video games and violence: truth or myth

           The evolution of video games and a certain reality(virtual reality and semi-real environments) that has been created with that evolution has led to many changes in the lives of people all over the world, but more importantly, to me, the American people, since 1940s.  Serious popularity came in the 1970s leading to now the video game industry is the fastest growing industry. At the same time there has been 57 school shootings (August 1966 to February 2008), of which 34 of those shootings took place since 2000.  This is just one of many statistics of increased violence that people have employed for their argument that video games are the cause or are at least correlated to the "increased" violence that people feel is happening all over the US.  The media seem to report mostly on the bad that is happening in society and less on the positives.  The best corellation/cause example is Columbine High School massacre that occurred in 1999 where afterwards the critics or the commentators on the event pointed to high amounts of violence in movies, video games and regular television.  There have been countless studies trying to argue that their data supports the arguement that the more violence youth experience the more likely they will be violent.  A documentary film called 'Game Over: Gender, Race and Violence in Video Games' that tries to support the argument and here is a clip from the film.  The film's focus is on people particularly youth being sucked into a virtual reality and not being able to maintain separation between that and reality.  The film even draws on military statistics for supporting the argument by saying that the military uses the video game Doom to train soldiers to react and shoot with less thinking and less hesitation.  This is supported by the statistic the marine corp gave saying that "they have had experiment after experiment to show the value of these simulators, but the greatest experiments are things like World War II where only 15% to 20% of the riflemen fired, and Vietnam where 95% of the riflemen fired."
           My view is that this is nothing more then people trying to point the blame and have a scapegoat, instead of actually trying to fix the underlying problem that has been the true reason for the increase in violence.  The underlying problem is that education is slumped and family structure is crumbling as people have moved to an individualistic thought process and away from the community mentality.  As far as the blanket statements in the first paragraph argument about video games and violence there is a key point or area of discussion is that needs to be looked at.  That is the emotional investment and connection that people put into the video games.  There are countless young people who have played only violent video games and have turned out just fine without becoming very violent.  For example when I was younger I played tons of video games and look I ended doing biology research and have never done anything violent like studies suggest.  The important component that emotional investment brings is that it tells how people reason with reality and the virtual reality created in video games.  The idea that people need to be able to separate themselves from the virtual reality of the game and their characters so that they are able to maintain their mental state is key to life.  Furthermore the military's stats are extreme because those in the military are willingly pushing their own psychy into the game and training of shooting.  The military personel have the emotional investment in the training and the simulations so there is little else to suggest otherwise.  With all that said please tell me what you think about my argument and how that video games have affected your life.

Globalization and Social Movements

            The process of globalization is when ideas, cultures, politics and economies around the world increase in connectivity and interdependence.  Globalization has been occurring at least since the seventeenth century, but the process accelerated with the european industrial revolution as inovation allowed for faster travel and communication.  Over the past century the United States has spread what the country's citizens hold most valuable (materialism and individualism) to other countries.  This is visible through the fact that you can go to distant locations and here american music (rap and hip-hop) for example in clubs in Hong Kong and Dubai.  The world for the most part perceives citizens of the United States through the television, for example televised political events, television series(Leave it to Beaver, Pimp My Ride, Desperate Housewives, etc), and movies.  Many people in other countries see through this media that US citizens have many material things and are self centered with little worry or care about others' lives.  These people seem to see that having a television is a sign of stability and wealth.  Most of the media that reaches the masses outside of the United States portray this almost problem free society with little difficulty.  This view has been pushed onto other societies and cultures thus the people of those areas increasingly want what they see on television.
            On the reverse side of things when global media products that do not originate from the United States reach the citizens of the United States there is this huge transformation of the products.  My experience has been just this, the products have been made easy to understand and translated into English.  I feel as if I am at a loss on somethings and at an advantage at others.  What I mean is that through having most media products of non-US origin translated and formated for easy viewing I lose some of the little intricacies that come with hearing and seeing things in the original format.  An advantage to the formating is that I am able to view many varieties of products without spending the time and money learning the language of the original product.  Another advantage is that I am able to become aware of other cultures and societies that would otherwise be unavailable to me.  The global media products that I tend to use are international news websites (http://english.aljazeera.net/) and radio (http://www.bachataradio.com/bachataradioondemand.htm) to gain further perspective about current and past events, as well as learn about issues and events not covered my media in the United States.  Furthermore, I enjoy listening to a vast variety of music from around the world in the native languages and in traditional form to try to experience what other people experience through their language.  An example is . This leads to my next point of discussion on why I have mixed feelings on globalization.
            The final point of interest that I want to talk about is my mixed feelings on globalization.  I am passionate about learning about the world of which I live in and believe that everyone needs to try their best to keep up to date on what is happening around the world within their means.  The overall trend started out bad back when european were invading countries left and right.  Though over time countries have become more conscious, the countries that have been attacked have lost some of their history, their culture, social values and local religion.  There are many points to mention, but these are what I value most and see as paramount in the in discussion on globalization.