Playing for Real: Video games and Violence

 "It is hard to talk about video games and 2012 without addressing the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. and the inevitable debate over violent games that emerged from the entirely predictable discovery that Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old gunman, played Call of Duty games," writes Chris Suellentrop in The New York Times on December 26, 2012.

Images of real weapons are depicted in video games. Last year, Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who killed 77 people, said that he "honed his shooting skills by playing many hours of Call of Duty," write Barry Meir and Andrew Martin in The New York Times of December 25, 2012. More disconcerting is that these violent video games provide links to sites where real weapons can be readily purchased. As I mentioned in last week's blog, the purchaser needs nothing more than a credit card to order semiautomatic weapons for overnight delivery.

Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig in their book, Gun Violence: The Real Costs estimate the annual cost of gun violence in America to be $100 billion. All of us share the costs of gun violence. I quote from a synopsis of the book. "Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book bag for our children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center, the steps we take are many and the expenditures enormous. Cook and Ludwig reveal that investments in prevention, avoidance, and harm reduction, both public and private, constitute a far greater share of the gun-violence burden than previously recognized. "

The human mind often has difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. Nancy Lanza, mother to assassin Adam Lanza, believed that Doomsday was around the corner and stocked her home with an armamentarium of weapons. Her son used them to kill her,  twenty children and six more adults on December 14, 2012.

People harbor all kinds of beliefs. We can't condemn them for their ideas nor can we predict who, when, or where they will act on "irrational" beliefs to harm themselves or others.

Each of us experiences moments of confusion conflating reality with fantasy. People have murdered their bed partners claiming they were acting on the basis of a violent "dream."

But we do know that video games include images of "real" weapons and contribute to blurring fantasy and reality and adding fuel to aggressive and violent behavior.

Conclusion: We need to acknowledge the predilection of the human mind to blur fantasy and reality, to address and, hopefully, close the loopholes to easy access and acquisition of firearms and ammunition. Factors like video games and violent movies that have encouraged or taught people about firearms need to be considered for their potential danger to harm innocent people, including us and our children.

Happy New Year to all. Let us hope that 2013 brings solutions to curb  the violence that plagues our nation.

Dear Reader, I welcome your comments.

jsimon145@gmail.com

Guns, Bullets and the Medical Model

It is a great irony that guns and bullets that kill, more rapidly than any pill heals, can be readily obtained. The distribution of medications like antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-anxiety medicines is strictly monitored, prescribed in specific amounts by professionals to individuals who require them for a limited period of time. Guns and bullets

are readily available at gun shows and on the internet "where anybody with a credit card can order semiautomatic weapons for overnight delivery." (The New York Times, December 19).

In his editorial column in The New York Times on December 20, Nicolas Kristoff provides some brutal statistics:

 1. Every two months more Americans die in gun violence than in the 9/11 attack, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 2. We lose some 2,800 children and teenagers to guns annually according to a study by the Children's Defense Fund.

3. More than twice as many preschoolers die annually from gun violence in America as law enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty.

Violence is difficult, and at times, impossible, to predict so background checks solve only part of the problem.  Adam Lanza had not been violent before he gunned down 20 children and six adults , massacring them in minutes, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.

People who commit mass murders rarely participate in psychological counseling. Targeting and stigmatizing people with a psychiatric history hardly encourages people to seek treatment. 

In last week's blog I mentioned that each of us, like President Lincoln, is to some extent "damaged goods." The issue is not "them vs. us" but to recognize our commonality.

This country has 300 million guns, almost one for every citizen in the United States. Some people believe that more guns will prevent violence. Research shows that more guns result in a greater number of both homicides and suicides.

By contrast to the unpredictability of the human mind, guns and bullets predictably kill. It stands to reason then, that a simple, effective approach would be to control the distribution of guns and ammunition.

 

Physicians are supervised and re-certified. Hospitals are required to have Utilization Review systems and review boards. Utilization review boards could be set up to monitor the distribution and use of weapons. Guns and bullets could be prescribed like medicine, in an appropriate quantity to an individual for a specific purpose for a given time period.

I hope we can put aside our selfish, uninformed beliefs and unite in the common goal to protect our children and innocent citizens, including you and me.

Conclusion: Rules for the distribution of medicine that heals contrast to the free distribution of weapons that kill. We need strict ways to distribute and track weapons and ammunition.

Dear Reader, I welcome your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com

What We Share with President Lincoln

In his editorial column in The New York Times on November 23, David Brooks attributes Lincoln's greatness to his ability to combine the paradoxical attributes of "high vision and low cunning."  Brooks concludes Lincoln's ability stemmed from the fact that he was "damaged goods."

The concept of 'broken' and 'damaged' rings throughout human history. Stories from The Bible spell out some variations on this theme. Prize winning playwright Eugene O'Neill said, "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue."

 My observations deviate from O'Neill's; I think we're born with the potential to be "whole" and become broken in small or large ways in the course of coping with the real world, rendering each of us "damaged goods".

Not even "good enough parenting" can prepare an offspring entirely for the outside world, because those who are lucky enough to receive unadulterated support and encouragement at home, may be disappointed to find that they aren't treated similarly by others. Paradoxically, the expectation of fairness can become a liability, because, as we know, the world is not always fair.

