Do video games cause violence? That’s the sanitary form of the question; what everybody really means is, ‘Do video games kill kids?’ It’s hard to ask this question with a level head. Dead kids get everybody’s temper running hot. Indeed, it’s because emotions run high that a ‘think of the children’ slogan comes into existence: it’s powerful. Here, as with many other cases, though, the plea is ill-considered. Violence in media is not a simple cause of violence in real life because that’s just not how media changes the way we think.

Yes, the stories you read, watch, and participate in will change how you think, but the mechanism is far from ‘monkey see, monkey do.’ When I read a murder mystery, I am not afflicted with a sudden urge to slit my neighbor’s throat and dissolve the body in my bathtub. When I read about Alexander the Great, I don’t feel the need to don my aspis and sarissa for a day’s work of stabbing people. We don’t mimic the bare actions of the stories we read unless we were already predisposed to them. The only person who sees the words ‘Harry murdered Sally’ and gets an urge to kill is somebody who was already on the edge of killing, who would have done it anyway.

What we imitate is the worldview. Every story has a worldview. The clearest example of ‘story teaching a worldview’ is Scripture itself. The Gospels teach a particular view of reality. This, as I’ve shown before, is an inherent part of stories. Simply because a story is a reproduction of reality, it will show the author’s conscious and unconscious understanding of reality, including both ought and is, morals and facts. When I read a story, though, I don’t just borrow its worldview wholesale. Jack London’s The Iron Heel may promote socialism wholeheartedly, but despite my enjoyment of that book I am far from a socialist. How, then, do stories affect us?

We can learn from a story by imitation or rejection; we can learn consciously or unconsciously. We learn by imitation when we agree with the story and by rejection when we disagree, whether intellectually or instinctively. In both cases something is strengthened- the story’s worldview is added to ours or our worldview is bolstered against the story’s. Of course, the experience isn’t usually purely one or the other. With The Iron Heel, I rejected the socialism of the story, but I doubtlessly imbibed some element of the picture of human nature there presented. I certainly can sympathize, in retrospect, with his dislike of the ‘plutocrats’ and the political elite of the nation.

As for whether we learn consciously or unconsciously, this comes down to what we notice. If I read Perelandra, think about the ideas presented, and come to a somewhat modified view of the relationship between sex and humanity (I did, though more emotionally than intellectually), I have learned consciously. I noted an idea, analyzed it, and integrated it (learning by imitation). In the case of The Iron Heel, I consciously analyzed certain of his arguments for socialism, especially the ones presented as arguments in an in-story polemic speech.

We’ve looked at how we learn; the next thing to consider is what we learn. As stated before, it’s not the literal actions of the story that we imitate or reject. The story works on a subtler, more pervasive level than that. We learn moral principles, mechanisms of reality, and patterns of thought from it (how things should be, how they are, and how we respond). In a story about war, therefore, the reader doesn’t learn simply that killing it a perfectly fine thing. No, he learns that killing in the context of war has a certain moral weight and justification. He may accept this lesson, or he may reject it. He may or may not recognize it. Nevertheless, that is the message the story teaches.

This does not mean that art’s teaching capacity is harmless, especially when reinforced by frequent exposure. Art makes arguments about reality and introduces those arguments in a way many people simply aren’t going to notice, either because they aren’t looking or because they’re interacting with the story in the fifteen minutes before bed and don’t have the brain-power to analyze anything beyond the surface. Sometimes this failure to notice entirely short-circuits the teaching process, particularly in minutia, but only sometimes.

Imagine yourself as another person, interested in a particular set of stories. These stories, by virtue of the culture they come from, with its morals, economy, and assumptions, have a number of similar patterns. Three of these patterns are their treatment of marriage, their view on how people should react to injury, and their tendency to show authority figures in a certain light. In the first case, they treat marriage cavalierly, in a modern way; it’s an arrangement of convenience and a restriction at once. In the second, they offer protagonists who are justified by their victimhood, who can do ugly things and be called ‘in the right’ because of how they were hurt, while allowing no forgiveness to those who hurt them, ever. In the third, authority figures fall into two categories: permissive of victims for their victim-status or habitually and bureaucratically cruel, always uncaring.

