The fact that TV and video games influence the minds of people is undisputed and has been extensively demonstrated, otherwise Coca Cola would not spend billions of dollars every year on TV advertising. This is no different when the topic is violence, but unlike simple Coca Cola advertising, the consequences are graver than getting fat.
The real question is not whether violence on TV generates violence in real life – the important question is how to address this problem. The simple minded people are the first to stand up offering the most effective solution: “Let’s censor violence!” Why not, after all the government has the role to drive society with a close look of a parent to a child.
This line of thought is dead wrong for several reasons. Let’s calmly address them one by one.
1) Violence is not black and white. The realm of TV programs is far from the binary option between comedy shows and Rambo. What about James Bond movies? Everybody is always carrying a gun –are they to be considered violent? What about American football? What about live cameras in Iraq and Darfur that bring world reality closer to us and thus make people think more about it?
2) Another practical issue is what is violence? Is it just guns and blood? What about sex? And cursing on TV? Violence is very subjective, like love and beauty. Who is to determine what is right and what is wrong? The quick answer: The government. Well, the government is not a supernatural power that swiftly runs the world on protocols like a machine. Government is made of people, fallible and full of prejudices like most of us. There is no government in an impersonal way – there are people ruling other people, the question becomes how much authority I am willing to give this ruling class to determine what, when or how I live.
3) Censorship cripples liberty. This is crystal clear and does not need explanations. The only instance when crippling liberty is allowed is to overcome a greater power that is crippling liberty itself. Allow me to give a practical example: should we censor a TV program that defends the right of the white race (if there exists such a thing as race) to enslave black people? The answer is of course YES, because it crosses the line that divides one’s liberty of speech and another’s right to live freely in liberty. Let me be very clear about this: Liberty of the press DOES NOT mean that everything is publishable. Your right to publish ends where you cross the fine line of someone else’s universal rights. Now -- it is a fine line, and we should spend time discussing about this line and not about universal censorship of violence.
4) Recently in Venezuela, a country that neighbors Brazil, Hugo Chávez has censored an entire TV station, the biggest in Venezuela, and the only one with a dissenting voice because he and his associates felt that this TV station showed inappropriate programs that questioned the government. So, he CENSORED it.
5) The issue of how much government can influence one’s life is worth discussing here. Ronald Regan eloquently said in his inauguration address to the nation, and I quote: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” End of quote. I believe that history has proven that more government control does not result in more liberties. Quite the contrary – the case study of government control is the Soviet Union under Stalin. Try preaching to the political prisoners sent to the Gulag that they need more government.
I am sincerely concerned with the backwards motion the world is taking today. The French Revolution changed the world in such a way that we became to believe that freedom is given for granted, that we have it no matter what. This is a grave mistake. Unfortunately mankind has demonstrated over and over again that dictatorship and oppression are the natural state of affairs, instead of liberty and freedom.
For the simple-minded the path is clear: If we feel something is wrong let’s censor it by force. What they fail to grasp is that universal liberty is an essential component of human development; it does not guarantee that the right path is always chosen, but it certainly creates an environment where the right path is MORE FREQUENTLY chosen. It’s not 100% proof, but it is certainly the best we have.
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