As I concluded in my blog of December 3, we're fortunate if we can piece together a story of our life to help us survive and thrive.

Conclusion: We benefit from recognizing our commonality with President Lincoln: We're all, in some way(s), "damaged goods."

Dear Reader, I look forward to your comments: jsimon145@gmail.com.

Good-Byes: Gratitude and Resentment

At the end of Yann Martel's masterpiece, Life of Pi, the protagonist's companion, a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, trails off into the jungle without turning his head to acknowledge or bid farewell to Pi, his savior. The moment is poignant and sad, as the tiger fails to conclude their relationship. (*Please see Pi's words below.)

After all, Pi  protected the tiger from drowning and starvation during their struggle to survive on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean.

Many of us animal lovers believe that nonhuman animals are able to experience and express gratitude. When Elephants Weep, the Emotional Lives of Animals by J.M. Masson and S.M. McCarthy  is a beautiful exploration of this theme.

The mystery of why the tiger fails to acknowledge the meaningful bond is left to the reader or moviegoer to answer. I'll take a stab at this baffling question and relate it to a story of my own.

Recently I underwent a routine colonoscopy required by the medical profession. I resented having to endure the preparation and the invasive procedure, although it was admittedly, a minor one. I had to reach into my soul to muster gratitude to the doctor who successfully and skillfully performed the (unwanted) procedure.

I suggest that Richard Parker resents Pi because the tiger connects Pi to the ordeal, associating Pi to trauma, rather than salvation. Imbued in suffering, Parker can't soar to the heights of gratitude.

 A good-bye can be seen as an expression of gratitude. Could the absence of a farewell (abbreviation from the archaic Fare thee well; go with God)  be an expression of  the opposite of gratitude, of resentment?  If Parker were human, would we accuse him of a kind of narcissistic self-involvement?

Striking examples from my practice stand out. One client, after concluding therapy, continued to phone to wish me well at holiday time. When she stopped phoning I knew she had passed away. Another client who had done good work begrudged having to see a therapist at all. In spite of substantial progress, she expressed resentment by missing her last appointment.

I suggest that a Pi and a tiger lurk within each of us, the seeds of gratitude and the potential for resentment. It may be a lot to project onto a tiger, but I think he lacks  gratitude.

Conclusion: A proper good-bye, expresses appreciation for the relationship. But  sometimes we have to settle for less.

 Dear Reader, I welcome your comments. jsimon145@gmail.com

 *(from Yann Martel, Life of Pi)

One of my last images of Richard Parker

at that precise moment

he jumped over me

His body immeasurably vital

stretched in the air above me

a fleeting, furred rainbow

He landed in the water

his back legs splayed

his tail high and from there

in a few hops, he reached the beach

He went to the left,

his paws gouging the wet sand

but changed his mind

and spun around. He passed

directly in front of me

on his way to the right

He didn't look at me

He ran a hundred yards

 or so along the shore

before turning in.

His gait was clumsy and uncoordinated

He fell several times

At the edge of the jungle, he stopped

I was certain he would turn my way

He would look at me

He would flatten his ears

He would growl

In some such way, he would

conclude our relationship

He did nothing of the sort

He only looked fixedly

into the jungle. Then Richard Parker,

companion of my torment, awful,

fierce thing, that kept me alive,

moved forward and disappeared

forever from my life.

Story-telling and Survival

We are all natural story-tellers when discussing our own lives. We stitch together events of our past and present imbuing the details with our own interpretations.  For example, "I was born....raised by my parents who.... brothers and sisters....and therefore....,"etc.

We are the authors and (often the only)  audience of our narratives. Sometimes we gather a relative or friend and indulge our human need to share our stories.

Yann Martel's award-winning book Life of Pi , recently made into a 3-D movie, tells the story of a young Indian boy Pi, the son of a zookeeper, who decides to travel to Canada by boat. The cargo ship (Tsimtsum) is wrecked in the midst of a violent storm, and Pi is the only human survivor. He endures many hardships as he struggles on a life raft in the Pacific Ocean. His sole companion is a Bengal tiger, who because of a clerical error, is named Richard Parker.

After many life-threatening circumstances, the two reach the land of Mexico, where Pi is taken to the hospital. He recovers and is interviewed by two Japanese investigators, who sent to find out why the ship sank, refuse to believe Pi's incredible narrative about survival with the tiger on the life raft in the Pacific. Pi humors them, altering his story. This invention of another narrative, opens up a philosophical can of worms:  What is the real story? How much does a narrator change his story to make it palatable to his audience? And to himself?

Perhaps what the real story is doesn't matter as much as the purpose it serves, which, I suggest is survival.  

In his new book Hallucinations (Knopf ), Oliver Sacks adds another dimension to the human impulse to spin tales. A professor of neurology at the New York School of Medicine, Sacks observes that the brain in the states of (1) boredom or (2) loss of sensory input may hallucinate to  create images to fill the void.

In other words, we create narratives all the time in many situations for the sake of our physical and/or psychological survival.

Is it fair to say, then, that a narrative, our storytelling, works when it keeps us alive, and fails us when we lose hope?

Conclusion: A narrative serves us well when it offers flexibility to change with our needs and times, to help us survive and avoid disillusionment.

Dear Reader, I welcome your experiences and comments. jsimon145@gmail.com