I hadn’t done anything for the last few Fourth of July’s. After I moved to L.A. I checked out some local fireworks and parades, but decided the parking and the crowds made it more hassle than it was worth. This year I still didn’t see any fireworks, but heard them popping outside while I was trying to take over Middle-Earth.
I was at a house shared by some Mennonites, see, playing the Lord of the Rings version of Risk. I had never even played regular Risk before, but the game requires four players, and I was available. At church the day before I was talking to a young woman about it who said that she never played Risk either, but left it to her husband and his buddies. “Should Mennonites even be playing that?” she asked. “It’s about war!”
I brought this up with my competitors while we were setting up the game, and was told that it was an outlet. A nice Menno has gotta let off some steam. I’ve been wondering about that. In fact, I was already wondering about it when we saw Star Wars last month. Back when I was in grad school I took a course on the media and children, and this is what they called the “catharsis” theory: if kids enjoy violent entertainment they’ll get it out of their system and be able to go on peacefully the rest of the time. It is, not surprisingly, a popular idea with makers and supporters of violent entertainment. Trouble is, there’s really no evidence to support it. In fact, the various studies we looked at it that course offered a consistent connection between violent entertainment and aggressive behavior.
I don’t think it’s really going to make a difference on these adult Mennonite guys. But it reminded me of a comment A.K.M. Adam made about pacifism:
The pacifist’s opposition to war becomes operative only at the extremity of human behavior — whereas the real work of pacifism takes place day by day. Margaret’s going to argue that Augustinian truthfulness provides a model of how we can envision pacifism as a way of life, inasmuch as Augustine both prohibits deception and discusses how people can live in a world where deception prevails. We noted that our family’s commitment to pacifism has affected our relations with one another, our behavior relative to neighbors and co-workers, our involvement in church and other spheres, much more than it has affected our attitude toward (for instance) the ongoing conquest of Iraq. Someone who says that pacifism is cheap when you don’t actually have to participate in war or face harsh consequences for your refusal, may not have considered sufficiently the cost of trying to live a life characterized by aiming at harmony and cooperation in a culture overwhelmingly defined by competition, rivalry, and conflict. That’s all the more true to the extent that anything we say or do risks supplying the grounds for an accusation from a hostile inquisitor (of whom I find a surprising number).
Pacifism is more than not serving in the army: it’s living as an emissary of peace in exile in a land of contentiousness. When you begin with treating your spouse and children, your neighbors and students in a way governed by the blessing of peace, of course war is unthinkable — but there’s so much more to be done before the question of war even comes up.
They’re challenging words, but true, I think. Even many non-pacifist Christians regard the Sermon on the Mount as guiding personal behavior, even if the state operates under different rules. Just War theory, as Nate explained, is meant to make war exceptional. So where does this put entertainments like Star Wars or Risk?
It actually reminds me of the pornography discussion that was going on last week. One of the constant unresolved arguments about porn — whether between religious people or not — is the exact relation between fantasy and reality. American society generally deals with its decadent tastes in amusement by making a strict division between them. When I used to read women’s magazines, sexual advice articles generally endorsed any fantasy that worked for you, no matter how disturbing or politically incorrent, because hey, it’s just make-believe. People who enjoy violent entertainments hew to the same line.
Certainly there’s often a difference between what people fantasize about, and what they’d actually like to happen. I once knew (slightly) a young woman who had a lot of sadomasochistic fantasies from a young age, including fantasies of being raped. Then in her late teens, she actually was raped. She hated the experience as much as any other rape victim, but this didn’t end her fantasies. In fact, she said afterwards they got even rougher. I can’t begin to disentangle the psychology of this, but obviously, the relation between fantasy and reality was neither simple nor clear.
At the same time, though, we have Jesus telling us that if we even look on someone with lust we’ve committed adultery already. This seemed to me, upon first reading, like an impossible demand (in fact, I recall that one of my first blog discussions with Telford was on that very passage). It does to a lot of other people too, which is why even a lot of Christians ignore it. The woman I described in the last paragraph described herself as a Christian, for instance, and in real life was a faithful wife, but figured her fantasies didn’t count because they weren’t real.
