Monday, December 17, 2012

What about the culture?

Donald Sensing predicted that after the Newtown massacre,

We’ll hear a lot about America’s gun culture, and all the talk will be about guns and not about the culture.

After 1999's massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Boston Globe editorialist John Ellis wrote,

Ours is a culture that glorifies violence, profits from it, sells it with the most advanced technology known to mankind. Violence bounces off satellites in outer space and beams into every American home, every hour of every day, every month of every year.

The Parents’ Television Council says that,

by the time an average child leaves elementary school, he or she will have witnessed 8,000 murders and over 100,000 other acts of violence. By the time that child is 18 years-of-age; he or she will witness 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders. One 17-year longitudinal study concluded that teens who watched more than one hour of TV a day were almost four times as likely as other teens to commit aggressive acts in adulthood. http://senseofevents.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-advent-sermon-after-sandy-hook.html

I had a doctor appointment today. While waiting in the waiting room, the t.v. was on and all the waiting patients were glued to it. I found it extremely annoying, because I do not have a t.v., and have gotten used to that fact. I was trying to read an outdated copy of The Economist, and was marveling at how wrong they were on almost every subject covered in the magazine. The date of the magazine was September 15, 2012, so I had the benefit of hindsight in judging how wrong the articles turned out to be.

Tonight I talked with my twelve-year-old son Jon. I asked him if he thought video games were having a bad influence on his peers. He said he believes that to be true of certain popular video games, like Grand Theft Auto and Max Pain. He said Grand Theft Auto is about killing people and stealing, and Max Pain adds drugs to the violence. I asked him when he has played those games. He said, "Remember that time when we were in Game Stop and you were out in the car taking a nap?"

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

Et ta Jon? LOL