Halo 3 Teaches The Logic Of Suicide Bombers
Halo 3 hasn’t been out for very long, but it seems the the ability-divide among the good players and the bad players has already been established. A player with less time on his hands than others stumbled across an amazing insight in which suicide bombing makes sense.
Reading about war isn’t the same as fighting one, even if the war is imaginary.
But the fact remains that something quite interesting happened to me because of Halo. Even though I’ve read scores of articles, white papers and books on the psychology of terrorists in recent years, and even though I have (I think) a strong intellectual grasp of the roots of suicide terrorism, something about playing the game gave me an “aha” moment that I’d never had before: an ability to feel, in whatever tiny fashion, the strategic logic and emotional calculus behind the act.
He found that when you have so little to live for compared to your enemy, suicide bombing makes sense:
The structure of Xbox Live creates a world composed of two classes — haves and have-nots. And, just as in the real world, some of the disgruntled have-nots are all too willing to toss their lives away — just for the satisfaction of momentarily halting the progress of the haves. Since the game instantly resurrects me, I have no real dread of death in Halo 3.
How do we end suicide bombings? Make the lives of the “have-nots” worth living.
Via: random($foo)