I wonder, though, if the problem here is this whole mentality of “counting.” Like God is up there keeping score, giving merits and demerits as we go along through life. Yet the New Testament seems to reject that legalist approach and emphasize personal transformation, so that the Law is no longer a matter of scorekeeping but “written on your heart.” That is also fairly impossible in this life, at least in a total and permanent way, but it somehow seems more helpful to me than thinking of God playing “gotcha” with every stray thought you have.
But there’s a larger question behind all this: what is fantasy? Modern society seems to assume that we have this ability mainly for our own amusement. Sure, there are important practical ways to apply imagination, in terms of inventing new technologies, creating strategies, and so on. Risk itself emphasizes that type of imagination. But what of a complete narrative, like the epic on which our game of Risk was based?
As it happens, I just read J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay/lecture on the subject, called “On Fairy-Stories.” In it he argues against the general degradation of fantasy in modern culture (he goes on for quite a while about the fact that fairy tales are really for adults), and says that creativity is essential to the human being:
Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in the fallen world is this not true? … Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.
To think of fantasizing as part of our imago dei is quite different from thinking of it as a way we can mentally do things that don’t count. But Tolkien was speaking of fully realized narratives like his own, which he calls “Sub-creation.” Where does Risk fit into this? Or porn? Or idle daydreams?
I don’t know. (Hey, this blog is called Musings & Searchings, not Definitive Conclusions.) But certainly fantasies have certain effects on their creators and participants. Tolkien identifies the effects of fairy tales as Recovery, Escape and Consolation. Porn’s effect is obvious. What about Risk?
In terms of a mental exercise, Risk is all about strategizing. But another thing playing with these three guys reminded me of is the role that friendly combat plays in male bonding. I mentioned in the comments to the last post how friendly insults, called capping or signifying or various other names, seem to function in male relationships. (My sister said she had a discussion with her female co-workers once about how all their husbands affectionately call their pets things like “shithead.”) The Risk game likewise entailed a fair amount of agreeable trash-talking and smiling threats.
Like all gendered traits, this habit exists in a sort of recessive form in the other sex. My mother and sister and I like to play Scrabble when we’re together, and when I’m with male friends I can “cap” with the best of them. But on some fundamental level I don’t really understand it. I don’t understand why it’s as necessary as it seems to be to a lot of guys. And so I’m reluctant to over-analyze it or pass judgment on it, as part of the male imperial mindset or something. But I wonder where this fits into the idea of Christian transformation. Is this an artifact of the violent world passing away? Or is there something else to it, something redeemable?
(By the way, since this is a post about games, I should warn commenters not to write about poker. I’ve had spam trouble and have set WordPress to nuke any comment that mentions poker-related terms.)
Re: your last question… I have no idea. Having spent some time playing strategy war games with other men, I’ve noticed that the more mature players tend to eschew the ‘capping’ and will chat in a friendly manner about other things, even while utterly destroying you in gameplay.
I like your post, particularly on the dividing line between fantasy and reality.
The verse “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” usually comes to mind when I think about these questions (though perhaps that’s a misinterpretation). It seems obvious that if one feeds oneself on violent sexual fantasies or any violent fantasies one will eventually begin to desire an acting-out in real life. But there has to be some room for the free play of the imagination, if only because A) the creative imagination isn’t bound by morality and B) most of us do have that dark side. Maybe the fuzzy dividing line is somewhere between ‘exploring’ and deliberately ‘dwelling on.’ Though I guess the situation with sexual fantasies is a little different, since people will dwell on whatever turns them on… plus people get gradually desensitized and keep looking for something a little darker or a little weirder. Hence all the weird stuff on the Internet.
But now I’m just rambling aimlessly.
