A Game Worth Playing
Wednesday
I was thinking about this afterward, and I've thought of a way to speak to this young mindset. He loves playing video games, as many young men of that age do, especially Halo and Destiny.
Halo is one of the most popular video games of all time. The game is about an interstellar war between the human race and theocratic aliens whose leaders are called the Prophets. I'm not making this up.
A newer game, created by the same people, has also proved to be immensely popular. It's called Destiny. The player must try to protect humanity from aliens who would wipe out the human race.
In other words, when he wants to have fun, he and millions of others like him, fight (in a video game) for a great cause. But when a real live version of this game appears, he wants to drop out of the world and travel? In the future, when this comes up in a conversation, I'm going to say something like this: "Come on man! You could be the hero you fantasize about. What we have been given is a game truly worth playing."
I will try to make it clear to him that he could, in real life, fight against a great evil in the world. We face a very real existential threat to the human race, to women's rights, to freedom of speech, to freedom of religion, to art, to science, to everything good about modern civilization, and there is something he could do to defend it.
The best stories, the best movies, the best video games all have one thing in common: Big stakes, big evil, and a few good people with a small chance of saving the world. I believe every human heart yearns for such a "game," such a cause, such a purpose.
I thought this idea might be useful for all of us. We need to find a way to infuse this perspective into the hearts of our young men and women. We need to help them understand that this cause is what they have been looking for.
Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.
5 comments:
Thanks to feminism, we have nations of men with no balls. The men and women with the will to fight will be few.
This article is a reminder of the wise saying from the twentieth century.
Which is "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
How interesting that as the world cries out for heroes, the potential heroes are playing video games. I was part of the 1970's feminism push but I can assure you that, at the time, we did not plan to feminize men. That's the part that spun out of control. Sad that I had any part in it.
I so much agree: The best stories, the best movies, the best video games all have one thing in common: Big stakes, big evil, and a few good people with a small chance of saving the world. I believe every human heart yearns for such a "game," such a cause, such a purpose. YES. And some of us take on this challenge. Vital to get this message to people.
In the book about the brutal and deadly jihad entity ISIS by Erick Stakelbeck which is entitled ISIS EXPOSED on page 78 in informs the reader that concerning this post 9/11 world with the threats and dangers for Islam’s violent ,and many times lethal ,militant jihad that “All of this means we’ve entering a fighting a personal – new phase in radical Islam’s war on the United States Will Americans glance up from their smartphones and put down their video game consoles in time to notice ?” To add to this , there distraction which is sports . Some sports are OK by some Americans take this frivolous hobby to the extreme. So much that they totally fail to see the whole picture about American in the things that really matter.
Therefore, the important topics as of Islamic terrorism are not seen by mater to many Americans who are distracted by such frivolous things as video games and as sports. It then needs to be stated that Karl Marx was wrong when he wrote down his claim that “Religion is the opium of the people.” From years of first-hand observations I can keyboard the hypothesis that the real “opium of the people is sports”. For many Americans refuse to buy, read and study books about Islam and its militant and stealth jihad. As, for example, by the author Mark Gabriel who was a former Muslim and now a Christian and wrote the book ISLAM AND TERRORISM. Other scholars of this topic many also be very informative .As the writer and scholar of Islamic terrorism as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Erick Stakelbeck and Brigitte Gabriel. Instead in investing their time of the suspect of Islamic terrorism some American invest much of their time focused on sports. That of course is their prerogative.
Nevertheless, this still shows some kind of misplaced values about what really matter. As in this indicates wrong priorities about what really important in life. As Brigitte Gabriel, who is the founder and head of www.actforamerica.org and wrote in her book which is entitled BECAUSE THEY HATE which reads “The West is ignorant and refuses to learn.”
Post a Comment