Originally posted by DamnedBuzzard
Speaking only for myself here but, what bothers me more Reverend is your apparent inability to differentiate a computer game from reality.
Hi DamnedBuzzard,
My bad. I know I probably should never have gotten into this one. Having a discussion about the ethics of something in a forum with no absolute ethical standard is fairly impossible. I'll leave this one well alone after this - especially because I'm well aware that this makes a BBS designed for fun all too heavy and serious and for that I'm sincerely sorry.
But let me raise a couple of thoughts that I hope may provoke a thought or two. Shooting pilots parachuting from stricken aircraft is actually a violation of a quaint old document called the Geneva Convention. It was for activities like this (and machine-gunning people in life-rafts) that we tried and hung men at Nuremburg and even a few in Japan. We once accepted that this, along with things like strafing refugees, was a morally abhorent activity, even in wartime. These were considered acts of murder not war.
Yes, I'm aware this is just a simulation, and that these are "simulated murders and war crimes" and that there are far worse sims out there (rape, serial killing, theft, etc.) But there's an old saying, "character is what you are in the dark". Society exposes its soul through the things that its citizens enjoy doing when no-one else can see. We are in a sense more honest in the games we play, than in the way we act in the world. If we are honorable, and courageous, faithful, and fair, etc. in the dark, then we will be so in the light of day. But if we are nothing but vile, adulterous, vicious, rapacious, etc. in our fantasies, then at heart we are barbarians and it's our civility that is a sham.
Personally, I don't like to think what the long term effects of ever-more realistic games that nurture or promote evil behavior will be on our culture (especially in the case of children). I think only the naive would say that they'll be good.
Do what you will, but as for me, I don't want to shoot chutes, not in the games I play or in reality.
- SEAGOON