Comment by Elliot — July 6, 2005 @ 12:18 pm
This is an interesting post. I recently read an article on Slate (are they articles?) that profiled a psychologist who studied serial killers. http://www.slate.com/id/2121404 He feels that the fantasy life of serial killers were contributive to the antisocial behavior of these killers. I DO believe that the more you immerse yourself in something, the more it takes hold in your life. If this was not true, why do companies bother paying the big bucks to advertise?
This has been a bug-a-boo with each new technology that aids our fantasy lives, but I do worry that as gaming and virtual technology get better at feeling like reality, our choices as individuals and collectively as society on what to depict will spell out our future. We look back at the Roman circus as a savage and bloodthirsty expression of their society. Is what we have now that far off?
I guess I am stereotypically female and pacifist when it comes to these things. My idea of a great video game is something like Tetris. Let me tell you that any offensive strategy or conspiracy that included me would be doomed to failure; I would still be in the corner happily putting together and taking apart the equipment. Maybe I could paint the machine gun a nice shade of chartreuse to go with my blouse.
Comment by Thea — July 6, 2005 @ 12:19 pm
Yeah, my favorite video game is Myst, which is about as nonviolent as it gets. I should say though, lest anyone misunderstands, that I don’t think being female and pacifist especially go together. Women, certainly including myself, are perfectly capable of violence when they get mad enough. And women do have a rather disturbing history of provoking and watching male combat (like women throwing their underwear at bullfighters and so on). It’s just this particular use of combat for fun and friendship that strikes me as a predominantly male thing.
But anyway, I have also sometimes wondered about our ability to simulate violence. On the one hand, it does seem to prevent people from wanting to see the real thing; I think of the Coliseum as the ancient version of horror movies, but with no special effects. But it does make the violence easier to make and obtain, and actually the current popularity of reality TV suggests that maybe people are getting tired of the simulated stuff.
Comment by Camassia — July 6, 2005 @ 2:23 pm
Fascinating discussion!
I tend to think that as we develop peaceful ways that letting off steam in this manner will seem ridiculous to us. But then, I’m a violent swine and I’ve never enjoyed Risk!
There also seems to be a subversive element to pacifists engaging in these kind of activities. In reminds me of some of the violent language in scripture and how we might say things like ‘fighting for peace.’ Now, I mean something very different by that than someone like Bush. I’m almost twisting the word, tongue-in-cheek to utilise, expose and (perhaps) redeem it.
Maybe there’s a way in which we can play a game like Risk that actually teaches us about nonviolent resistance and peace?
Dunno, just thinking aloud!
Comment by graham — July 6, 2005 @ 3:41 pm
Risk is a highly attenuated depiction of combat. As war games go, it’s a lot closer to chess than it is to Everquest. Is playing Risk really more violent than playing Monopoly? I wonder if the issue here may not necessarily be violence but rather competition in general. Note that Myst and Tetris are not just non-violent but non-competitive as well. Haven’t there been studies of children showing that boys tend to play amongst themselves in competitive games, while girls more often organize games that emphasize cooperation?
Jeff Foxworthy did a routine about the way male friends address each other in ways that would be unthinkable among women, noting that a man will answer a phone call from an old friend with “Wally, you bald-headed old pervert, how are you?” but a woman would never greet her friend with “Jane, you fat pig!” This reminds me of the studies suggesting that girls often can fight among each other just as viciously as boys do, but using verbal abuse instead of physical violence. Thus, maybe women don’t play at insulting one another because they’re more likely to have been raised to assign more serious significance to verbal interaction than men have. As for why men do it, maybe it has something to do with their having been socialized not to show affection to each other directly, and thus resorting to a reversed method of expressing closeness.
Finally, as to fantasy affecting reality, this past Saturday I spent a lot of time playing The Simpsons’ Hit and Run (basically a comedic version of Grand Theft Auto). When I got behind the wheel for real that evening, part of me was all fired up to drive on the sidewalk, knock over mailboxes, weave in between a tanker truck and a baby carriage, etc. So, it can be tempting. Then again, I didn’t actually do any of those things.
