On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:00:37 -0000, Roderick Stewart
 wrote:

>...
>Most of them seem to be 
>about pretending to kill people with noisy weapons, but young people 
>seem to find them fun.

Sixty years ago we used to play Cowboys and Indians, pretending to kill
people with noisy weapons... ;-)

-- 
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.gt-britain.co.uk/weather

Alan White wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:00:37 -0000, Roderick Stewart
>  wrote:
> 
>> ...
>> Most of them seem to be 
>> about pretending to kill people with noisy weapons, but young people 
>> seem to find them fun.
> 
> Sixty years ago we used to play Cowboys and Indians, pretending to kill
> people with noisy weapons... ;-)

In the next room right now, and soaking up some of my internet bandwidth, my 
lad is killing others in one giant on-line PS3 game, and even talking to team 
mates on 'his side' via a bluetooth headset.

I suppose you're right Alan.


-- 
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:18:47 +0000, Mark Carver
<mark.carver@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>I suppose you're right Alan.

The difference was, of course, that we used to suffer real cuts and
bruises rather than 'virtual' ones. This, I suspect, brought home to us
the reality of violence, albeit in a very mild form.

-- 
Alan White
Mozilla Firefox and Forte Agent.
Twenty-eight miles NW of Glasgow, overlooking Lochs Long and Goil in Argyll, Scotland.
Webcam and weather:- http://windycroft.gt-britain.co.uk/weather

Alan White wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 10:18:47 +0000, Mark Carver
> <mark.carver@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> I suppose you're right Alan.
> 
> The difference was, of course, that we used to suffer real cuts and
> bruises rather than 'virtual' ones. This, I suspect, brought home to us
> the reality of violence, albeit in a very mild form.

That's modern warfare for you, but only of course at the 'sending' end.

I suppose the other side of the coin is the amount of real violence that 
they're exposed to. Some of our lads' friends have been hospitalised by acts 
from their peers. Unheard of when I was a teenager (in this same town) just 30 
years ago.


-- 
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

In article , Alan White 
wrote:
> >...
> >Most of them seem to be 
> >about pretending to kill people with noisy weapons, but young people 
> >seem to find them fun.
> 
> Sixty years ago we used to play Cowboys and Indians, pretending to kill
> people with noisy weapons... ;-)

So we did. And "Jerrys" and "Japs" too, and those were often the villains 
in some of the published comics my schoolmates read. I recall feeling a 
little uneasy about this at the time, since the war had finished before 
any of us were born, but that's the way it was.

Rod.

"Roderick Stewart"  wrote in message 
news:VA.00000296.01727ff0@removethisbit.beeb.net...
> So we did. And "Jerrys" and "Japs" too, and those were often the villains
> in some of the published comics my schoolmates read. I recall feeling a
> little uneasy about this at the time, since the war had finished before
> any of us were born, but that's the way it was.

No, you shouldn't feel uneasy about basic human nature. We all all programed 
to be intensely tribal. Children need to work through that so that they 
acquire the self knowledge to deal with their own feelings in later life, 
and recognise when they are not appropriate.

Bill