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We live in fascinating times, especially in the Western
world where many teens have more toys, machines, gismos and gadgets than
they know what to do with. When Sony announced the long-awaited debut
of its Playstation, it did so with the caution that not enough units
would be available to supply demand.
The pricey personal video game machine selling for several hundred dollars a pop sold out in hours in major retailers. The black market geared up to supply the demand at premium prices. I checked on eBay shortly before writing this article and found that some sellers were asking up to $800 for the video game.
What ever happened to Atari, the must-have game of a few years ago? It wouldn't be a paperweight today for most teens. New technologies make the old obsolete faster and faster.
In the clutter of a dizzying array of expensive toys that often feature violent or lewd games, there are symptoms to notice. The emotional and spiritual makeup of kids who have lots of things, but little vision of the future, is troubling. Life is more than just a vicarious experience and hours wasted on climbing to the top of a game leader board. The hollowness of a gadget-filled world is more than obvious when kids kill kids, sometimes just for kicks. Recently in Japan, a juvenile was arrested for murdering someone. When asked why he did it, he said he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. Experts are now wondering if the violent games (many produced in Japan) could have anything to do with the rise of juvenile crime in that country.
In his book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Modern Liberalism and American Decline, Judge Robert H. Bork discusses the rage of rap music. "Its performers don't just sing about criminals; some of them are criminals. Which does not seem to diminish their popularity. What we hear in rap is paralleled elsewhere in popular culture in varying degrees. That the movies feature sex, violence, and vile language is not news. Car chases ending in flaming crashes, the machine gunning of masses of people, explosions of helicopters, the liberal production of corpses, language previously not heard in semipolite society, these are not standard. It is no doubt true that Hollywood is appealing to a profitable adolescent audience, which appears to think that dismemberments and obscenities are an excellent evening's entertainment" (p. 126).
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