PC Games and military and the counsel of Ellen White and the Bible

Koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Department of Liberal Arts

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

4^rd August 2012

             An article was published by Darius Kazemi "Lecture: Militarism and Video Games, Nina Huntemann" in Culture, Industry, Transcript (25 February, 2010) he looked at the lecture by Nina Huntemann on this topic.

             In this lecture, Nina Huntemann shows the relation between the games culture and the military. She looked at five things: people teach the art of war through play; the semantics  compare very well in the language of war and the language of play; military industries and  entertainment industries are connected; there is a connection between the military and video  games; the ideology of culture and the ideology of the military actions are the same.

             The 4th of July fireworks are simulated rockets and bombs symbolizing freedom.

             Scout movements were started by a British general who saw the value system of the military as helpful for the youth.

             Modern sports is talked of as if it is a war: "battle" on the field; "offensive" and "defensive" lines.

             War is talked about as if it is sports: nuclear arms "race".

             Chess is a simulated battlefield dating from the 6th century. In Germany of 1812 "Kriegspiel" was a war game to teach strategy to the Prussian army.

             Risk and Axis & Allies is playing out war.

            In the 60's and 70's there were paper and pencil wars. SPI and Avalon Hill published many paper war games.

             Then the computer came. Games went from the table to the PC.

             Computer games and video games came out of the Hingham Institute Study Group on Space and Warfare funded by Pentagon. The PDP-1 came from 1962 and Russell designed it. He also created Space War.

             Then Pong came as the first commercial video game.

             PEO STRI is the space where the US Army and video games meet.

"We employ entertainment principles and technology, but what we make is meant to train soldiers" they said. They moved to Orlando to be near Universal and Disney.

             The game DARWARS is based on Operation Flashpoint.

             Virtual Iraq is the US army and its units working with THQ and Pandemic Studios and the ICT at the University of Southern California to make it. Both ICT and Virtual Iraq is funded by Pentagon "to create products that fulfill both the needs of the US military and can potentially be sold at retail".

             Lockheed Martin is working on air attack simulators with SEGA and they manufacture SEGA's arcade board for games like Virtual Fighter.

             In the olden days, during World War II propaganda films were made "Why we fight" and John Wayne's movies helped as "persuasive tools for the military".

             "New militarism (Andrews Bacevich) is a marriage of militarism and utopian ideology".

             One of the problems with games is what is called "strategic culture" which is an "overstated confidence in the efficacy of . . . technological might . . . and a culture of technological fetishism". It is "the idea that we are so superior in our technology that we will just shock our enemies into surrender".

             Medal of Honor is a well researched series that recreate historical battle-fields.

             The public are attracted by the realism but "it is a pedestrian understanding of history rather than a deep understanding". It is a certain kind of realism, not historical realism, says Huntemann.

             In the post-911 world, games grapple with counter-terrorism. The mission was "whether it's a single soldier or group of soldiers, covert ops is a big part of this. The concept of the “rogue soldier” or the “rogue squadron” operating outside of the rules of engagement is popular. The idea that terrorism is so horrible it can only be dealt with outside of the rules of engagement. You violate the Geneva convention in these games. We do know that this kind of stuff happens in real world." We notice the rules that are broken.

             There is the rock-and-roll type of modern warfare games genre as well like Army of Two.

             Another genre is proleptic war games or games about future wars. "The assumption remains that there are fears we have currently that will be big problems in the future, but the US or US/EU/UN coalition will use hypertechnology to passify the problems" (Huntemann). "This is strategic culture enacted through future war". Example: Tom Clancy's End War.

             Whereas films made by Frank Capra was to educate the public "Why we fight" in WWII, modern video games serve to educate the public "How to fight". It "served to teach people about the ideological reasoning for warfare".

"By showing people HOW we fight, and understanding warfare through tech fetishism, is becomes more acceptable as a response to global conflict because the representations are often sanitized" (Huntemann).

             Contemporary games lack historical understanding. It overlooks the problem of civilian casualties. Video games normalize the use of force.

"It is impossible to progress through a military game without using force" (Huntemann).

She concluded:

"We are in an era of “the long war.” We’ll be fighting terrorism for a long time. It requires civilians to be accustomed to constantly being in conflict. Video games are used technologically to train our soldiers, but the same technology and ideology is being used to socialize us into the comfortableness of our weapons and military might."

             In all this popular culture that is surrounding us today, the Christian is one who follows the counsels of the Lord and the issue is for us: what does the counsel of the Lord says about militarism and the breeding of a militaristic culture within our own surrounding culture as a Christian.

