Against Video Games: The Principle of the Thing.

hey guys I do not want to seem like I'm
trivializing this topic at all if anything I want to emphasize the enormity of the question of playing video games and quitting video games for our generation and for every generation to come in the conceivable future the experience of quitting alcohol the experience of quitting cocaine when you think about it impacts a relatively tiny percentage of the world's population you'll always meet people who just you know for no particular reason never really got into alcohol I've met people who just said they didn't like the taste both growing up as a teenager I've met people who said they didn't like the way it made them feel so even when they were going to parties as a teenager other people were getting drunk and they just they just weren't into it there are a lot of people who have never been through the process of quitting alcohol who've never developed a dependency or an addiction and also just never even developed a habit for it and yet when you think about it on a global scale almost everyone who is not a gamer today anyone from a society that has regular access to electricity they have made a conscious choice to quit playing video games or stop playing video games I'm 38 years old so I remember how it was decades ago and you know if you're a college kid watching this video let me assure you your professors went through it this is not such ancient history you know what I mean and you will have some professors today who are still playing video games you will probably have some professors in university who are quietly struggling with video game addiction but everyone you meet you know unless they're 90 years old and very traditional and lived on a farm in the countryside or something almost everyone you meet who doesn't play video games made an intentional decision not to in the current generation of people alive on planet Earth you know the author george RR martin who's primarily famous for Game of Thrones and a Song of Ice and Fire I remember him just commenting and passing an interviewer asked him if he ever played the video games that were based his book they were based on his most successful books and he answered no he can't allow himself to play videos he's a very elderly man I'm sorry I don't I don't know his age but I mean he said he could not allow himself to play video games he enjoyed playing them he enjoyed it too much and he knew he wouldn't get any work done if he if he left so close it's not really something as simple as addiction and quitting an addiction on a small small number of people struggle with video game addiction on a much larger scale on a scale of Millions and indeed I think billions more than 1 billion in the world certainly we're not talking about addiction we're talking about the choice to lead a meaningful life and what that really entails and the choice not to play video games in order to live a meaningful life in order to pursue some goal or some objective so you say I'm not making light of this I'm wearing my sarcastic me--never shirt for this for this video but I'm not joking around this is a meaningful question my own life it's a question that's touched the lives of many people I know personally and again when you scale it up and think of society as a whole it's a huge issue now for the future and it's an issue I'm absolutely certain I'm gonna have to talk about with my own daughter my daughter is now four years old and she does play doing this at age four it's an issue I'm certain I'm gonna have to talk about with my daughter not once and not 10 times I'm certain it's gonna come up a hundred times in the course of my parenting in the next next few decades you know possibly even when she's in her 20s and what-have-you it's not a decision you just make once I think most people if you're really speaking honestly and I biographically you'll be able to say there were different periods of your life when you played video games maybe as a child it was this way maybe as a teenager it was this way and then I think most of the people who've made videos about this I've looked around on YouTube they talk about the fact that maybe in their 20s they went back and forth at periods of quitting and then trying to play video games moderately and making making decisions of this kind most of us as adults have a crushing realization that our time is precious and we it's not a happy or wonderful thing it may be when you get your first full-time job that you realize this and maybe when you have your first child that you realize this and you're spending so many hours a day just take care of this infant but at some point another thing most people as grown-ups you look at the clock on the wall or you think of the pie chart of how many hours you've got in the day and what you're doing with them and you realize your opportunity to make the most out of life whether it's in terms of the books you read the things you do the humanitarian aspirations you have the creative aspirations you have whether you want to be a polar or poet or a painter or you're interested in politics need the world a better place in some way or just cultivating your own mind learning something about about history or making some meaningful difference the number of hours you have in a day to do that is always going to be too few as an adult and that's a contrast from the feeling of youth during your childhood you probably felt that every day had hours and hours for you to fill up that it was just a question of dealing with the boredom you know the boredom of childhood the boredom of youth of having so many hours when you weren't at school with nothing in particular to do and where your main challenge was staying out of your parents way was maybe not making your parents angry or not annoying your parents and of course playing video games in many cases becomes a substitute for a babysitter it becomes a substitute for real quality time or other activities you know for the family they'll be harder for your parents to manage so it's a way of it's a way of parents getting rid of kids of kids doing a you know a safe activity they don't need to be they don't need to be watched or monitored by their parents while they're doing it and that just eats up hours of the day I looked at you know since I made that my last video on this topic a couple days ago I looked at other youtubers who had rest.this and there there are not that many there doesn't seem to be a lively scene within YouTube of X video gamers or game quitters people who are or any video game which is already a surprise to me so I mean compared to vegan politics or animal rights or even Buddhism there doesn't seem to be a lot of heat on this issue at the moment maybe it's something that comes and goes in and out of vogue but I think a lot of the lot of the videos I did see in the last couple of days they start by taking a false first step in that they look at video games as a form of enjoyment the enjoyment of life and then they try to emphasize to the viewer that instead you should cultivate a diversity of other forms of enjoyment pursuing the opposite sex or pursuing the same sex if you prefer you know dating romance cultivating friends family and activity is like mountain climbing or world travel they just sort of present a varied palette of what they consider to be a good life of self-indulgence of enjoyment in contrast to a life that is disproportionately devoted to this one source of enjoyment - playing video games and I think that's a contrast to the notion of honor Duty aspiration ambition that we even see within the video games themselves video games do not typically portray as the main character someone who is fatuous self-indulgent and simply trying to enjoy life simply indulging the pleasures of life if you think about the protagonists or the heroes of video games if you think about the type of career and life that's depicted in video games again and again and again it's very often a medieval character it's a set of kind of Bronze Age virtues or even Stone Age or juice the type of self-sacrifice heroism devotion to a cause