Video Games "In Moderation", How Much is Too Much?

who decides when video game addiction
becomes a problem who decides when you're merely playing video games and it's not a problem and it's crossed some dotted line into being an addiction or into son that has a deleterious effects in your life who decides when you're not merely drinking alcohol but you are in fact an alcoholic who decides when drinking alcohol becomes a problem the answer is you do you decide but I'm here on the Internet let's try to encourage you to make the right decision because there's a right decision and there's a wrong decision or we can put it this way there's one right decision and there are hundreds thousands of wrong decisions the excuse making mentality is very deeply seated within all of us once we get it into our minds to make an excuse any excuse will do anyone any dozen any hundred and we can keep on making up new excuses or whole lives long when is your sexuality a problem when are you a sex addict or when are you letting sexual desire destroy your life I think my own father when he was a younger man could have been described as a sex addict at any rate whatever term you want to use one way or another he let his desires destroy his life and destroy many other people's lives also it's not as if there's a simple textbook definition and if there were he wouldn't accept it he had nine children with a whole bunch of different women lied to all the women he didn't think it was a problem he didn't think getting women pregnant and then abandoning them was a problem he didn't think lying to women was a problem maybe from my perspective we actually have some very telling red flags there right okay what if the moment you have to lie to a one to have sex with her what if already then your sexuality is a problem right again maybe sex addict isn't the right word maybe already your sexuality is out of control when you're lying to others when you're lying to yourself what if it when you're what if when you're making excuses that's the red flag my father had nine children but he never admitted to anyone I was his own youngest son but he would never admit it to me he lied to me his whole life long about how many kids he had with how many women she the fact that you lie to yourself the fact that you lied your kids the fact this son you lie about maybe that's maybe that's a red flag right I mean but the same token if you're lying to people about how much you play video games if you're lying to people about how much you drink alcohol if you're already into the excuse making mentality maybe we have here one possible objective criterion we could agree upon as to why something like this you know may be a problem why maybe you're making the wrong decision why maybe you're embracing some of the wrong excuses our sense of what is a normal level of self-indulgence of what is justifiable level of self intelligence largely derives from our cultural context right so in Muslim societies there's very very little tolerance for drinking alcohol in fact I mean if you've lived in Malaysia if you've lived in some Muslim countries you will have seen people who are members of the Muslim faith drinking some alcohol but in general there is very very little tolerance for drunkenness or consumption of alcohol in strict Muslim cultures varies a little bit from place to place if you live in the United Kingdom if you live in England Scotland or you have to drink a lot of alcohol before anyone will call you an alcoholic before anyone will suggest it's a problem you can drink yourself to death and people will go to your funeral and say well at least he never had a drinking problem the level of cultural tolerance cultural normalization of that behavior of that form of self intelligence it's very very significant and that all you need to do is take your own little step into the excuse making mentality you can ruin your whole life this way all the time saying and thinking and feeling that you don't have a problem I have many many brothers as mentioned my father at nine kids one of my brothers came to attend a lecture I gave on Buddhism this is a lecture in a formal University academic theatre at the invitation of professors to a very erudite crowd and this brother of mine showed up and I hadn't seen him face to face in something like five years before that meeting and after the lecture we went to a kind of social area on campus this is a British campus in London England so I think they called like a common room they don't call it a bar or they don't call it a nightclub but you know it's a university common room something like this and at this common room they served alcohol but they had a rule that was something like they weren't allowed to serve alcohol before 4 o'clock in the afternoon it might have even been 3:30 in the afternoon it was something like that you know they had some rule on the books you know that it wouldn't serve alcohol until a certain hour and my brother he sat there fidgeting he went up to the bar repeatedly he made it clear to the bartender that the moment the clock hit 3:30 or whatever the magic number was that the guy should bring over drinks to him right away he didn't get drunk that day he didn't get rum but I got to see him going through like withdrawal symptoms I got nervously looking at the clock looking at the bar where he couldn't wait 15 minutes he couldn't wait 30 minutes to get a drink of alcohol and there was no pressure on him we were