THE GAMES THEY PLAYED
Many years from now experts on Mankind's progress will examine our records to determine what games we played as children.
Of what records? Of what games?
We take pride in the obvious fact that the mind of Man is much more receptive to new information than that of the general group of animal creation. It is far more flexible than we care to admit.
The games we make available to our children today are doing a great deal to determine what their future will entail. Objection has been raised consistently concerning the nature of such games. Used increasingly as entertainment-education tools they are exerting tremendous influence on our youngsters. Repeatedly, honest attempts to evaluate these entertainment-educational hybrids are thwarted by potential profit for the makers thereof.
At that time when we finally get around to a serious examinations of the situation, what will they find?
Initially it will be learned that there seems to have been a radical change general era following World War II. Games, in general, became sedentary rather than physical. Outdoor exercise games gradually gave way to indoor technology-assisted play.
We continued deeper into this area as the decades went by and today the majority of children play electronic games as their favorite pastime or watch special sport which have gone far beyond their ability to perform. Most children, being small versions of adults, seek an easier way to get a thing done,and certainly there can be n nothing easier than plugging in an appliance and pushing buttons or flipping levers.
If the investigators of the future have at hand a selection of “records” from various institutions detailing the progress, growth and changes of the genre they will see how their subjects conducted themselves and be able to judge much about their early training and experiences.
Will it be that, if they examine prison records, they will find that - as children - many inmates where well schooled in all forms of violence and forceful achievement their goals? Or, will it be that some other records will show adults living in a fantasy world in which unlikely things happen routinely and aspiration as achieved without effort.
Yet another vast group of adults might then be living a farcical existence in which they pretend all is well and leave management and care up to others while they wonder how the came to be subjects under a dictatorship.
We can no longer deny that some real dangers exists. A quick glance at the current crop of games will show you that our children are being taught by what, to them, seems living example, that violence solves all problems ....if anyone does anything you don't like - eliminate them. They are being shown how man's history is nothing but a fantasy or a farce.
We may be too late. I think that more and more as I witness parents playing their children's games. Statistics of the future may not show that facet of figures which are steeped in clandestine caution.
It is, perhaps, past time for adults to tinker openly with today's “games” we allow young people to play.
A. L. M. November 9. 2004 [c533wds
