Reply #33: I would say that violent video games are a reflection of a violent culture,

[politicat]

not a or the cause of the violent culture. There are more discussions/images/realities of acts of violence in everyday life than video games could ever hope to produce.

Human culture has been violent since we came out of the trees, and before then, too. The difference now is that the tools are more effective and the knowledge of the action travels faster and farther than it did in the past. We also don't have the cultural channels for violence we used to have (though I will say, as a gamer, that exploding kobolds - and heavy workouts - pacify the mental urges to commit actual violence) so that when violence does happen, it shows up in inappropriate places. There is no culture-wide, ritualized warfare training that every boy/child gets, no hunting-as-responsibility-of-adulthood, no violence-redirections.