiry) or Aristotelian catharsis.
DeleteI personally like playing good guys, if only because they often involve more challenge and heroism than neutral or evil types, and I like heroism. So, when I write an adventure, I do my best to picture the bad guys as *really* bad: the more powerful the obstacle, the greater the heroes. Yet, my friends like best to play neutral characters trying to make the most of their fantasy world, and they have a lot of fun with it. Sometimes, one of their characters turns evil and it's fine. Evil people do evil things. All this is pretty much okay with me.
ReplyDeleteWhat's not okay is when evil behavior becomes the underlying layer, the standard. Why? Because Gramsci. RPGs are part of our culture, they seep everywhere in video games, novels, comics ; they contribute to shape our culture. That's where I think we should care about what we deliver, because culture is the main driver of societal changes, more than economics, more than politics. We should care about the ethics at a global level, not at an individual level where it's mostly irrelevant, except if you blur too much the player/character distinction like your friend Patrick does.
Yet, I like to live in a society in which I'm ultimately in charge of what I create for this global, cultural level and therefore, against any sort of limitation to freedom of speech — any sort. Then again, I begin to suspect we have quite opposite political opinions, but that's all fine :)
How much should I have blurred it?
DeleteAnd also, if I'm caring about the ethics at a global level (where it's important) but not at the individual level (where it's mostly irrelevant) what do I do at the national level? Or any of the the thousand fine gradations betweeen my own life and the life of the world?
DeleteLike Patrick, I'm not sure why caring about ethics at a global level rather than an individual level is preferable.
DeleteI think in the past the people who care about ethics at a global level but not at an individual level tend to be callous people who believe the end justifies the means. Lenin, Che Guevera, Pinochet, etc. They were all very ethical when it came to the global level, but cared nothing for individuals.
I agree. An ethical code of conduct should be the minimum at the /individual/ level, based upon a simple moral test ('Would I like it if it happened to me?'). Once the individual level is in place, it will extend outwards. Chivalric knights spring to mind as shaping their whole society. The Samurai's Bushido code is another one. These were both highly successful and stable models for society as a whole. More's the pity that we do not subscribe to something similar today.
DeleteWaw Noisms, equating Lenin, Pinochet and Guevara is quite a feat! This being said, what I meant is that weighing our ethics about our own individual situation without the scope and background of our global interdependance seems rather unethical to me, so, yeah, mostly irrelevant, sorry.
ReplyDeleteEthics are about what you do to people, including yourself, not about abstract ideas, and these games are abstract. It's about actions, not theater of mind, that's why I think you're blurring the line: you didn't actually do anything — your character did. Am I unethical if I play Lenin's role in a movie? Sure not.
I don't really believe in any distinction between left and right: there are people who want to remake society based on ideology and people who don't. Lenin, Pinochet and Guevara are all in that former category. Their ideologies may have been different but their character was the same.
DeleteSo you equate Lawful Evil and Lawful Good and Neutral is the best? :)
ReplyDeleteSo I was thinking about this more. And I know you said that you think this applies more to film than the written word. But just looking at content, quite a few of novels on my shelf would probably have been bitten by your proposed censor's axe: American Psycho, The Debt to Pleasure, Child of God, The Road, The Red and the Black, A Boy's Own Story. And that's just the one shelf of novels I have that are not in storage. I'm sure there are many others in my storage unit.
ReplyDeleteAnd Raggi's Grindhouse Edition, and Carcosa.
Practically speaking, I don't want bureaucrats in charge of whether or not I'm allowed to interact with that kind of art.
Yes, I said it applies more to film than the written word.
DeleteI also trust well appointed censors to know what the difference is between cinematic violence that is gratuitous and cinematic violence that isn't. As I've already pointed out, this is something film censors do already, at least in the UK; all I'm arguing for is that, for violence, the bar should be a little higher.