Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Why blame the culprit?

This Sunday I watched a few scenes from the movie “No One Killed Jessica”. Call it an intentional misuse of power or an unintentional move after being doped, some mistakes turn into irreversible blunders. It’s easy to point fingers and start blaming. The culprit blames it on the victim; the parents of the culprit put it on the offender’s friends and obviously the victim’s kin blame the culprit.
What troubles me, is the pain and misery caused by one human to another over a moment of heated disagreement. And, strangely the sadness and uneasiness is momentarily; short-lived.
And, what further bothers me is that these horrendous incidents are not just spontaneous reactions, but actually point towards the culmination of some dangerous traits at a very early stage in a person’s life.
Around me, I see young children hooked to screens- mobile phones, PSP, PC- Laptop and video games. Almost all these entertainment options offer endless opportunities for competition. Imagine these kids formulating strategies to fail and banish any XYZ who comes up to stand against them. If you don’t like someone progressing as well as you are, all you have to do is fire a shot. Bang! He goes away; oh! Not 'away'- he DIES. Imagine these kids have got the POWER TO KILL AND DECIMATE anyone who gets near them, their safety zone or secured position. That’s the point.
Our lovely child gets virtual powers that we would mind allowing him to access, in reality. How do we explain the difference between the reality and the conceptualized world? It’s somewhat akin to the difference between falling in love on the screen and handling the relationship in real life. After you supposedly fall in for someone, and like the movie way, start living together; you eventually realize that life is not the fairytale you imagined it to be.
Coming back to my concern; are we informing these teeming gamers that in real life they are not supposed to cross the red light, hit others' cars with their's, blow someone’s head with a bullet and much more? If we are not, then, we lose the right to scold, criticize or blame them for faults and blunders they make when they bridge the gap between games and the real world, in their own sweet/bitter ways…

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