I felt compelled to write this after watching the above video
This post is me speaking from experience with a life long struggle with video game addiction, and from seeking a solution:
Thanks for posting this. Its very true. While I'm sure this will be met with opposition and many gamers will argue that video games have brought them more joy... its not something we can ever really weigh the benefits from. We can never know what we could have done with our lives were it not for being sucked into video games. What we missed out on. etc Now i'm referring strictly to those consumed by video games, and who have reached an age of maturity when responsibility becomes paramount. To live life stripped of video games would be a real shame. There is also a lot of socialization and bonding that can take place via games and a litany of other benefits that can be derived from it. And on the one hand excessive gaming can provide a relatively safe medium for us to reach rock bottom and learn how to get in touch with our values and standards we wish to aspire to. I used to say video games is my anti drugs. So if I'd have to learn one of the harder lessons in life I think learning it through a relatively harmless medium like video games can be good.
At the same time the harm done will also seem less severe through video games so that your sense of urgency will be diminished. As your sense of repercussions/consequences won't be felt immediately but parsed over a great span of time. Our willpower giving into one innocuous indulgence upon another. ... but theres a lot of harm in inaction, in fact all the wrong in this worlds stems essentially from inaction...And escapism enables this. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
Its important to recognize that inner voice instead of dismissing it. Its about meta cognition thinking about thinking. A lot of un-moderated gaming is brought on by the underlying issue of procrastination. There's a great video on YouTube on procrastination, a ted talk presentation. Link below: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WD440CY2Vs0 In this video Vik Nithy describes how procrastination is brought on by an argument between your frontal cortex and your amygdala He discusses how its important to keep in mind what it is that your brain is doing. Instead of being on auto pilot and letting yourself be driven by the drives/impulses brought on by the amygdala, learn instead to recognize them, and learn to place emphasis on your higher mind. Every time you choose to dismiss your higher conscience, you're cutting yourself short, downplaying & or acting against your inner voice.
You want to be ever-mindful and receptive of that part of your brain hovering in the background informing you of where it is you are trespassing where you are undermining your values. You want to bring this "background noise" into the foreground and turn it into a harmonizing melody.
Rock bottom is below your standards which are shaped by your values. The higher your standards the less likely you are to succumb, or the sooner you will reach a low point that will force you to reexamine yourself (assuming you don't fall victim to cognitive dissonance etc). Another important factor that will keep you from hitting rock bottom (or a variant thereof, since there's no telling sometimes how low you can go), is your your sense of obligation to meet these standards. The level of sense of obligation combined with discipline will determine how well you live up to your standards/values.
I will leave you guys with my favorite excerpt from the book Tom Jones: by henry fielding moderation "True wisdom, then, notwithstanding all which Mr. Hogarth's poor poet may have writ against riches, and in spite of all which any rich well-fed divine may have preached against pleasure, consists not in the contempt of either of these. A man may have as much wisdom in the possession of an affluent fortune, as any beggar in the streets; or may enjoy a handsome wife, or a hearty friend, and still remain as wise as any popish recluse, who buries all his social faculties, and starves his belly, while he well lashes his back.To say the truth, the wisest man is the likeliest to possess all worldly blessings in an eminent degree: for as that moderation which wisdom prescribes is the surest way to useful wealth, so can it alone qualify us to taste many pleasures. The wise man gratifies every appetite and every passion, while the fool sacrifices all the rest to pall and satiate one.It may be objected, that very wise men have been notoriously avaricious. I answer, not wise in that instance. It may likewise be said, that the wisest men have been in their youth immoderately fond of pleasure. I answer, they were not wise then.Wisdom, in short, whose lessons have been represented as so hard to learn by those who never were at her school, only teaches to extend a simple maxim, universally known and followed even in the lowest life, a little farther than life carries it. And this is, not to buy at too dear a price.Now, whoever takes this maxim abroad with him into the grand market of the world, and constantly applies it to honours, to riches, to pleasures, and to every other commodity which that market affords, is, I will venture to affirm, a wise man, and must be so acknowledged in the worldly sense of the word: for he makes the best of bargains; since in reality he purchases everything at the price only of a little trouble, and carries home all the good things I have mentioned, while he keeps his health, his innocence, and his reputation, the common prices which are paid for them by others, entire and to himself.Prom this moderation, likewise, he learns two other lessons, which complete his character. First, never to be intoxicated when he hath made the best bargain, nor dejected when the market is empty, or when its commodities are too dear for his purchase."