             The subject of war in Strong’s Concordance [and it is not exhaustive] places war as a society necessity tool or machine to keep at bay human evil existing and approaching from adjacent countries or nations. We hear of soldiers taught to do war, preparations for war. In later prophetic times however, the Little Horn or papal power between 538-1798 was to make war against the saints for 1260 years. Napoleon gave the Holy Roman Empire chief a deadly wound (Revelation 13) by captivating him and moving him to France. Now the roles were reversed and secularism became the new tool for militarism. The book of Revelation predicted that the Holy Roman Empire power wound would heal later and it did since 1928 when the Vatican City was set up again. Today, Catholicism is as strong as, or even stronger than in the Middle Ages. It was predicted by John that Catholicism will work strongly with the USA and one can confidently say that even though sometimes public statements appear to hold a healthy distance from the USA, in essence Vatican II is the application of the USA constitution in religion. From dogmatically mono-religion [and they silently and by statements and comments still endorse this view] the public image tries to portray an ecumenical openness for multi-religions. When the UN struggles with Syria, for example, the comments of the Vatican do count with the military thinking tanks.

             When Paul asked Christians to put on the armor of faith and mentioned the different paraphanalia of the soldier, the Christian faith has nothing to do with militarism. The Christian in his/her mind has to be spiritually vigilant to recognize Satan and his demises, to react appropriately and in line with biblical principles. Christ’s battle in the eschaton is without a single act of battle or battle tools. He just speaks and it will be the end. The Warrior Messiah is a non-militaristic Messiah Who has conquered evil already on the cross by dying Himself in the space of humanity to solve their evil problem. The armor of faith of Paul has to do with accepting Christ’s substitution and remain in that acceptance through sanctification until the parousia or Second Coming, when saints will be separated from the evil and taken to heaven.

             Militarism was in the Ancient Near Eastern times sectionally removed from the ordinary human. They were in a special zone of their own, similar to today, but video games since 1980 has made militarism penetrating domestic ordinary citizens’ homes. Now Johnny boy in his room or highschool Suzy in her room is sitting in her room “shooting” and “pursuing” and “killing” the virtual enemy left right and center.

            Drone operations keeps the soldier from actually going to another part of the world and in his/her “game-room” the tips of the finger is itching to “take out” when commanded.

Johnny and Suzy is doing the same, with exactly the same emotional effects and existential experience but their killings remain virtual, for now.

             For now is important. The mass killers in the USA and Norway over the past three years have all admitted to have played computer games too much.

             Our appeal is not a case of over-playing versus occasionally playing. It is a case of playing versus non-playing. If it is the task of the military and police systems of society to be involved in these actions, so be it, but Christians may find a greater blessing to stay away from video and computer rooms for these militaristic games sake.

             Ellen White warned against the playing of checkers and chess and as a chess player myself, I could not see why she is making a big issue out of this. Chess is listed supra in the article of Huntemann as a soldier or militaristic game.

             The Christian culture leaves militarism for the militaristic part of society and refrain from participating, sharing, co-enjoying, co-habiting with it. They have their reasons for doing it but the Christian has his/her own reasons for staying away from it.

             The ideology of the games experiment with futuristic scenarios of eschatological battles using biblical prooftexts and parts thereof in constructing a fake and surreal scenario that is a-biblical. Biblical eschatology is far removed from any creation of computer games.

Biblical names is not going to make the games more trustworthy. The days of a physically well-trained soldier is over. Anyone can now be a soldier, in their own houses training their fingers to “shoot” and “kill” at the right moment when needed in the computer games.

             Computer games makes use of image in all possible dimensions and colors and shapes with side-effects like music, sound and commands for interaction and psychological involvement with the activity. As children in church we sang the song: “watch your eyes, what they see”. Visual and audio impact on the brain combined with imagination and emotional involvement creates the potential for the “real killing” to take place in future. Parents, education, society leaders, librarians, and individuals need to be informed of the high risk they let their children into and even adults need to decide whether as a Christian, they want to be trained as a virtual soldier killing left right and center. The human brain is a very dangerous tool to play with in an undisciplined and irresponsible way. Game abstinence for Christians are pleaded for.

             Paul’s “fight the good faith” had nothing of this in mind at all.

Source:

http://tinysubversions.com/2010/02/lecture-militarism-and-video-games-nina-huntemann/

Joystick soldiers Nina Huntemann

Johannes Renger, “Spiel, I. Ägypten und Alter Orient” Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike: Band 11 (2001): 823.

Johannes Renger and H. J. Nissen, “Games, I. Egypt and Ancient Orient” Brill's New Pauly - Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World Band 5 (2005): 682f.