Comment by Tom T. — July 6, 2005 @ 7:20 pm
I used to play Risk with my siblings as a kid; it consisted of my much older brother getting the four of us who were about 5 to 7 years younger than him together, massing up a hoard, and conquering the world. Playing chess with him was a similar experience.
But the one kind of war game that I’ve continued to enjoy, even after becoming a Quaker (though not since moving south – I no longer have people to play with) is fantasy role playing games. I’ve thought about it, because, on the one hand, I really do think that what we do in fantasy affects us; I don’t think either fantasy, or fiction, or games are inherently morally neutral. They can shape who we are, and we probably want to avoid dwelling on certain kinds of fantasy. On the other hand, fantasy role playing seems to me a potentially positive thing. Within the structure of having a story which generally involves a few combats somewhere along the line, I’m allowed to be creative, make up countries (if I’m the gamemaster) or characters (if I’m the player). One of the things I like about it is the ability to set up moral choices, and make them from someone else’s point of view. Each character I’ve run has a particular viewpoint, and any time they have to make choices, I think of their goals, their moral constraints, and the facts I’ve been given, and only putting all of them together do I choose what they would do. Occasionally, my friends and I have inserted nonviolent characters into the fantasy role playing scenarios (and some games already include provision for certain types of non-combatant characters), but I have to admit that it’s much easier to make the games work if most of the characters running aren’t pacifist – it’s easier to come up with combat-oriented plots than non-combat-oriented ones.
Comment by Lynn Gazis-Sax — July 7, 2005 @ 7:31 am
It seems clear that there is some relationship between fantasy and real life behavior, but it is by no means a one-to-one causal relationship. It’s quite complicated. Still there is _some_ causation. I imagine the problem is demonstrating this.
For myself, I have played a ton of war games over the years, from the abstract (I would include chess here with some provision) to fantasy role-playing games like Dungeon and Dragons and Traveler and to strategy games like Squad Leader, Steel Panthers and the Civilization series (these last three were probably the most captivating). I have always wondered what effect such game-playing has had on me and others; while I don’t see any effect on active behavior (fighting, bein g pro-war or whathaveyou) I wonder if it doesn’t dumb down one’s moral sense, and increase one’s tolerance of violence, thereby imaginatively linking and perhaps binding one to the system of the world. Oh maybe we should be in the world and intimately liniked to it, but it shouldn’t be uncritical.
As a sidenote, when I was in late elementary school/early Junior High school I played Dungeons and Dragons with one of my brothers and a neighbor, and I loved it. One day my mother was told by her friend that the game was satanic, opened players’ minds to dark forces etc. So it was banned. But we were allowed to play the game, Traveler, which is a sort of space-age version of Dungeons and Dragons and without magic. The lack of wizards and priests and demons made the game kosher, but oddly the violence of the game – and it was outrageously violent in our conception – was never questioned.
Comment by Troy — July 7, 2005 @ 8:40 am
Troy,
Pertaining to your sidenote, a similar thing is pretty striking in what my father allows in his house as far as movies go. He has an enormous collection of DVDs, but while he thinks that the Harry Potter movies are satanic because they deal with magic, he has a wheelbarrel-full of rated-R movies that are filled with violence and profanity. Not that the latter can’t be instructive in certain ways, but some of it is pretty egregious.
I don’t quite get it. Well, then again, maybe I do.
(although, I’m probably the biggest hypocrite of them all as I’m a pacifist who likes Fight Club and horror movies…)
Comment by Eric Lee — July 7, 2005 @ 11:55 am
I wonder if one might understand the role of fantasy and war games in one’s life in terms of Jung’s “transcendent function:” the unification of conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche to bring about individuation–that is, the development of one’s true Self. He notes that the unconscious has a compensatory function to the conscious mind, so perhaps war games for pacifists (or anyone not committed to violence) can be a way of integrating the psyche: bringing up the violence of the Shadow and including its strengths in one’s Self while limiting its power over one (which can only happen when its contents become conscious).
