No, Actually Quit Video Games: Vegan Gains & You, Too.

you make a bunch of YouTube videos
talking about stupidity and people right into you wanna talk about stupidity so I think it should come as no surprise to me that a bunch of people took the time to try to angle II defend the habit of playing video games one of the things I find instructive and slightly surreal about this discourse is that the rationale for not playing video games can be found very clearly read within the literature of video games themselves video games which largely revolve around a hero a protagonist who gets up one morning and decides to save the world who gets up one morning and decides to rescue the princess who gets up and decides to get involved in the management of his village or town cinemas on a smaller scale who decides to make strategic planning decisions whether military or in games like Animal Crossing for the sake of civil society SimCity what-have-you there's actually a lot of social and political responsibility built into the fabric even of a video game as banal as Super Mario Brothers meaning do you know who the princess is of the country you're living in do you know the kings and queens and political leaders are of your country are you involved no and as ridiculous and be knighted as it sounds that there are real-world situations you can get involved in if you have this kind of humanitarian impulse this kind of heroic personality all over the world at any given time I know a guy named Joey I think he's still watched the channel shadow terribly he has nothing to do with Syria he's not from Syria he's not Syrian he started to get involved in humanitarian work in the area surrounding Syria because that's where the refugee camps are and someone he started to learn the languages plural connected to that conflict he went back to college and got more credentials that are relevant to that he is in his small way making the world a better place and you know what he could have thrown a dart at the map he could have chosen anywhere else other than Syria to stick with Syria for a minute I think I might have mentioned this years ago on the channel there was a Chinese entrepreneur who started doing humanitarian work in Syria and the reason why I know about that story was he set up a system where he'd ask for donations and then he just tell people every dollar of what happened with their particular donation and you could imagine it's mostly really boring stuff it's like oh here's this guy who was living in a abandoned concrete apartment and he had no running water and no uh no bed to sleep on so you donated $100 we bought this mattress here's a photograph of the mattress here's the receipt no we bought some plumbing it really comes down to this got a detail but this this Chinese guys set up a charity that was in this sense very 21st century a hundred percent transparency hundred percent accountability and in his way making it a better place I've never I've never heard of a video game where really the player is the protagonist where the protagonist is someone like the player where the protagonist is someone who just wants to be entertained is just someone who wants to waste their time as an adult in a kind of children's form of of entertainment where you turn on the video game and the character you're you're interacting with the hero is just someone who wants to sit around play video games you know what why is that and again it's kind of built into just the fabric and and framing of the picture here who is the hero in whatever Zelda or Metroid or any any mainstream video game it's not someone who's lazy it's not someone who's self-indulgent someone with tremendous self-discipline self-sacrifice it's someone who very often goes around the world of the fictional world reading books about ancient history and uncovering mysteries and being involved in again this kind of fictional politics as it unfolds and Wars and the rise and fall of kingdoms and what-have-you you know maybe role playing games this is especially true of Anu this is true of some genres and and not others but I know there also a lot of games that glorify military service and and what-have-you so in my life this is kind of parallel to the paradox we had in Buddhism Buddhist philosophy and Buddhism as a modern like well you know guys we have this religion that seems to be totally devoted to self-sacrifice humanitarian work helping the poor that has an incredibly negative view of accumulating riches of the pursuit of money and here we are in this Buddhist temple and everyone here is devoting all of their time and energy to accumulating money and we're actually doing nothing humanitarian neither for Syria nor for Sri Lanka nor for Myanmar or something there even within the terabyte of Buddhist world in that part of Asia there's a lot of humanitarian work that needs to be done and in most cases you will say look it's the Catholic Church that's going out and caring for orphans and caring for the poor even within these Buddhist countries somes is the Muslim charities and we as Buddhists aren't doing it what's up and the answers you'd be getting would be like well we devote absolutely all of our time and energy to making money you know what could I well you know again sort of in the same sense when you look at the protagonist in the video game what is he or she represent when you look at the heroes in Buddhist literature when you look at what's being presented to you as a model for moral or exemplary behavior you know what what is there - damn you like there what is the lies were supposed to draw from it so yeah I think there's a really strange and sad form of self justification that goes on these messages I'm getting from people who are saying one of them you know what this is this is not strumming them this is steel Manning them the best excuse I get the best excuse is video games are great works of art do they stand up as works of art so do mosaics a mosaic is a picture made out of little fragmentary pieces of tile how would you feel if you knew a grown man who spent 20 hours a week smashing up plates into little pieces and then taking concrete or any other fixative and putting the pieces together into a mosaic 20 hours a week there's no debate mosaics are works of art the mosaics are great works of art how would you feel if you knew someone who spent 20 hours a week going to museums and looking at mosaics you know that the great art issue is irrelevant I know what may seem well but it may seem like morally it's the most meaningful thing in the world for you to stand up and defend this now again I'm not saying mosaics have to have zero role in your life how many mosaics did I see in museums this year I spent a few minutes looking at a few different folks this year um but it's even more pathetic if you take the next step and ask okay who is depicted in the mosaic what virtue or what kind of person oh it's it's Heracles sorry more commonly it's Hercules it's this hero it's this person of outstanding personal courage and valor and self-discipline is going out and trying to make the world a better place and sometimes just literally trying to rescue the princess or what have you there's maybe this symbol of civic virtue you know whatever you want to say there's someone who's engaged and as a sense of mission is trying to save the planet or save the village or help their town or help their city it's someone who cares it's someone who's not spending 20 hours a day sitting at a computer or sitting on a couch in front of a television just interested in their own amusement it's it's Hercules it's a hero couldn't you ask the person this hypothetical person who's addicted to making mosaics at what point are you gonna put the tools down and are you gonna try to become like Hercules yourself instead of spending all your time playing games with little pieces of colored glass