Laureen Guldbrandsen’s Neighborhood

I Love You, But I'm Not In Love with You

There are many hazards that plague the average undergraduate.  The high cost of chinese food.  Caffeine addiction.  HPV. There is one though that is seldom recognized, but still ever-present and irritating: psychology majors.  They're easy to make friends with initially.  They seem intelligent and well-read, and are in general excellent conversationalists.  You bond with them quickly; words flow freely, then opinions, then secrets.  They then reward your confessions with opinions on your secrets in true amateur-analyst fashion. And it's about then that you lose all desire for conversation.

The worst of these was Brian*, a co-worker at the family-friendly restaurant that I worked at throughout my last two years of college.  He wasn't even an actual psychology major, but had taken Intro to Psychology the previous semester and fancied himself a therapist in the same way my neighbor fancies himself a DJ and I fancied myself a graphic designer in high school.  He was right in the middle of a love-affair with Freud, and during the slow lag between lunch and dinner rush he would unload a string of questions on the staff, making us all his de-facto patients.  On one occasion, it was the day after a relationship of mine had ended, and he annoyingly-accurately surmised that it was probably my emotional neediness that had caused the breakup. I told him to go fuck himself.  He was a little lacking in bedside manner.

It may not need to be said, but he was sexy as hell.  Born in China-mainland, raised in Poughkeepsie, he had a deep voice, loved soul music and worked the uniform black Dickies and pastel polo shirt like no other employee in the restaurant. I was entirely attracted to him, and as a result completely despised him.  The only times I didn't have disdain for him was when he offered evidence from his own experiences into his prognoses; when he let himself slip from self-satisfied arrogance to slight self-deprecation.

"Have you ever been in love?" he asked on one particularly slow day.  I like to have a catalogue of stock answers for certain questions; those loaded questions that, unless thought out in advance, tend to make the person answering offer up a pathetic half-answer, inarticulate and rarely eloquent. What kind of music do you like? ("You know...stuff, all kind of things really. I like rock, but am into alternative too I guess. I'll basically listen to anything as long as it's good" turns into "I like a variety of genres, I've been really into indie-rock and dance-electro lately, but am always up for listening to anything from jazz to classical to post-hardcore.") So what do you want to do when you graduate? ("Well, I'm studying journalism and music, so something to do with that. I'd like to travel, or work for a magazine maybe. I don't know, I might go to law school" turns into "I'd like to go into either music journalism or publicity writing, and am considering law school.")  I came up with an answer for this particular question a few years back, when a potential love interest sprung it on me one day, although in a different variation. ("How many times have you been in love," he asked, just assuming that I had, and that it had been on multiple occasions.)

"I'm not sure if I've ever been in love, which I'm assuming means I haven't been." It's clever, telling, and to the point. It's another way of saying, in short, no.  But if the person is listening closely, it says more. It says that there have been times that I've though I've been in love, but that those times didn't last, that I outgrew them. It says that I don't really know what it means to be in love. It also has the slightest sense of bitterness, which would be accurate.

He jumps to respond. "Me neither," he says. "I can't imagine being that intimate, letting myself getting that involved." I could tell that he also had prepared his answer, and probably only asked so that he could give his response.  I've been guilty of that many times. (How do you feel about relationships? What do you think about this class? How was work today?) His answer was telling too.  For him, love was about vulnerability, about giving in, almost to the point of failure.  Thinking in the same vein as another friend of mine who would be content to exist in a lifetime-long relationship without saying the words "I love you" if it meant she didn't have to say it first, he thinks of falling in love as losing.  I would say this is a gendered idea, but the three-word-phobic friend is female, and I'm almost as equally guarded.

I may have never been in love, but I've thought that I have been.  When I was fourteen, being in love meant wanting to spend all my time with one person.  At sixteen, it meant wanting to make sure the person I loved was always happy, and never felt pain.  Four years later I think love might have something to do with giving up everything for one person, about sacrifice.  The negative aspects of love seem to become more prevalent the more I encounter it, and the more times I think I have fallen in love.  At some point love transitioned from something light and pretty to something heavy, and hurtful, a game with winners and losers, or no winner at all.  As long as I think of love as something where I have to give some part of myself away, I'll always have a hesitation towards it.  The problem is making that shift, of ignoring past experiences to think of love as something that can do more good than harm.