It also seems likely that fantasy role-playing games could be especially useful in producing the transcendent function, as they would, I think, tend to put one in closer content with the archetypes of the collective unconscious (these are modes of thought, not images, as Jung is careful to point out), which have a great power to shape our behavior, especially when we are not conscious of their existence.
In other words, properly used, war games and fantasy role-playing help us take the dark side out into the light of day and see it in a way that enables us to use its good qualities and overcome its bad one.
Comment by Dave Trowbridge — July 7, 2005 @ 8:06 pm
Myst is my favorite videogame, too (never mind that it’s almost the only one I’ve played — it’s the only one I’ve wanted to play). But that may be because it simulates a book, and I am utterly imprinted on books from childhood. The idea of “going into” a book illustration, as you can in Myst, simply “makes flesh” (or pixels) something childhood picture book lovers have already done in imagination. (If you like that subject, see this post at Stepping Stone.
There is a third term between “fantasy” and “reality,” which is imagination. As I wrote here, psychologist James Hillman says approximately (he’s hard to paraphrase without doing violence to his subtlety) that the problematic relationship between fantasy and reality — which he blames on the strain of Christianity and other spiritual traditions like Buddhism that conflate “soul” with “spirit” — comes from condemning, both in the moral sense and as you would a building or a tract of wild land, the realm of imagination, where these images are not enacted but elaborated and ultimately “seen through.” Sorry, that sentence is a mess. Let me try again: Hillman asserts that our culture has flattened out the imaginative life where “fantasy” is meant to become a rich source of culture instead of an itch for literal transgression.
Comment by amba (Annie Gottlieb) — July 8, 2005 @ 7:26 am
Tom T.: Yeah, the point I was trying to make (and that I think AKMA was trying to make) is that pacifism is more a state of mind than a prohibition on particular acts. Therefore, competitive sports and games are all kind of suspect. It’s a pretty radical thing to say when so much entertainment revolves around it, but it seems like the logical extension of this particular strain of Christianity.
Lynn: I’ve never played rpg’s, but I know that it is a lot harder to come up with pacifist story lines. I think that one problem is that in the Bible nonviolence works mostly through deus ex machina. In the OT we have enemies being hit by plagues and infighting so the Israelites don’t have to conquer them, and in the NT we have Herod getting eaten by worms, Stephen having a vision of Christ as he’s being stoned to death, the entire Book of Revelation, and of course the big one, the Resurrection. If this were fiction we would think the author was “cheating,” because what we really like in stories are seeing how conflicts are resolved according to the rules of life — or at least, the rules of some universe. God can break his own rules when he feels like, but authors don’t have the luxury.
Dave: I don’t remember my Jung well enough to recall all the individuation stuff. But I remember when my game-mates and I were talking about this I joked we could pretend this was “spiritual warfare.” Even historical pacifists like the Mennonites adopt a lot of war language when talking about fighting the forces of evil, including evil in oneself (and I don’t know about Quakers, but Mennonites take evil very seriously). Dwight at Versus Populum wrote an interesting post touching on that paradox here.
Annie: Actually, Tolkien also distinguishes between fantasy and imagination in his essay. Imagination he defines as the mind’s ability to create images, while fantasy describes stories or alternative worlds. Tolkien, as you may know, was an old-school Catholic who spent his life immersed in medieval literature, and he blamed modernity for devaluing fantasy and reducing fairies to little creatures suitable only for children. So Tolkien, at least, would have strenuously disagreed with Hillman’s idea that Christianity is somehow inherently hostile to imagination or fantasy. (If he’s talking about Calvinism though, he might have a point…)
Thanks for your comments, all.
