12 ms·
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit: “The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually up
by tomkat0789 4y ago
I think he highlights some fundamentally toxic aspects of human nature with this bit:
“The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do.”
The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up. These days “peace games” like Stardew Valley are more appealing to me, but maybe I’ma little odd.
- ant6n 4y agoDuplo, Lego, Brio
- bitwize 4y ago> The engineer in me wishes we could substitute the soldiers with construction workers or something, LEGO® Minifigs?
- brazzy 4y agoWhile there are no modern LEGO soldiers, there are Knights, Ninjas and Pirates, all equipped with weapons.
- tomkat0789 4y agoYes! I spent many hours with Legos growing up! I also remember playing a basic little kid video game about road construction. You’d select various heavy machinery to plow snowy roads and build bridges. I vaguely remember laying down pavement for a road being very satisfying.
- wffurr 4y agoStardew Valley has the monsters in the mines. I thought it would have been a cute farming simulator game to play with my toddler, but shortly after we discovered the mines it was all he wanted to do.
- Latty 4y agoYou see a lot of children playing Minecraft, or when older, Factorio on pacifist modes where they can focus on "the good bit" of building something. Historically war management was what was available, I remember enjoying building a city in Age of Empires more than the battles, and I think with the options available, while combat will always be popular and engaging, it does have alternatives some people enjoy more.
- the_only_law 4y agoI'm waiting to see how Vic 3 turns out. Given the devs claim to focus on diplomacy and politics moreso than map painting warfare (much to the distaste of the paradox community) Ofc war is still an option, albeit the mechanics are rather high level and less micro involved than past games. If the mechanics are well designed in general I think I may find it really engaging.
- philistine 4y agoLooking at Paradox's past promises and what was delivered, I expect the game to be just as focused on warfare as Europa Universalis IV.
- shostack 4y agoI love the survival crafting genre but am so dismayed that the best games have gone heavy into combat or thriller directions. And I've played most of them. There may be a way to set a peaceful mode but it is rarely if ever a fully fleshed out experience.
- the_only_law 4y agoThat genre seems to be in the midst of a rush, with every publisher Indy or large trying to pump out games in that genre. I generally like it, but my steam queue are now filled to the brim with crappy, rushed survival games trying to copy everything else all because I played Ark and Valheim a few times.
- zozbot234 4y agoKids just don't know any better. I would imagine that those who actually spent some of their childhood in a war zone would have a very different perspective. What's toxic is when grownups end up glorifying war or thinking of it as a solution to hard problems.
- alex_sf 4y agoI don't think this counts as Godwin's law given the context, but: What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
- likeclockwork 4y agoLets translate your question. What exactly is your solution to the sort of [war] by Hitler in [war]. Is war not a solution to [war]?
- alex_sf 4y agoYep. I know what you meant to do here, and I still agree. You do not get to choose whether someone else is violent or not. If you aren't prepared for violence, you can only be a victim of it.
- likeclockwork 4y agoI guess you appreciate any opportunity to restate your beliefs. I was just suggesting that offering war as a solution to the problem of already being at war is pretty circular.
- alex_sf 4y agoI appreciate an opportunity to provide clarity when it seems like a point was missed. Whether it's circular or not isn't a meaningful property when bombs are dropping. In that spirit of providing clarity: what is your answer to the un-translated question I asked? > What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
- johnfn 4y agoI don't know; I loved SimCity as a kid. I tend to think this sort of thing rather signifies a lack of imagination on the part of video game authors.
- dleslie 4y agoCity simulators still exist and are still made; so are countless other economic simulators and puzzle games. Their popularity is a reflection of demand for them, not developer creativity.
- etempleton 4y agoI loved city builders and tycoon games as a kid. I think many of them tend to follow the same formula and so the returns becoming increasingly diminished. I am excitedly looking forward to a follow up to Cities Skylines.
- agumonkey 4y agoa few personal notes: - as kids we all did fight games, from just kung fu fights for fun, to team fights where we somehow considered a group strongly as "not our friends" - maybe remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight for survival ? it might sound primitive but some bits are important because life may become chaos and ability to secure your own vital space is life critical (even in a modern world)
- MikePlacid 4y ago>as kids we all did fight games My daughter would not have touched toy soldiers with a stick. And her older brother always picked up war movies from a dump on the floor, while she picked up only films about "relationships". >team fights where we somehow considered a group strongly as "not our friends" I was amazed, watching myself playing on a PvP server in World of Warcraft, how easy it is to hate another faction - even though you play it yourself half of the time. >remains of evolution needs to make kids ready to fight for survival Evolution does not need anything. It just so happened that populations where boys did not like to play war games are now dead. That's the process of evolution. But it does not care if your population is dead or alive in the next step. It goes on anyway.
- agumonkey 4y agoYeah, no need for semantics, we agree on evolution "emergent" property.. I was just trying to explain that the aggressive nature of boys is not just a poor defect. In a random bath of beings, if you're too passive, the more aggressive ones will stomp you brainlessly.
- alex_sf 4y agoI don't understand why that's toxic. Striving, struggle, and violence are critical for any living thing to survive. Short of reaching post-scarcity, this can't change. If we define toxic as harmful, then violence is the opposite. It's the only reason we have civilization.
- fwip 4y agoCooperation, not violence, is the reason for civilization.
- scandox 4y agoI think possibly cooperation and violence. Or even cooperation for the purpose of enhanced violence.
- dotgov 4y agoWhat if both are?
- alex_sf 4y agoCooperation is certainly critical, violence is what allows for it to take place. You can build a utopian commune, but if your neighbors want your crops you would be wise to get a weapon.
