May 16, 2012
Syed Moazzam Hai

Anders Breivik, the self assured killer of 77 people in Utoeya, Norway, has been a diehard fan of violent computer games, he boasted in front of the court that he once played ‘Modern Warfare’ for 17 hours straight, he also explained that he used such computer games to plan out the police response and his best escape strategy.

Breivik was benefitted in his own preferred way from his lethal infatuation, however, people had to pay with their lives for his passion for violence. But Breivik is, of course, not the only fan of violent computer games around, there are seemingly infinite millions of virtual warriors amongst us who’d play the game as more than a game, including people as devoted as an American mother jailed last year for 25 years after her three year old daughter died from malnutrition as she played World of Warcraft reputed as one of the world’s most addictive computer games for long endless hours.

Psychiatrists, social scientists, intellectuals and other such men and women of academic wisdom would enlighten us on their theory that computer games and for that matter movies, TV programmes and other forms of violent ‘entertainment’ have actually got nothing to do with violence in our societies hence we must not blame them. In a way they have a point there. Violence is inbuilt and quite inseparable a component of human instinct. Same logic, however, does not go for the outside stimulus to violence. And to be realistic we do not need psychiatric commandments on the effects or no effects of violence, we do not need a scholastic discourse on something we observe daily with our non psychiatric selves. There are more than ever reported incidents of school and college violence, family violence is also up and violent crimes are getting uglier and more shocking in our societies.

Violent actions and words entail a social cost that’s borne heavily by people and society, those profiting from promotion of violence should at least be paying more for their gains. We may not be able to ban violence in entertainment but we may make it a more costly pleasure for its producers and takers, we may tax it heavily and that maybe an initial step in discouraging the further pervasion of violent entertainment in scope and intensity. We the common folks have already too many complexities in life, businesses complicating them further with the stimulus of glamourised violence should be sharing more of their booty with the society.

We need global consensus and action for imposing a higher percentage of tax on violent computer games, movies and other entertainment elements. There should ideally be universally uniform tax ratio on violent forms of entertainment. The target of enhanced taxation should of course be the hardcore violence otherwise there’s violence even in Charlie Chaplin’s movies.

Human life has a value, which is presented as a grossly devalued commodity in violent forms of entertainment contributing to the increasing disregard for the value of human life around us. How long can we let it go unchecked?
Syed Moazzam Hai is a freelance contributor
Source: Khaleej Times