Real-world sensitivities and game names

[Atreides]

Zeldor said:
Lch:

You treated my post seriously? That topic is not serious. Some people simply seek things to offend them. And truth is that Jews and Muslim are now best at it, better than Christian fanatics. You can read newspapers or listen to TV and you find a guy like that. Then you send him dominions, ask if it insults him and he will find 50 bad things about it and demand it banned.

Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing. To contextualize my opinions for everyone reading this, I was brought up as a reform Jew, and as the joke goes, that means in practice I'm an atheist In any case, the statement that Jews and Muslims are most easily offended by trivial things is just a little ridiculous. I'm certainly in no way offended by the name Adolph, or the fact that you said people from my religion are apparently petty and offended by absolutely nothing.

In any case, I don't think there is anyone involved in this discussion who doesn't realize that people on television are generally completely insane. Political commentators are frequently drawn from the extreme left and the extreme right with little regard for any middle ground. Similarly, when individuals are on television railing about insults to their religion, those people are quite simply religious fanatics who represent the smallest portion of the smallest constituencies of any major religion. In specifically addressing your comment, maybe its my tendency to ignore the irrational arguments and sensitivities of religious zealots, but I don't think I have ever seen a Jew on television screaming about being offended over nothing in particular. Likewise, the only Muslims I've ever seen ranting on television are the clips the American mainstream media loves to play of bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda operatives in an effort to convince people that Muslim's are irrational and want to kill us because of cartoons. When you consider that an estimated 1.8 billion people in the world are Muslims from a world population of approximately six and a half billion and less than one percent of those 1.8 billion are considered "radical adherents of Islam," what probably pisses off and offends Muslims most is 99.9% of them being lumped together with radicals because the media in the United States and throughout the "developed world" has a completely one-sided portrayal of Muslims that fails to mention anything about the constant denunciations of extremist Islamic groups by the majority of Islamic countries, groups, and people throughout the world. And as for Jews, we are by far the most liberal demographic in the United States, and being liberals, Jews generally are not very offended when someone makes either a profoundly uninformed or just outright incorrect statement.

Being as I am from the United States, if you want to talk about religious nutcases on television getting easily offended about absolutely nothing, you might want to pay a little more attention to evangelical Christians and the Republican party who somehow think that homosexuals existing and living in this country, where tolerance and freedom of expression is a right, is offensive to G-d. The American media is crammed full of hate-mongers who bask in finding offense in everything and nothing and speak for and represent millions of like-minded fundamentalist Christians, like George Bush "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.", James Dobson "Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth," Jerry Falwell (currently in Hell learning that hating people probably wasn't what Jesus wanted him to spend his life teaching people) "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being," and Pat Robertson "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." So I hope I'm not offending you Zeldor, but these are the guys with millions of followers in the US and they are on TV, or organizing politically, or running the government, and they are on TV everyday spouting their hate and bigotry and when it comes down to it, these are the groups who can't stop *****ing about violence in video games, violence and profanity in movies, pornography, and a host of other issues that would honestly not be offensive if not for the fact that these people want to impose their social views, their religious beliefs, or their bigoted judgment and puritanical standards on people who think differently.

Since it is almost inevitable that someone will say that I am bashing Christianity (because they are easily offended and won't actually read my arguments or my justification for my statements) I'm not suggesting that only Christians do that, but in the United States Christian fundamentalist groups are by far the largest radical religious groups in the country. To argue the other side, there are certainly Jews and Muslims that are also offended by violence and whatnot, Senator Lieberman is a prominent example of hating the video game industry and getting outraged and offended for political purposes, and he is quite frankly ridiculous and a douche bag who is in no way representative of any Jew that I know. Anyways, the possibility certainly exists that I'm wrong and maybe there is some satellite television channel of Jews and Muslims giving "I'm offended by X" diatribes that I'm not aware of, please feel free to inform and correct me.

Oh and aside from responding to Zeldor's comment, if it wasn't clear from the previous paragraph, I'm obviously coming down on the side of PC not really needing to be an issue for dominions. PC is a strange concept, and I generally believe that it really shouldn't exist because its the thought and attitude behind words that matters rather than the actual words themselves. Dominions 3 is a video game. It is meant for entertainment purposes only. There is honestly nothing as petty and wasteful as getting angry and offended over something that does not have any impact or importance to issues that exist in the real world. As people have already said in this thread, people who get offended by something from a video game should probably examine more closely what it is about themselves that is causing their reaction rather than what it is about the video game that 99.9% of people have no problem with whatsoever.

[JimMorrison]

I'm impressed, that was quite well expressed. I was a little daunted by the general lack of breaks in the text. A couple of paragraphs would do wonders for getting people to read what you have to say. <3

[Atreides]

Haha, Yeah I tend to write in pretty solid blocks. I need to work on that. Thanks for the comment though, I'll see if I can find some logical places to break that first paragraph up...