just sitting around chit-chatting after I gave this lecture on but ISM you could see add what we call dependency he was dependent on the drug whether emotionally or chemically you know and was shocking he didn't think it was shocking he doesn't think he has a problem as long as you can hold down a job but pay your rent pay our taxes especially in that society nobody is gonna tell you of a problem nobody's gonna talk about the opportunity cost nobody's to talk about what you're not doing with your life because what you are doing with your life is drinking alcohol right that same brother so I talked to him that day I talked to you about five years before and then I talked to him about five years before that at the time I knew the precise number of years and at our last meeting there he he asked me a question about Buddhism and I said to him you asked me this exact same question five years ago and you asked me the same question five years before that so I've seen you like oh three times in so many years and each time we met you asked me that question and each time you didn't remember asking me the time for the second time he asked I remember telling that I said you know you asked me that exact same question the last time I saw you so you know what why do you think that is you don't remember asking me the same question and you don't remember my answer because I remember I can give you exactly the same answer I mean the first time he asked me that question as I recall was just getting started as a scholar I put a sum in terms of how how these years all line up but I already knew I already knew the answer the question question about a specific issue in ancient or medievalism you know what's not a stupid question by the way but it's the sort of question you might remember asking or you play from look for the answer to now there's no simple cause-and-effect explanation that he drinks alcohol therefore he doesn't remember but drinking alcohol is part of a reckless aimless self-indulgent self-destructive life that guy leads my long my long lost brother and you know genetically that guy I don't think he was born any stupider that I am I don't think he was born any less gifted I don't think he was born any less advantages neither mentally nor in terms of the education he had growing up and he's traveled all around the world that guy he's been to many of the same places I've been to he traveled extensively in India he traveled in Cambodia but if you ask him what he did in these places because you know I remember talking about Cambodia Cambodia has been a big part of my life most of the stories he has to tell involve drugs and alcohol he doesn't think he has a problem the whole world doesn't think every he's married his wife doesn't think is a problem what he has is a meaningless life and everywhere he goes even if he has some kind of intellectual pretensions and he does when he was in India at one point he was filming a documentary about a Hindu religious ritual he ostensibly has interest in the history of Hinduism and Buddhism he travels to these places and visits museums and ancient archeological sites he takes with him the meaninglessness of his own life and he acts out and sustains that meaninglessness partly through drugs and alcohol when you are living an unexamined life when you are living a life of this kind of self-indulgence doesn't matter if you go to India and it doesn't matter if you go to Cambodia and it doesn't matter if you go to see the pyramids in Egypt you might as well have just stayed at home alright he comes back none the wiser he comes back none the richer and yeah you know what he has funny stories about drinking alcohol using mind-altering drugs and womanizing from all over the world he has stories about chasing women from all the world to him and it's not a problem when is it a problem it's a problem when you decide it's a problem it's a problem when you admit to yourself it's a problem it's a problem when you get dissatisfied with your own excuses when you get dissatisfied with the status quo you've been living with so you guys know I do have a small number of people writing in to me who are very highly motivated to rationalize the time that they're putting into video games and I said before you can take this problem and dilute it to the point where it becomes meaningless if you're talking about playing videos for five minutes a day I admit at that point it's not the same problem as three hours a day it's not and I compared this to eating soap if there are tiny amounts of soap that you're reading and there probably are on your plates on your Forks and your knives on your glasses there is soap residue on a lot of these things your body can tolerate a certain amount of soap in the diet however that doesn't mean eating soap is a good thing so you can dilute the problem down to where it's so few minutes per day on videogames that it's really not a big deal anymore that still doesn't mean I recommend playing video games that still doesn't mean I recommend eating soap I don't recommend it hate the fact that you can tolerate with it the fact that you can cope with it does not mean I recommend it um I am probably gonna read books on paper in English today for about 1 hour and 30 minutes in total you know so I don't count reading in Chinese in this category but reading English on paper today about 1 hour and 30 minutes honestly III don't think I have time for any more I really don't think I have