Nothing new on the addiction front

I grew up in the 70's. At that time it was not so common to own a personal computer. The existing computers were expensive and there were not many video games available at the time that would be of any interest to us youngsters. The interactive games available were pinball machines and so called fruit-machines/one-armed bandits.

Compared to now it was like another planet. No Internet. No DVD's or mp3's or even CD's. Not many cell-phones. Two television channels. Not much rock music to listen to on either radio or television. No video recorders so you had only one chance to see a movie.

How did we survive?

The pinball machines were addictive. I had several friends that would spend all their money on the machines to try to break the current record. The machines were coin operated.

I remember there were many parents that demanded that they ought to set an age limit to play them because the kids were ruined trying to break records. It also became obvious that spending lots of time gaming would result in bad grades. School work came second hand to the pinball addicted.

In the early 80's the video game revolution started. Me and my friends used to save up money to rent video games for a whole weekend. Then we sat all night and day playing until our eyes and thumbs were sore. At sunday 1800 hours the game had to be returned to the shop and usually we played right up to the last minute before we had to bring it back. This obsession finally made myself and some of my friends soon writing our own computer games. So at the same time we were learning something.

At the same time the video recorders came about and movie rental stores were the new gathering point for young persons like us. We just had to see all the films that were crucified in media as "dangerous for youths" like "The chain-saw massacre" and other really crappy movies.

This big debate about violence in movies only fueled our interest. It also made us realize that authorities and media not always automatically are right in their opinions just because they are in charge. The downside of this video-revolution was of course that some people developed something you could call an addiction to films. Watching three movies every night or more!

I don't think today's problem with people being addicted to online video games is a new or even a big problem. It is quite a big problem for the individuals but I would like to think it is a problem that only occurs for a small period in a person's lifetime.

Plus I believe if the addicted person wouldn't be addicted to online video games he would be addicted or obsessed doing something else; TV, collecting stamps, body building, chemical substances or climbing mountains. So therefore I don't think the problem being addicted to video games is the real problem for these people.

I think it lies deep in the human nature to hang on to things that are rewarding. Or run away from things that are not.

If real life does not live up to what you want it to be it maybe is easier to just stay in a fantasy world that does. Until you inevitably have to deal with reality. Real problems - real pleasures.

Are we being hoaxed?

This is not an easy subject. Is this increased environment awareness just another cheap stunt pulled by the media to make us buy their papers and watch their tv-shows? Is it a trick to make people focus on something other than the obviously incompetent leadership of our countries. Or are we really on the eve of destruction?

I don't know, but my guess is, from what I've seen with my own eyes, that the environment really is taking a lot of damage. I believe that that part is a reality.

On the other hand is the fact that we now are able to get reports of disasters happening all over the world almost the second it happens. The media can now cover every little corner of the world and does not miss reporting a single tremble or quake. In that way our world seems to be a much more hazardous place to live in now than it used to be.

This also makes it easy for fact-freaks to make us pay attention to the increased number of reports now compared to the lesser reports of the years before and so on. The scientists can then draw a graph using those figures and easily predict a very grim future for us all.

Before the technical breakthroughs of the information-age we often did not hear anything at all about earthquakes occurring in other parts of the world. At best we did get to hear about it weeks or even years after the incident.

Though it's easy to be intimidated by the shear number and frequency of catastrophes we hear of happening all over the world every day, our increased knowledge is not only a bad thing.
The good thing is that we are constantly being reminded how quick and easy we can make the earth inhabitable if we are careless.

Even if it all should turn out to be a big hoax - which I don't think it is, at least not a big one - we all would be better off as human beings if we started living our lives a bit more responsibly.

Taking care of each other AND the place we live in shouldn't really be so hard, should it?