Combating exaggerations with more exaggerations #5

In our class discussion today, many students felt like video games are not as constructive as the article made us believe; I believe they are correct. There were a lot of assumptions in the article, and the author did a terrible job of presenting both sides of the debate. To me, it seemed more of an advertisement for the games that she was developing, rather than tackling a prominent issue in our society. Even within in her own debate, her logic seems to clash.

In the Ted talks, for the first 5 to 10 minutes of the presentation, she explains how people need to continue playing video games. However, she soon acts like we need to fix those gamers, developing world problem solvers. If there was nothing wrong with their habits and addictions, why would we need to change them? If playing video games promotes skills that lead us to change the world, then there is no problem. To me, it seems like she doesn't believe that commercial video games are all that constructive, but she doesn't want to step on gamers toes. Instead, she chose to patronize gamers, presenting faulty logic.

Along with a shaky premise, her idea for constructive games is idealistic at best. Algorithms of codes construct video games that several software developers produce. Unless you are hacking into the code of the video game, it is impossible to "think outside of the box", since the software developers have already established boundaries to the game. In order to believe that gamers could solve world problems with these games, you would have to assume that the game developers could develop a software that exceeds their knowledge. If you have experience with coding, you know that this spells out disaster. Developing a game that can exceed it's own coding potential doesn't make sense.

All of this comes down to one big problem; combating exaggerations with more exaggerations. People that are against gaming throw out tons of "bloated" material that may or may not true. Although this is the case, it is not necessary to treat video games as the savior of our world in order to combat irrational accusations. With that beings said, advocates of video games are not the own guilty party of this type of behavior. After I left class today, I saw a sign that read, "Broadband internet will save the world". Hyperboles, such as this, are not doing anyone any favors. Aristotle's theory of moderation could not be more applicable.

-Derek Miller

Food - Derek Miller 4th Post

During class on Tuesday, a popular opinion among my colleagues was that the food industry should not have more regulations. While more regulations could lead to a shortage of food, I think it is imperative for the government to have more control over big agricultural businesses, ensuring a more sustainable future.

 Allowing capitalism to play its course in the food industry demonstrates a major flaw in a capitalistic government: classism. People with less wages cannot afford or have time to purchase or make higher quality of foods. As mentioned briefly in class, cheap quality food has allowed corporations to pay their workers less, since they can obviously buy the cheaper quality food. With that in mind, I am not saying everything is the corporations’ fault; their number one goal is to make a profit. However, since we have established this in our government, we need to include more regulations, ensuring safer environments for animals, pesticide-free food, and a lack of antibiotics in our meat.

At the same time, to believe that the switch to environmentally sound foods will be easy is completely wrong. With the input of all kinds of chemicals in our food and plants, farmers are able to feed more people. Our population number is on a J-curve at the moment, which to put that in perspective, no animal species has every fully recovered from a j-curve population explosion. If we switched everyone’s diets to all natural, the cost of meat would be astronomical and other foods wouldn’t be too far behind, due to the high demand for food.

So in other words, there is no easy way to fix the food crisis. Sure, you could follow the text’s example, allowing the middle-class and wealthy to eat healthy diets, while the poor are still stuck with cheap, processed food, but I think the government can start taking steps to change certain aspects about the treatment of animals and food processing. 

Class discussions about war

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After our class discussions last Tuesday and Thursday, I believe that people, including myself, are influenced by the “media spectacle” more than we realize. Since we are a culture that promotes violence and views war as entertainment, we have to realize that it is hard to escape certain myths that are embedded in our culture.

In a capitalistic society, most people within the culture are playing a game of King of the Hill. When people have been exposed to games such as Call of Duty and others, compounded with cultural egotism, I truly believe that people think that they could handle war-like situations. Granted, nobody would admit to it, since rationally, it is quite absurd. However, subconsciously, a lot of people in Western societies have been raised to believe that they are special and unique, causing them to believe they could easily do anything.

I am sure some people play violent video games or watch CSI and subconsciously do not believe that they could fulfill those roles, but as doctors have seen with the development of Web MD and other medical websites, in the technology age, people sometimes believe they are more informed than licensed professionals.

Also, treating war as entertainment is horribly wrong and truly exposes the flaw in nationalism. Could you imagine if the media used the same coverage techniques in school shootings? Why do we believe that American lives are better than Iraqi lives? That is the most alarming thing about this chapter. Everybody deserves the chance to live a happy and prosperous life, however that may be, regardless of race, citizenship, or anything else.

-Derek Miller, Blog entry #3

Things to think about...

Last week, when we discussed if women are humorous and the story of the woman runner that the media deemed to be a man, I believe several of my colleagues’ opinions were slightly misguided. Below are some points that should be considered.

1.     First, there is a difference between gender and sex. Gender is how someone identifies themself, and sex is what someone scientifically is. When Semenya allegedly had elevated testosterone levels, I believe it was okay for the Olympics committee to investigate the sex of the runner. When you enter the Olympics, you need to be comfortable with the harshest scrutiny from your peers and the Olympics committee. However, I believe the unfair scrutiny that the media put on Semenya is the true crime. The individual should be the one that decides his or her own gender – not other people.

2.     Second, when the children were being interviewed about Semenya on the Tonight Show, many people were shaming the children’s opinion. However, if you look at their comments in a developmental perspective, their opinions were rational for their age. From 3-12 years old, children are developing schemas that shape the world around them. Analytical thinking is minimal at these ages, and many children apply their schemas with a narrow mindset. Although parents partially help mold schemas, most gender-based schemas come from observations within their environment. Most women do not have muscles like Semenya, and it is quite possible that some of the children on the video had never seen a women built like Semenya.

3.     As I mentioned in class, when it comes to humor, I don’t believe women need to be masculine to be funny, but I would argue that they would need to be androgynous in this day and age. Androgyny is not a masculine or feminine trait, but is rather gender neutral. As proof, every female comedian discussed in class had androgynous traits.

    -Derek Miller

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Intimacy and Social Media

Recently in class, we discussed intimacy in terms of social media. Although some individuals believe that social media hinders intimacy, others believe it improves relationships and satisfies intimacy requirements. The problem with both of these claims is that intimacy is not just one component but a combination of several qualities, such as: verbal communication, body language, physical touch, communication through text, etc. With that in mind, social media does not necessarily hinder intimacy between individuals, but at the same time, social media does not fulfill all of the requirements of intimacy.

First and foremost, I believe that social media has benefited society in many ways. The service is changing journalism and provides personal information to friends and acquaintances with little effort. One can send private messages, share photos, and boost their friends' self-esteem through retweets, likes, and other ways of approval. However, intimacy is much bigger than any social media service can provide. Although social media may allow two individuals to communicate with one another, I do not believe that alone should be considered intimacy, but rather, a quality that is a part of intimacy. If intimacy were a car, communication through social media could be considered the transmission, a component of the final product.

Most people want more out of their relationships with friends, family, or significant others than just messages, Skype chats, or Tweets, showing that social media can only provide certain parts of intimacy. Even after Skyping with a significant other, a service that provides face-to-face interactions, one would typically prefer to see the individual in real life.

Many people believe that social media sites fulfill all of their intimacy (intimate?) needs, causing them to feel lonely or unfulfilled. This unrealistic expectation is something that is fueling our individualistic society, replacing the all encompassing, intimate communities that individuals had 40 years with ago with more abstract and psychologically unfulfilling communities that we see today. Don't get me wrong, social media can provide parts of intimacy and improve aspects of relationships, but it cannot provide every quality within intimacy that face-to-face interactions provide.