[HoneyBadger]

Don't feel bad-they yelled at me about that too.

[thejeff]

Great rant, Atreides.

I'd like to suggest that most of those ranting on TV aren't really insane. They're actually canny politicians. They may or may not actually be offended by whatever they're ranting about, but they know they'll gain audience and thus money or votes and thus power by ranting about.

There are people who are offended by trivial things, but I'd look closely at anyone who's getting paid or holds any kind of public position or is pushing an agenda. Are they really offended or is this just another chance to boost their standing or shut down debate.

One example of this from the Jewish side, since you seem to have covered the Christian side, would be the political groups that scream Antisemitism at any suggestion that Israel is anything but an innocent victim in it's dealings with Palestine. Another can of worms, like gun control, probably better not dug into here, so I'll just note that there's more open debate in Israel itself than in the mainstream US media.

[Leif_-]

Atreides said:
Zeldor, I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this statement because I found it pretty confusing.[...]

Personally, I'm deeply and griveously offended by your hatred for paragraph breaks.

[Atreides]

Leif_- said:

Personally, I'm deeply and griveously offended by your hatred for paragraph breaks.

To borrow from Family Guy, I can't help it. Paragraph breaks killed my father... and raped my mother.

[Agema]

I would prefer not to debate gun control.

However, if I can continue it's use in relation to liberty. To take your car example, you need a licence to drive, because cars are dangerous. In that sense, you do not have liberty to just drive a car, it is restricted by the state. If you apply similar principles of adequate training to own and use guns, you are supporting a form of gun control.

When liberty potentially endangers others or denies them their own liberty, it is reasonable to restrict it to some degree. There is a balance that needs to be found.

[JimMorrison]

lch said:
Car accidents are an unwanted byproduct of public transportation. "Violence in all forms" sounds like a very active act compared to that.

Well this is a fair assertion, sir. But I was Googling around for a comparison of "death rates", and the first well compiled list that I found did not go to the extreme detail of listing "fatal gunshot wounds", whether accidental or not. I actually thought it was useful to show the relationship in numbers that I found, to illustrate how big a "menace" cars are to innocent people.

Agema said:
I would prefer not to debate gun control.

However, if I can continue it's use in relation to liberty. To take your car example, you need a licence to drive, because cars are dangerous. In that sense, you do not have liberty to just drive a car, it is restricted by the state. If you apply similar principles of adequate training to own and use guns, you are supporting a form of gun control.

When liberty potentially endangers others or denies them their own liberty, it is reasonable to restrict it to some degree. There is a balance that needs to be found.

To be honest, my intent was not to derail this train onto a a Gun Control debate. It was brought up, and I do think it is a perfect example for the larger discussion of civil liberty.

I hardly think that education and licensing are considered by many to be a form of "car control". When the US government uses the word "control" in relation to anything, it implies severe limitation, or partial or total banning. For example, drugs in general are referred to as "controlled substances".

It is becoming increasingly obvious as time passes, that government intervention in personal lives, on the level of "control", is a failure to the common good, and causes more strife on many levels, than a lack of control would cause.

Imagine this: if we maintained the same level of police protection that we "enjoy" now, but decriminalized most things that are difficult to enforce at best - then those police could focus on the one thing that everyone should agree is the worst problem of society - violent crime.

Perhaps if we directed our resources towards making sure that all of our citizens were safe, then we would find that peripheral concepts like gun control would become much more manageable. Chasing after guns, or drugs, or pornography - these are all emotionally charged persecutions that are heavy-handedly executed, causing untold amounts of misery among the people, many of whom are basically innocent - and would remain "more innocent" were they not persecuted unfairly.

To um all of this up, my point was that if you want to live in a 100% gun free neighborhood, for example - then you should be able to mandate that if you and all of your neghbors wish it to be so. However, you and your neighbors should not have any say whatsoever about whether the people in my neighborhood own guns, or what kind of guns, or how we regulate them - that should be for us to decide. The only impact that has on someone from this community, would be if they were traveling, but what kind of idiot travels with a gun without checking on the appropriate local laws?

I hardly doubt that Oregon, as a separate entity, would ever get designs on "invading" one of its neighboring states. I'm reasonably certain that if we focus on making ourselves better people, rather than telling other people how to live their lives, that it won't come to that, either. <3

[chrispedersen]

JimMorrison said:
To um all of this up, my point was that if you want to live in a 100% gun free neighborhood, for example - then you should be able to mandate that if you and all of your neghbors wish it to be so. <3

"Power flows from the mouth of a gun". Mao

Part of the responsibility in a democracy, are the acts required to maintain that democracy.

Our forefathers, having experienced restrictions to the right to bear arms under the Sedition Acts [?], and knowing the problems in overthrowing the british, decided that one of those reponsibilities was that the right to bear arms.

So, no, while you may elect to be gun free, and live with like minded individuals, you cannot mandate that none bear arms.