Comment by Camassia — July 8, 2005 @ 8:19 am
Today while reading Walter Wink’s “Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination,” I ran across something that may cast further light on this discussion:
“Gandhi insisted that no one join him who was not willing to take up arms to fight for independence. They could not freely renounce what they had not entertained. One cannot pass From “Flight” to “Jesus’ Third Way” [active non-violence]. One needs to pass through the “Fight” stage, if only to discover one’s own inner strength and capacity for violence. One need not actually become violent, but one does need to own one’s fury at injustice and care enough to be willing to fight and, if necessary, die for its eradication. Only then can such a person freely renounce violence and embrace active non-violence.”
So here’s another possible use for war games and violent role playing or fantasy in the life of a pacifist.
BTW, I’m not far enough along the Quaker path to know very much about how they think about evil, but I do know that they describe the struggle against evil as “The Lamb’s War.”
Comment by Dave Trowbridge — July 8, 2005 @ 9:52 am
I am certainly of the mind that these games can be very troublesome. I don’t go to arcades much, because there is really
only one kind of game I’m drawn to. Shooting games! I love, love, love them. I once put $24 of quarters into a machine in the Westfield Plaza in Eagle Rock, just so I could keep shooting things. I love the feel of a gun in my hand.
And I walk away with elevated pulse and excitement, and infinitely less compassion. I cannot afford that kind of fantasy; it’s just porn by another name. If I use porn, I objectify women’s bodies for my pleasure and imagine myself penetrating them. When I shoot people in an arcade video game with my realistic looking gun, my imaginary bullets
penetrate their bodies for my pleasure. I fail to see anything remotely redeeming there.
I never could play board games like Risk; I’m far too hyper for that, and so I can’t comment. But today, I would no more
walk into an arcade than I would a strip club.
Gosh darn it, I think you’ve just given me another post, Camassia!
Comment by Hugo Schwyzer — July 11, 2005 @ 10:06 am
“Is playing Risk really more violent than playing Monopoly?”
This is a tangent from the thread but I thought a would share a tidbit about Monopoly. I just learned that Monopoly was started as an object lesson about the dangers of capitalism run amok. It was designed to show that once an individual gained wealth through monopolizing land and commodities it was virtually impossible to unseat them or compete. Over the years the game was simplified and lost some of its political overtones, but anyone who plays Monopoly still gets the message if not the morality.
Comment by Thea DeGroot — July 11, 2005 @ 11:23 am
This got me thinking about the lifestyle of a pacifist. I was a pretty strict vegan for about 3 years, but I’ve moved into vegetarianism now because it’s simply to hard to fellowship with my brothers and sister sometimes without being served a piece of cake. In reading materials to convince myself of the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle, there is a lot of emphasis on it as a lifestyle, so it also included, as far as consumerist choices went, not buying leather products (shoes, belts, etc.) and also, if possible, engaging in what is called “permaculture.” That is, the use of available space to cultivate renewable sources of food and energy like planting a garden instead of a lawn, putting up solar panels, etc.
The more I’ve thought about this post, it would seem like a pacifist who plays Grand Theft Auto is akin to a vegan who buys leather Doc Martin’s.
Similarly tied to this is this blog post written by one of the students from Columbine High School who was a friend of both Eric and Dylan who massacred those people in ’99. It’s definitely written from a different perspective, and although he sorta has a point, I don’t really agree that people go out and play Grand Theft Auto because of all the “choices” it offers. If you want choices, you could definitely play any number of other games that aren’t like that.
I know I like to play Real Time Strategy games like Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Age of Empires because I like that kind of strategy and thinking in those ways (I guess it would be comparable to Risk, although I’ve never played it). I don’t know if there’s anything positively Good about them, though. I did, however, just get some sandals made out of rope over the weekend, so maybe I’ll donate those leather Teva’s I have to somebody and I’ll be halfway there
Comment by Eric Lee — July 11, 2005 @ 4:03 pm
Awesome blog you have. I enjoyed reading it this evening.
Peace
TreeFrog
Comment by TreeFrog — February 21, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
Great reading, keep up the great posts.
Peace, JiggaDigga
Comment by JiggaDigga — April 7, 2006 @ 8:57 pm