1. What has this all to do with Mote Prime ?


2.

> But first I must tell you that I am very much against guns, knives, 
> and
> other instruments of violence. We were in a theater the other day 
> and there
> were 4 first person shooters in the little video arcade in the 
> lobby. Kids
> between 8 and 16 were playing these games. Some with the parent 
> standing
> right there. I commented to my family, and my daughter, as I always 
> do, that
> these games glorify violence and it is wrong to desensitize kids to 
> the
> effects of guns on humans. I won't let my kids watch movies that 
> glorify
> violence. Especially the ones where people are shot at and never hit 
> (G.I.
> Joe) or shot and forgotten in the movie. They watched "Master and 
> Commander"

At least it's "hero" is a NZer.
Albeit overly dangerous when armed with a telephone.

_______

My son grew up through his teenage years on violent PC video games and 
1st person shooters and the like. We were, as one may imagine, 
suitably concerned and sought to apply a proper degree of light handed 
guidance. There would have been some 'just plain no' but largely it 
was interaction and discussion - nothing heavy (which tends not to 
work with most teenagers anyway). Overall I was still moderately 
unhappy with his choices in this area.

He is now 26 and still likes subsets of this sort of activity.

However, he is now in the final year of a theological degree and 
intends to follow this with a Masters degree in theology. I can hear 
the remarks being prepared about Christians and their kind :-). But he 
is also now a Pacifist in the truest sense. He is utterly against 
violence to people and against evil in all its many forms, but he 
does not consider that killing people is justifiable. He cannot 
conceive of Jesus Christ in his earthly role doing so and believes 
that there are other approaches to all the problems where death and 
violence is a common "solution".

While his views and mine do not align completely in this area* this is 
a rather pleasing outcome considering my concerns in his formative 
years.

* I, alas, feel that there may be circumstances where killing people 
becomes the optimum solution, or the best one practically available. I 
certainly don't ever want to be placed in the position where I have to 
make such choices in practice. World War 2 probably provides a 
suitably time removed and situation-rich example to test these 
feelings on. There were, of course, many situations in that conflict 
where killing people was not the best solution. eg despite the several 
excellent arguments for the dropping of the two A bombs on Japan, 
creative solutions that *may* have resulted in little or no loss of 
life would have been possible.

However, I'm also not wholly sure that my son isn't right.




        RM




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