Violent games on the OLPC Activities page

[Antoine van Gelder]

Edward Cherlin wrote:
> On Jan 18, 2008 1:06 AM, Antoine van Gelder <hummingbird at hivemind.net> wrote:
>> Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>> I was in the hills north of Seoul, Korea, in 1968
>>
>> Mr Cherlin - with much respect to your service in Korea (I have friends
>> who also served) but may I ask you to please consider the possibility
>> that your experience as an armed, trained and well-supplied soldier was
>> not the same experience as that had by civilians caught in the crossfire
>> of armies ?
> 
> Mr. van Gelder, I respectfully request that you read my message, over
> and over if necessary, until you understand the severity of your
> egregious and insulting error. Then apologize, not just to me, but to
> the others on this list who have had it far worse, and are even more
> fed up than I am with those whose ignorance and lack of imagination
> causes them such pain.
> 
> The rest of you, no spoilers. He has to make this discovery himself
> for it to take.
> 
> And to think that hummingbirds are the messengers of the Gods in Mayan
> mythology.



Ed - look...

Unless I'm completely misreading you, you are arguing on the basis of 
your experience as a soldier that Children need to be exposed to 
violence lest their naivety be taken advantage of by monsters.

This is a valid point of view.

I let my own children play the Harry Potter games and Starcraft etc. 
etc. (and yes, when they are older Quake or whatever other waste of GPU 
cycles Id has come up with by then) to their heart's content because of 
that very reason.

BUT

The thing which I am trying to point out is that on the continent on 
which I live children are _already_ on the receiving end of violence 
with the result that their needs are different to the needs of my children.

Or to put it yet another way:

South Africa is still deeply fractured along racial and economic lines.

Less than ten minutes from my children's school is a predominantly poor 
community. The children in this community have daily experiences of 
drive-by shootings, sexual abuse, rampant crystal meth and alcohol 
addiction, gang warfare and other such pleasantly formative experiences.

Now in my children's school, there are a small amount of children from 
that community.

With a result, that I can guarantee you that if ANY parent at my kid's 
school were to start arguing that the school should install Doom on the 
media center's computers that I would oppose them in any way I can.

Sure - if we were to make these kinds of decisions on the basis of a 
majority then _clearly_ there are more kids at the school who would 
learn from Doom than kids who would be traumatized by Doom.

I would hope however that such a decision would rather be made on the 
basis of common sense.

  - the messenger of the gods