indeed stereotypically trying to save the world is very often the purpose of video game to save the world what these video games feature again and again is a resolute and purposeful life that has absolutely nothing to do with enjoying yourself that has nothing to do with your happiness that very much presumes as part of its premise and its plot that a hero that a an adult character about playing a leading role in this video game is without any hesitation willing to sacrifice all the comforts of home pack up his sword and his bow and arrow and go out and save the world go out and take some take on some quest or some endless series of quests to make the world a better place to save the planet to conquer to put his stamp to make his mark on history whatever the case may be so I think actually the contrast that you can confront video game players with is not between a more diverse and so-called healthy life of self-indulgence you know a form of happiness you know that to live for one's own happiness you should instead dissipate your energies into these these various leisure activities and not just one leisure activity I think the question to ask is why aren't you trying to live like your own heroes as absurd as that may be why aren't you trying to be like link in the Legend of Zelda Oh mister I pick any kind of stereotypical mission to save the world video game what's your mission what's your aspiration what's your ambition why aren't you the hero in your own plot why isn't your life your own video game in which you are on some series of fools errands now life is long especially if you're not tragically killed in a bus accident in real life people who have that kind of motivation often go through a series of disillusionment they often complete one mission and are disenchanted and take on another I'm very self-critical about the kind of missions to save the world make the world a better place of I've been on myself you know when I was involved with the Green Party in Canada with ecology in Canada of course very quickly you become cynical about and insightful about what's right and what's wrong with the Green Party the ways in which it's a waste of your time what have you but of course that can lead to you know more effective activism there after you taking on a new direction you know you learn and you learn you adapt you either take on a new mission or change the way you're doing it I went into humanitarian work and was really considered a humanitarian work in Cambodia and Laos Southeast Asian countries I wasn't a fool I mean I wasn't trying to save the world that was already a pretty cynical down-to-earth pragmatic character but sure I mean I can also make fun of myself for that and when I talk about it with other people who know the field you know in some ways I could speak very positively about that experience how much I learned from it and positive outcomes from it but another way is sure I can I can criticize my own naivete to some extent or not even not even naive to the extent to which my ambitions my hopes and dreams were impossible we impossible to satisfy impossible to realize but so what challenge yourself do the impossible don't take on beating level 12 in a video game don't take on a task that's been designed to be possible for your amusement and diversion take on impossible tasks and when you want to do that when do you want to have that ambition when you're in your 60s when you're in your 50s when you're in your 20s all of the above I met people doing humanitarian work and doing scholarly work doing because I did both research and humanitarian work I met people doing the same things I was doing in Southeast Asia after their retirement you know when they're in their 60s and I met people doing it in their early 20s you know you met people at all different stages of life who decided on whatever the issue was you know because I worked in a diverse range of fields whether it was something in the arts that they had their ambitions a humanitarian field like hiv/aids you know research major that straight up handing out sacks of rice to starving people that kind of direct humanitarian work or more philosophical and historical research and again it could be an including you know like massacres crimes against humanity Zinn the 20th century it's not ancient history but recent history where people are still alive interviewing them you know documenting that history for another generation whatever their passion was the taking on big ambitious impossible goals if you like where you become you know the hero in your own game and it may end tragically or a man with your disillusionment and Amanda with your Bordeaux and they ended with you you were having a rage quit could you take out of the game sure that's part of the the drama of urban life but I think actually you're missing the point if you treat videogames as just one form of enjoyment and you reach out to people who are so-called videogame addicts and say no no you need to deepen and diversify you joining of life I really say the opposite I say what the is wrong with you why is your life just about enjoyment why are you living for self-indulgence for happiness for these kinds of shallow pleasures and I ask that of people in their 20s 30s 40s right up to their 60s and 70s I would ask that of my own grandmother she was still alive you know I don't think people should live that way at any age well any age above 20 if you're four years old admittedly at four years old your life may just be devoted to self-indulgence and short-term pleasures your life may just be one popsicle after another and it may just be one video game after another from the age of four to twelve or something okay you know I've got I've got to put in a cab it there but sure I do think that as adults we should take on ambitions both in trying to make the world a better place and more immediately in trying to make ourselves better people you may uh turley fail to transform the world if you go and do humanitarian work in Cambodia or you take on some more scholarly pursuit that's entirely in a library whatever whatever kind of research a humanitarian goal or political goal you may have may be straight up party politics whatever it is you may uh turley change you sir pardon me you may uh Turley fail to change the world but I guarantee you will not fail to change yourself even if the outcomes are tragic even if the outcomes are heartbreaking even if you go through a long series of disillusionment what you learn in that process it's going to become part of who you are as an adult and that is an experience you can never have with video games and you can never have it with card games you could never have it with billiards you can never have it with games period so my message is not just about quitting video games it's really about quitting everything and about taking on real ambitions real goals even though those goals may lead to your own destruction to be sure in my own story there was a plus an even self-destructive element to the ambitions I have some of the things like I did I could say I wouldn't have wanted to do them if they were easy I wouldn't have wanted to do them if they were safe I didn't want to be involved in humanitarian work in Sri Lanka it was too safe I want to Cambodia you know I mean with in Laos I could have stayed in the capital city no I wanted to get up on the border where the civil war was still going on you know I wanted to be in the most dangerous areas where the red-hot bullets were still flying and where the starvation was still a problem where the humanitarian work was there to be done even within research I always wanted to be on the frontier the ragged frontier of where things were unknown where things hadn't been done before or you know there was there was impossible work to be done I wanted to test myself and push myself to the limit and I wanted to do all that when I was a young man because my professors at university were old men who had never done those things I saw my professors as men who were outwardly successful but were inwardly failures and if I had a choice I'd rather things were the other way around