Gamers
How could this be … video games that are good for you? But I thought the only ways to enhance your body and mind were to read books and do jumping jacks or to have open ended debates and run marathons. Could it be that modern technology might actually provide some benefits? No way. That’s impossible!
Video games destroy the mind and so does TV – they make us lazy. Movies are just mindless entertainment crafted around the human obsession over sexuality, violence and potty mouths. But wait a minute. Yeah, books stimulate our minds and our imaginations but fundamentally they only stimulate one of our five physical senses. What about video games, TV, and movies which can stimulate two or three senses at a time? Is that worth absolutely nothing?
There aren’t any great artists in the world anymore. DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa and made it look like her eyes follow you around the room. Video game companies create realistic looking people that do follow you around the room. The difference: a video game programmer’s paint brush is a mouse rather than a stick with a brush at the end. “But computers make everything so easy.” I’ll buy you a copy of Photoshop and challenge you to “paint” me a sphere.
Books are an excellent resource for storytelling, but so was oratory. Weren’t books just “lazy” ways of telling stories that were previously always spoken or acted out? Isn’t the printing press essentially the same thing as a video camera – a way to record a story? Don’t books actually destroy some of the benefits of “storytelling”?
Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy reading and I think it has its benefits. But I also don’t want to be fed some line about how Showgirls is an example of how movies degrade our intellect because for every Showgirls there’s a dozen Danielle Steele books. I don’t think that watching Friends will teach me how to be a better friend, but it could possibly help me enjoy life better and that will make me a better friend. Humor in a book and humor on a television show is humor all the same and one is not better than the other.
All I’m saying is that books don’t automatically make you smarter and TV, movies and video games don’t necessarily make you stupid. There are benefits from all of these activities, it’s just a matter of getting a healthy blend of all and not immersing yourself in just one. Well, in my opinion anyway.