Social-Engineering of the War-game.

Posted on January 8, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Society |

Whilst things have become very entertainment-centric – I do still enjoy parts of it. The odd movie is great, and there are a number of very good TV shows available (Battlestar Galactica). I also like some of the various online war-games – although I do think war-game is an oxymoron, even in this context.

At any rate, it is difficult to play these games, and not consider the implications and impact they must have upon my psyche, conscious and spiritual self. Most of the war-games I play are ‘online’ meaning you play against other people, and they always have a very strong theme of competitiveness. I don’t enjoy competitiveness, but I do like a bit of escapism; yet it seems there is always a price.

These war-games – or shooters – as they are commonly known, range from the science-fiction setting of Halo 3, to the ultra-realistic combat of modern warfare in Call of Duty 4. Now a few days ago I posted about the Intentional use of Technology. All technology – especially in the form of entertainment opens us up to various forms of “imprinting”. By that, I mean we are sub-consciously influenced by the media we consume; our psyche receives an ‘imprint’ from the emotions that have been embedded into that media.

With movies and TV, the nature of that imprint is often very deliberate. Often movies are intricately set up to create a certain response, especially movies with very dark themes. It’s not simply a case of influencing your thoughts, but manipulating your emotions and being on a very deep level. This is one of the intents behind most forms of ritual; to evoke a particular state of mind and being within either the practitioner or the participant / viewer, or both.

The difficulty with war-games is that this process incurs an element of randomness which generally makes the outcome far worse. The game developers can carefully craft the environment, and set parameters for how people can and cannot play. However they have no real control over the attitude of the players; and that marks the greatest contrast between online games and traditional media.

As a player becomes deeply engrossed within the game, they feed a whole load of emotion into it. When playing online with maybe twenty other people, that mixture of emotion can become very palpable. It mixes in with your own feelings, and attempts to drag you along in its torrent – much like is experienced with mob-mentality. It’s one of the things I find most disturbing with war-games. Whether deliberate or not, it is a form of human programming.

This is far more noticeable on those games which mimic real world combat and wars. In recent years, war-games have started to record extensive statistics on the players. On the one hand a gamer can view a record of their gaming ability. On the other hand these records are also available to many other people and groups.

For years there has been this theory that war-games could be and are used as training war simulators for the public. Personally I think it goes far deeper than that, as there are very powerful and even subtle energies involved – as I mentioned above. I feel that rather than ‘training’ it is more a case of (un)intentional engineering.

Comments

2 Responses to “Social-Engineering of the War-game.”

Chris on January 8th, 2008 3:36 pm

I highly recommend the following documentary which deals specifically with the partnership b/w the American military and Hollywood.

Militainment Inc. is a nine part documentary, written, produced, and narrated by Roger Stahl, assistant professor at the University of Georgia. The documentary shows how the Pentagon and the entertainment industries became partners in militarizing TV, games, sports and more
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Marcus on January 9th, 2008 10:19 am

Thanks, I will be sure to check out that documentary.

I really think it can’t be over-estimated just how much of our thoughts are influenced by the media we consume.
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