Over this year in English and History I learned a lot about the nature of people. I learned that it is easy for people to stray off of human nature for various reasons. While writing my Op-ed I talked about how violent video games are blamed for many school shootings, when it really has to do with home problems or mental disabilities. This showed me how people are aware of things being able to change people, but might not have the best judgment to know what is changing them. For my first quarter English benchmark I talked about how the kids become more savage when exposed to less technology. Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids start to revert back to having animal like behavior while on the Island. This showed me how people are willing to go back to savage behavior very quickly, instead of work together and act civilized, or can make sure that they do not become savages. The way to not become savages would be to make the island like their life and not change anything, but this is very hard to do; that is why it is so easy for people to revert back to being savages.

            During the fourth quarter we learned about freedom and prisons. We had several assignments talking about torture. During these lessons we discussed how almost anyone could become a torturer. We watched and reflected on a video called The Milgram Obedience Experiments where “scientists” would bring in someone from the street, and ask them to question another person in a different room. Every time the person in the other room got a question wrong the person brought in from the street would press a button that they were told gave an electric charge to the other person. The person who was answering questions was not actually getting shocked, but was just acting and pretending to be in pain. The questioner was told to turn up the intensity of the shock until it got to a certain point, and keep it at that level. There were several circumstances, and the results varied from where the answerer was, where the person telling the questioner to do their job was, and if there was any other people in the room. In the end most people would go somewhat far, even though they could hear or see the other person that they thought they were torturing.

            One of the units in History dealt with sweatshops, and child labor. We talked about why it happens, what the benefits are, what the downsides are, and how it can affect consumers or other people. We had a group activity where everyone was split up into several teams for a Transnational Capital Auction. These teams were the Ruling Elite for countries. The object of the game was to try to please the Multinational Companies, so they would give work to our citizens, but to make sure that our citizens were not going to rebel against the government. We had to decide our standpoint on key issues like ability to form unions, child labor, laws on keeping a clean environment, and several others. There were five rounds to change the bids, and depending on what you did, the Multinational Companies would want to go to your country. The team that ended up winning didn’t put everything good for the Multinational Companies, because that would mean their citizens would be very unhappy with the government. The teams that did good put things somewhat in the middle of good and bad in the choices, even though they all seemed to be very bad from our standpoint in the United States.

While learning about freedom had a section on prisons, and penitentiaries. I got to read about prisons, and prisoners that I had no idea about before. Much of this was very interesting, and cool. We got to read facts about prisons and prisoners and write our responses. The thing that I thought was the most interesting because I had never thought about it before was about the family of the prisoners. The person who goes to jail might be the only family member with a job, and has to support their whole family, but when they are sent to prison the government does nothing to help that family. This could be a very big problem to the family, and would make them change their whole lifestyle. The government might say that it would be the fault of the family member for doing a crime that put them in jail, but I don't think that the whole family should be punished for the actions of this one person. 
            The main things that I learned about this year almost all centered around human behavior. Human behavior contributed to all of these topics very much, like how a torturer can be made, when people are civilized or savages, and how people view certain things. Human behavior is something very unique, that would not be what you expect until seeing real life examples of what can be some of strange parts of human behavior.

 

For the experiment on the man we watched in class, he started off questioning a lot of what was going on, but later on started to accept it. The “scientists” pressured him, which made him become more obedient and stop questioning their authority and his actions. At one point in the video the man is hesitant about pushing the button again, until the “scientists” tell the man that he is not responsible for anything that he is doing. After he is told that he isn’t responsible he presses the button somewhat quickly. Close to the end of the experiment the man is told that the test was really on his behavior, and is asked several questions. He starts to laugh uncomfortable to avoid answering some of these, or to try to make it seem like he didn’t do as bad of a thing as he feels.

            During the video the man protests shocking the other person, or asking a new question many times, and seems adamant on his decision. Almost every time the “scientists” are able to get him to go back and “shock” the other person by just talking to him and telling him what to do. I was surprised that the man would go back so many times, because he seemed ready to stop asking questions very early on, but continued because he was told to. The thing that surprised me the most was that after the person on the other side of the wall stopped yelling or making noise, the man didn’t show as much resistance until he finally decided to stop. 

Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids become more savage. The boys start out as somewhat civilized, but as they realize that they might not get saved, they get more savage. In several instances in our world, there have been people or groups who are against technology. The example about groups not having or wanting technology relates to the boys because they go back to their animal instincts.. The real life example hurt people for a not very good reason, and they either didn’t have or want technology. The diminishing amount of technology affects people in ways so that they revert back to their instinct of savagery.