I think about Brian, and wonder how many hours he has spent wondering why he is terrified of intimacy.  Whether he analyzes himself to death, going over conversations, thinking of different outcomes for potential situations the way I do when I'm in a relationship.  I wonder if there was some deeper reason why he would ask me about love, or if he just thought of me as a fellow fuck-up to gather some insight from.  He may not realize it, but by asking me that question, he made a mini-confession of his own, and opened himself up to my own personal diagnosis.

It seems whatever curiosity psychology majors have is contagious.

*Name changed to protect the irritating and emotionally unavailable

In the not so distant future we will be completely desensitized to violence; playing video games full of blood, gore, horror, and terror. But wait, you say, isn't that the way things are today? It is true that we are certainly on the road to complete desensitization to violence, and a great deal of that is due to the video games widely available for people today.

For our purposes, we will assume that video games refers to all electronic games that require interaction from a live person, also known as the player, in order to advance the action or story of the game. This will include games that are intended for play on the computer, or other gaming console such as Nintendo's Wii, Sony's Playstation (1, 2, and 3), Microsoft's Xbox, and Xbox 360, as well as the various handheld consoles.

There are a variety of genres and sub genres in the gaming industry, and while some are understandably non-violent, such as most puzzles and sports related games, many other's are full of graphic violence. There are fighting games, roleplaying games, strategy games, sports, and action games, first-person shooters, and much more. With so many different games it's easy to see that there will be a great deal of violence, and in many cases we can see violence in games that twenty years ago we would not have seen. For example, racing games have started to contain a great deal of violence, as have strategy games.

Video Game Ratings

Each video game is given a rating by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), ranging from Early Childhood to Adults Only. According to the ESRB titles rated Early Childhood (EC) have content that may be suitable for ages three and older, and contains no material that parents would find inappropriate. Titles rated Everyone (E) are suitable for ages six and older,  and may contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language. Games rated Everyone ten and older(E10+) may be suitable for ages ten and older, and may contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language and/or minimal suggestive themes. Games rated Teen (T) are intended for people thirteen years or older, and may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language. Games rated Mature (M) are intended for people seventeen or older, and may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language. While the highest rating is Adults Only (AO) obviously intended for people eighteen or older, and may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

By looking at the ratings given by the ESRB it is easy to see that starting from six years of age parents are being taught that it is okay to permit their children to play video games with violence. The violence in these games increase as the child grows older, eventually culminating in games with ratings that allow for prolonged scenes of intense violence.

Video Games and the Real World

While graphic violence is a common element in many games, here are a few games that have been created based upon real world events that bring home to the player that violence is a very real possibility. Battlefield 1942 is a popular war game, set during World War Two, where the player has the opportunity to play a soldier during the battles. Players have the ability to fly Wordl War Two era fighter aircraft and bombers, navigate naval ships and aircraft carriers, man coastal defenses, drive tanks and jeeps, control weaponry, or fight as one of five classes of infantry. Each battle takes place on one of several maps located in a variety of places and famous battlefields in all of the major theaters of World War II: the Pacific, European, North African and Eastern Fronts. The maps are based on real battles set in World War Two, and while not necessarily realistically portrayed, the fact remains that the game allows the player to feel as though they are a soldier during this time.

It is not only wars, however, that are glamourized in video games. April 20, 1999 is a date that marked the deaths of twelve people, and the injuries of twenty four others, in a brutal slaughter at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Known as the Columbine High School Massacre, this day was not one that many people thought would be immortalized not just as the day so many died, but also in a video game where the player has the opportunity to not be a victim, but to be the shooter himself. The online game "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" first became available April 20, 2005 marking the anniversary of the massacre, and while it lacks the high-end graphics of many popular video games, and is "not especially bloody," it is full of violence, and can take nearly five hours to play.