Not all the stories this other you reads follow these patterns. Many of them only touch on two of them. A few outright contradict. The mass, however, offers this view of morals, of self, of the world, not as a possibility but as a proven truth, one backed by the author’s intent. What effect will this have?

If this other you is not paying attention (which he probably isn’t- noticing all these problems might make the stories less fun. It’s hard to enjoy a story when you realize the protagonist is using his pain as an excuse and the story encourages rather than punishing this vice), if he isn’t paying attention, these ideas will probably start to creep into his way of thought. His behavior might not change much, particularly if he has strong contrary convictions or other influences, but he’ll start analyzing other situations slightly differently. His instincts will lean a little towards the story’s teachings, and he’ll be a little more cavalier about marriage, a little more prone to viewing himself as a victim (and justifying his desires thereby), a little more likely to stereotype authority figures into pure evil if they fail to be fully permissive.

That’s the bad side of the process.

The other side of the card is just as powerful, though. A man who steeps himself in stories of true bravery, when the crunch comes, when danger looms, he has a greater foundation on which to step forward despite the pain and the risk. He’s formed phantom experience (see this article for more) in being brave by reading or watching those stories; he’s come to a greater emotional and intellectual understanding of why he should be brave, what bravery means. He’s thought about it before, he’s inculcated an unconscious readiness for it, and even if he flinches he’s that much steadier in taking the plunge.

Does violence in a story lead to violence in real life?

It can. A story which teaches that different ideas justify violence can lead to political violence; a story that teaches grievances justify any behavior can lead to personal violence; a story promoting violence in retribution for speech can lead to ideological violence. The violence in the story, though, isn’t really what had the effect. What was learned was not the violence but the rationale for it.¹ A story which glorifies evil teaches evil.

Sometimes this teaching-to-violence is a good thing. A story which readies a man to defend his home, a woman to defend her child, a son to defend his mother, this is a good story. The rationale which it taught for violence was good; it taught violence, but it discouraged murder. Stories teach ideas, and therefore we must just the story by what ideas it teaches. If what is taught is evil, having considered the story carefully, we will have to put it aside as unhealthy for our souls.

Sometimes that decision is not hard at all (even if the action it requires may be).² Sometimes it can be difficult or debatable; I read The Iron Heel despite it being obvious Socialist proselytizing (and I do not think I took harm from it- a story which urges evil may be of use in training our skills of rejection as well). Be wary of temptation; seek righteousness. Our culture is a dirty one, skilled and steeped in immorality, with “hands full of blood” (Is. 1:15). We should seek stories which edify, whether by imitating them or rejecting. All these stories will be mixed, and each person will differ. For some, the understanding of the world (and the entertainment) will be worth the necessity of rejecting certain moral and behavioral teachings (see: me reading Catholics). The only sure harbor is Scripture, and from that great tale we must take our direction: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good….” (Is. 1:16).

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Stories can make people aware of violence, it is true. A future killer may learn from stories of the bare possibility of violence. To blame stories for this, though, would be wildly myopic. The possibility of violence is taught not only by interaction with real life and the news but by experience. Children don’t need an example to figure out they can hit each other. If we want to blame stories for making people aware of the possibility of more effective violence, we must also face the truth that in order to obscure that possibility we would have to create a stultifying and complete lie around every person, preserving them from the world’s truth, and that would be a great immorality in itself.

I would wager, too, that the news does more in promoting mass shootings (and school shootings) every time they spend time on publicizing and decrying it than any hundred pieces of fiction has ever done. The same goes for promoters of sinful ideologies such as socialism and critical theory and humanism in our current day, for encouraging an attitude of self-victimization and justification of atrocity.

2 – The work of Marquis de Sade, for instance, or a story obviously intended towards evil. Pornography is another example- and harder to put down, for most, than the above grotesqueries.