time and if I wanted to take more time to read I'd probably have to refuse to talk to my girlfriend for example I'd have to cut something else out of my life all right you can't tell me that playing video games for one hour a day isn't a significant commitment isn't a significant sacrifice isn't a significant decision you know what some of you may have it under control some of you may have it under control where it's only one hour a day but I think a lot of you if you're being honest with yourselves and I I remember when I was a kid a lot of you for being honest ourselves you'll admit that you tell yourself it's one hour a day but some days it slips out of your control something happens to the game that's especially fascinating to you where you get a brand-new game there's some reason why what was supposed to be one hour becomes three hours or four hours or more that you keep playing right there are people who say they have their drinking under control and some do some people drink alcohol in a very rigorous limited way it exists but a lot of people need to be honest themselves that even if they tell themselves they're only gonna have two beers or two shots of whiskey that sometimes what began as just two drinks just two servings of whiskey turns into four six twelve turns into a long night if every and it could be for all kinds of reasons your friend comes back from a long journey overseas there's something to celebrate or maybe there's something to mourn there's something sad and even if it's just once in a while that the drinking can get out of control that it does get out of control and you know what my father had nine kids with a whole bunch of different women you you don't have to be a sex addict in a conventional sense for your your sexuality to destroy your life you don't have to be a sex addict for your desire to destroy your life you know in theory you could have nine kids and you only had sex nine times right you might think you're gonna have a sexual encounter with somebody that's only gonna last one hour and it could end up resulting in pregnancy and becoming a major you know driving force in your life 20 years to come could change your life for many hundreds of hours for many many years to come right he could get out of control I know these videos I've made have had a positive impact on people's lives they've been writing into me for years I had a whole bunch of family unless if people writing in and saying how positively it impacted their lives just to hear me talk through the implications of the decision to play video games or the decision never to play video games again if you really want to come on YouTube and make the kind of argument that you guys are running into me just a few of these you guys are running into me and saying oh well how is video how is playing video games for a few hours you are they are better or worse than then some other hobby if you want to make those excuses do you do you really think that's gonna have a positive effect on other people's lives do you think about we're here making excuses for my brother's lifestyle and saying hey it's fine you can get drunk six days a week and travel around the world and get drunk and use hard drugs and womanize you can live a life just my brother if I were encouraging people to live this way you know or even to put it in terms of what's the upper limit of what you can get away with before it becomes a problem you know how much soap can you eat before it ruins your digestion before it starts having negative impacts I mean what's what's the maximum amount of soap you can eat know the fact that you can accidentally eat some soap in your diet and still be okay that doesn't mean that we should direct our attention to warrants how much we can we can possibly get away with the fact that there's no objectively real standard for when drinking becomes a problem for when playing video games becomes a problem the fact that there's no objectively real standard doesn't mean that there isn't a subjectively real standard right it's subjective but it's still real it still matters it still has consequences in your lives mine it's going to be relative to your ambition how ambitious you are it's going to be relative to the type of person you want to be if all that you want to be is a couch potato then drinking alcohol and playing video games and having a life of short-term thinking and self-centered self-indulgence of course you're gonna have a tremendous tolerance to that you're never gonna run out of excuses for that as soon as you have some ambition as soon as your the some ambition that gets you off that couch that makes you aspire to be a better person to do better things then those excuses start to seem sillier and sillier stranger and stranger why were you ever making excuses for sedating yourself why were you ever making excuses for engaging in childlike entertainment children's entertainment as an adult why it starts to become unthinkable the difference between subjective and objective is not the difference between unreal and real all right the point at which drinking alcohol becomes a problem is up for you to decide but that doesn't mean that there is no wrong answer I'm asking you now to make the right decision I'm asking you to choose reality over fantasy I'm asking you to choose to live in the real world the world of sobriety the world of nonfiction instead of yes a simulated world of diversion a world of fantasy a world of video games