- umeshunni 4y agoCooperation within the group and violence outside the group.
- wsc981 4y agoPerhaps a bit of both. > So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel. - “The Haj” by Leon Uris Perhaps applies to other cultures as well. After all, the Western world is now struggling against Russia and tries to define “us versus them” through this struggle.
- 4y ago
- koheripbal 4y agoIt's interesting that Socialism was so synonymous with pacifism in the early 20th century, and how that radically changed. Mussolini famously broke with his Socialist Party to abandon the pacifist doctrine of Socialism and form his own movement which he called Fascism.
- waffle_ss 4y agoThat speaks more to socialism's enduring PR successes than reality. Lenin's Red Army didn't roll into Poland in 1918 to spread worldwide revolutionary socialism with just flowers and poetry. That happened basically immediately proceeding from the success of the October Revolution.
- wolfgang42 4y agoThere’s an amusing short story about “tin pacifists”, The Toys of Peace.[1] The introduction claims that this is a “primitive instinct”; but I tend to agree more with the conclusion. On a related note, a Tumblr post[2] that’s been making the rounds recently: > “In a game with no consequences, why are you still playing the ‘Good’ side?” > Because being mean makes me feel bad. > Because my no-consequences power fantasy is being able to help everyone. [1]: https://gutenberg.org/files/1477/1477-h/1477-h.htm#page3 https://gutenberg.org/files/1477/1477-h/1477-h.htm#page3 [2]: https://deflare.tumblr.com/post/157885054221 https://deflare.tumblr.com/post/157885054221
- anigbrowl 4y agohttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
- benreesman 4y agoGiving in to the violent tribalism that’s obviously part of humanity’s matrix is bad, but pretending it isn’t there will get you into a tight spot pretty fast too. Violence sells better than sex at the cinema.
- lostlogin 4y agoThe regulation in this space is weird. It’s more acceptable to show someone getting shot than to show a nipple.
- rayiner 4y agoIs war play “toxic” or “essential to the survival of human communities?” It’s interesting to me how “humanism” veers into “human denialism” (denying the nature of the human condition) or active “trans-humanism” (seeking to transcend the human condition).
- cm2187 4y agoPost-ww1 pacifism didn't do much good to France.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoAnd building a military machine didn't do much good for Germany.
- whoopdedo 4y agoThe answer to this is sports. War is competition through violence. When you remove the violence you get peaceful competition. It satisfies the tribal urge to fight things different than you, but also encourages healthy behaviors. Respect for your opponent. Accepting loss. Recognizing your weaknesses and working to improve them.
- varjag 4y agoNope, usually you get the cult of war and cult of sports together as a bundle.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- warent 4y agoDo people regularly mass murder each other over sports? Because that's the stakes we're talking about here in context. Brawling and screaming over a sport is much preferred to bombing and poisoning.
- widdershins 4y agoNo (though it does happen, see Constantinople's chariot teams). But expansionist and militaristic societies are often obsessed with sport, for example imperial Britain, Germany at the 1936 Olympics, and arguably the modern US.
- rhizome31 4y agoNot to mention Ancient Greece. Sport as a substitute for war is a joke.
- anigbrowl 4y agoBoth sports and war leverage the same dynamics, just as individual athleticism improves one's chances in a fight. Neither are ends in themselves.
- goodpoint 4y ago> but I can’t deny enjoying war games growing up Depending on the player and the social context around it the same game can be glorifying war, or be neutral, or even be a way to release steam and become more relaxed around people. Confusing real war, violence, genocide with a game is quite stupid. Or prudish.
- sbf501 4y agoIsn't Orwell kinda trolling here, or is he unaware of his fallacious statement? Not all kids of WW2 generation played with tin soldiers, like 50% of kids, namely: girls. This oversight is a bit of a bias in his false-dichotomy: there are only soldiers or pacificts as toys/role-models.
- etempleton 4y agoPlay fighting is observable in many adolescent mammals. It is perhaps, in a way, vestigial for humans, but not really because conflicts do still arise often enough. As you get older you become increasingly aware of the horrors of war and fighting and it losses much of the naive appeal it had when you were young.
- derbOac 4y agoI think the substitute are explorers, where the enemy is the unknown. Tin astronauts works.
- Banana699 4y agoI don't see it as a problem. War games don't transfer to real world violence, anymore than street racing games translate to real world dangerous driving. I remember when I played need for speed most wanted for the first time and they had the main actress in the opening cutscene to the game telling you that... this is all just a game and in real streets you should drive safely and responsibly and wear your seatbelts. I never skipped the cutscene because Josie Maran (the actress) is really really pretty, but the message is absolutely and unimaginebly dumb. You're sitting in front of your computer manipulating a car through an interface that doesn't look remotely like the controls of any real car, "driving" through a world with bizarre physics and collision logic with zero haptic feedback, again, an experience unlike any in a real car. Does any reasonably intelligent person really need an actress telling them that "remember, this is all just a game" ? isn't it all kinda obvious ? would a person who somehow got the idea that real driving is as easy as mashing some buttons on a keyboard with zero consequences be snapped back to reality by a character inside the game telling them that it's not true ? The only real way I can see a "fiction leads to the real thing" argument working is through propaganda, a military might invest in war movies and war games to make it look glamorous to a gullible teenager who will be of military age soon. But how can you prevent that without demonizing all fiction ? Before video games, before movies, before even reading and writing, the military had no problems whatsoever with getting recruits. Propaganda is just the symptoms, the real problems are all downstream.
- kergonath 4y agoLego bricks is a perfectly acceptable substitute, from my experience. Or something like Minecraft.
- megablast 4y agoSo, Bob the builder??