During the book Piggy’s glasses go from good condition to being broken. While the glasses are diminishing, the savage instinct of the boys becomes more prevalent. A quote from the book from where the glasses are half broken is “You didn't ought to have let that fire out... one side's broken." page 71. During this section the kids are in the middle of being animals humans. This quote shows that they are starting to abandon one form of technology that they have, fire. They left the technology to go hunting; and because of this the ship that passes by didn’t see them. If they had kept their technology, then they would not be fighting about not getting rescued from the ship. The fire would have also kept them from killing the pig, so that they would be less savage. Only savages would leave something as important as the fire, to go kill a pig for food that they wouldn’t need if they were rescued.

Many of the older boys were hunters, or wanted to be with jack to kill a pig. Luddites were people in the early 1800’s who were against some new technology. The new technology would do their job faster, but they claimed that it wasn’t as authentic, or good. The luddites destroyed many of the machines, and killed some people in the riots. The luddites are similar to the boys in Lord of the Flies, because they ignore or demolish technology, and in the process they hurt things. This new technology made them destroy technology, which showed how they went back to their animal instincts, and didn’t think about anything else. The luddites were against new technology, while the hunters were against watching the fire. Both of them had their priorities wrong, the luddites could have found new jobs, or solved the problem without violence. The boys had their priorities wrong because they chose hunting, and fun over being saved.

There is a lot of symbolism in Lord of the Flies. One big part is Piggy’s glasses. They symbolize technology, which also shows civilization and how put together they boys are. In the beginning of the book, when the boys are civilized the glasses are fine. When the glasses are half broken the boys are splitting apart, and most of them are going back to their animal like instincts. Close to the end of the book the glasses become fully broken because of the Savagery. A quote close to when the glasses are broken is “”How can we make a fire?” Jack squatted back and frowned at the pig. “We’ll raid them and take fire.”” Page 136. This shows that Jack has turned savage; he wants to steal from other kids on the island without asking first. His animal instincts have taken over, where he thinks that violence is necessary and doesn’t even consider talking to them. Another type of technology that they have on the island is fire. At the beginning they use the fire because they realize that it is an important part of them getting saved. The first time that they let the fire go out was when they first started to become savage. They decided to kill a pig instead of get saved by a ship. The technology was not present, so the boys reverted back to their animal instincts. After the boys split into two groups the fire is almost not present, which shows that they are barley separated from animals. At the end of the book there are two significant fires. The first one is the cooking fire, which would not serve their purposes, this shows that they are using a different type of technology and have disregarded the signal fire. The other fire is when they light the forest on fire to try to kill Ralph, this fire shows how much of savages they are; that they would destroy the jungle in order to find and hurt one person that wouldn’t join them.

There is much symbolism around the technology in Lord of the Flies, along with much emphasis on how anyone can become savage.. Technology is one thing that separates us from animals, so when it goes away we go back to our animal instincts. The boys lost almost all of their technology throughout the book, which made their savage instincts easier to see. This happens in our world, where people loose their technology, or the technology changes and they revert back to being animal like.

Op-Ed on video game violence

 

The shootings at Columbine high school were blamed on many things. Among drugs, alcohol and mental disorders was the first person shooter video game called Doom. Many people blamed the video game because there was not a lot of drugs or alcohol that showed up on the tests. Bill Manville on NY daily news said “"Doesn’t that sound like they were trying to rack up a record score in some video arcade?" This isn’t a very realistic idea, there is no way that a violent video game can make you think that on your own.

 

Many studies say that when testing violent video games on kids, they test whether the games made kids more violent. Almost all of the studies concluded that the kids who played violent video games became more aggressive after playing them. Many people who play violent video games become more aggressive, but they don’t make you act on these emotions.

 

The reality is that millions of people play violent video games, and there are not millions of school shootings or violent crimes every year, so it cannot be affecting people so much that they want to act on their emotions. Recently, video games have become more popular.  As an article on PBS says, “According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low." This combined with the fact that many of the other studies only said that the people playing violent video games only became more aggressive supports the idea that it makes people more aggressive, but they don’t act.

 

Violent video games do make people more aggressive, but they don’t act on these emotions. If the violent video games were having such an impact so that they made the kids to things like the columbine shootings, then there would be a lot more juvenile violent crimes. The study was only for the United States, but these statistics could be different for other parts of the world. A lot of these studies are not 100% accurate because they don’t account for everything in the game players life. This is almost impossible to do, so the data will never be completely correct for these kinds of studies.

 

The shootings at Columbine or any other school shootings are not majorly caused by the kids playing video games. Many people try to blame video games because they are something that many people can easily put the blame on, even though according to PBS 83% of video games that kids shouldn’t be playing are bought by their parents. Less of the blame should be put on video games, and more on other factors like illegal substances, or mental problems.

 

Overall many people find that violent video games are something easy to blame problems on. In fact the video games do make the players more aggressive, but not as violent. Although violent video games do hold some blame in violence today, there are many other factors such as drugs, alcohol, or mental problems that contribute to this violence more than violent video games.