Can you be a pacifist and still enjoy military gaming?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/29/can-pacifist-enjoy-military-gaming-violence

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Studying the horror of the world wars turned me into an avowed pacifist by age fifteen. Two years later, I walked into an army PR van for a chat with the recruitment sergeant. I felt confused when I went in but when I left, a bundle of helpful propaganda under my arm, I was also scared.

How could I have become a pacifist thinking about signing up to the armed forces? It took years before I understood myself, but smarter people had already worked it out. Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien and other biographers of America’s failure in Vietnam had the answer. To say that war is hell is an obvious truth, but the harder, darker and more subversive idea is that it can be persuasively glamorous too. A clarion call to the base instincts beneath our precious veneer of civilisation. It satisfied desires that lurk hungrily in us all, however much we might wish otherwise.Some soldiers and civilians recall wartime as the best years of their lives, the carnage and loss forging bonds of solidarity as strong as those of family. It is a thing of extremes that brings out the best and the worst in people.

Rick Rescorla, an Englishman who served in the US army before becoming a security consultant on Wall Street, was in the Twin Towers on September 11. After leading his charges to safety he went back in, again to save more people and was killed when the South Tower collapsed. Shortly before he’d called his tearful wife and told her: “stop crying ... I’ve never been happier.”When warfare is so dramatic, so pivotal in much of history, it seems less inconsistent that some might find it both irresistible and appalling. My pacifism is a luxury, bought with the blood of warriors.

As Richard Grenier, paraphrasing Orwell, had it: “people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” War is sometimes necessary, and without it there would be no pacifism. That’s a far greater contradiction than being a militarist who favours peace.

At age 17, I understood little of this. All I knew was that a drive toward pacifism and a fascination with the military were tearing me apart. I called on a friend who was playing the latest video game he’d acquired: Overrun, a tactical simulation of modern warfare. Over a surreal afternoon, we discussed the consequences of real violence while playing at it on the computer. As is so often the case, play proved a fantastic medium to explore the activity it was mimicking. Theories of learning through play suggest that children use it to explore adult activities prescribed to them due to their youth. Why shouldn’t adults use it as a way to get inside activities they find fascinating in theory but repugnant in practice?That was the start of a long love affair with military games both on screen and on the tabletop, from frantic shooters like Medal of Honour to sedate simulations such as Unity of Command.

In playing these re-creations of horrors past and yet to come, my desire for militarism is satiated. It’s a safety valve, a way I can harmlessly examine the dichotomy between the lure of war and the fruits of peace. Those who decry the depiction of violence in these games don’t see that simulating an activity can act as a replacement as well as an encouragement.To accept this does not equate with across-the-board comfort at all titles. There’s a world of difference between the flawed, sinister protagonist of Spec Ops: The Line and the gung-ho, invulnerable super-soldiers of Call of Duty.

Time and perspective also matter. The hard realism of the excellent Band of Brothers: Earned in Blood works because the second world war is history now – something we’ve discussed, deliberated and put in its proper context. By contrast, the release of Battlefield: Hardline directly after the tragedies in Ferguson just feels crass and exploitative.Yet even the people who choose those sorts of games over more contemplative fare may be doing so for good reason. In the humdrum safety of our cosseted, comfortable western lives we yearn for stimulation and excitement. Some find it in extreme sports, others in travel and adventure. I, and many others, find it in military games.

Study after study has found no suggestion that playing violent games makes people violent. But no one has stopped to wonder whether playing them might help divest gamers of their more warlike urges. Perhaps it’s time to update the wisdom of the ancients and say that if we want peace, we must prepare for wargames.