Psychological Effects of Video Games

There have been many studies performed in order to determine if violence in the media does, in fact, desensitize an individual towards real life violence, and there has been evidence to support this theory. For example, viewers of filmed violence show reduced emotional and physiological arousal and rate violent films as less violent after multiple exposures (Dexter, Penrod, Linz, & Saunders, 1997; Drabman & Thomas, 1976; Linz, Donnerstein, & Penrod, 1988; Mullin & Linz, 1995). These findings indicate that media, in general, does have a desensitizing effect due to a reduction in empathy, generally defined as a sensitivity to another individual's pain and suffering, on the behalf of the viewer.

Anderson and Bushman's general agression model (GAM) attempts to explain both the development of agression as well as the individual differences in susceptibility to the influence of violent video games. According to the GAM, both situational and personological variables interact in roder to affect a person's internal state. The GAM also states that violent video games have both short-term effects, as well as long-term effects. In the short tem, the games are a situational variable, causing an increase in aggressive cognitions, affects and arousal. The long term effects are just hypothesis, as insufficient research has been done to test its effects. Anderson and Bushman hypothesized in their 2002 study that violent video games influence behavior by promoting aggressive beliefs and attitudes, thus creating aggressive schema, aggressive behavioral scripts, and aggressive expectations.

A study led by a pair of psychologists at Iowa State University has proven for the first time that video game violence can desensitize the player to real-world violence. In order to prove this the researchers tested 257 college students (133 women and 124 men) by taking each individuals heart rate, as well as testing their galvanic skin response (GSR), or electrical resistance of their skin. The heart rate was used to indicate the fight or flight response, while the GSR was used in order to indicate high emotions; most commonly fear, anger, startle response, orienting response and sexual arousal. After taking the baseline measurements participants played a variety of violent video games for twenty minutes.

After playing a video game, a second set of measurements were taken. Participants were then required to watch ten minutes of video documenting real-life violence taken from television programs and commercially released films, during this period herat rate and skin response were continuing to be monitored.

The psychologists determined that "playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence... Participants randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play nonviolent video games. It appears that individuals who play violent video games habituate or 'get used to' all the violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it." (Carnagey) 

"When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity on me." With these few words a legacy began. The Kushiel legacy is darkly erotic, beging the series with Phedre, a young woman who finds pleasure in pain. A spy, a courtesan, a whore, a slave, but most of all, a woman. Phedre is one of the strongest, most captivating characters I have ever read.

If Phedre is strong, then it is easy to see how the son of her nemesis could be just as strong. Imriel no Montreve de la Courcel. The son of a blood traitor, and the adopted child of Phedre no Delaunay de Montreve, and her Cassiline Joscline. Imriel begins his life as a simple goatherd, is sold into slavery, tormented and tortured until he is finally rescued by Phedre, and adopted into her household against the Queen's wishes.

Kushiel's Scion shifts the point of view from Phedre to rest solely on Imriel, where we see that he is not getting over his past. Through the novel we watch as Imriel grows from a boy of twelve to become a man of eighteen, with his first blood staining his hands. Sorrow, and pain is a common theme, but so too is love and lust. In the world created by Jaqueline Carey love itself is pure, and unfettered by society's beliefs. There is no shame in love, only joy. "Love as thou wilt," being the rule D'Angelines follow.

Imriel finds love and loses it again and again in Kushiel's Scion as he journeys from Terre d'Ange to Tiberius, and from there to Lucca. He grows, and becomes not just a Prince of the Blood, third in line for the throne, but also a scholar, a soldier, and a lover. He overcomes his revulsion to lust and sexuality and grows to embrace his birthright and his nature as his own.

As with the first three novels, Kushiel's Scion is a sensuous feast, with breathtaking description, and action that will keep you turning the pages. The language borders on being formal and flowery, and it is told from the first person point of view, however it works. This, and the first three novels, is a definite must-read.

I just started reading this. So far, at around page 200... really friggin good. O_O I almost want to try the other series she wrote just to see if it was any good... even if I hated reading it. >.<