Remove God from school and what do you get? This sad generation who consistantly blames others for their life.
Let's not give teaching about your god credit or blame for how a generation behaves. There have been schools without religion for a very long time, without any evidence that faith based teachings are required for making better people.
Addictive Personality is a disorder. Sloth is a Sin, not a disorder. Addiction is a behavior, and finally, Playing Games is a Hobby. So unless you want tax payers to start flipping the bill for people that choose to play games rather then handle their responsibilities, This conversation is over?..............Addictive personality is the disorder and it can lead to addictions of anything you can think of. Playing games isn't the issue. I give up.
We know that emotions come from different levels of chemicals in the brain, and we know that substances and behaviours can alter those levels.
If you perform an action or take a substance often enough, those levels can be changed for extended periods, even after you stop the action.
The body(and mind) will desire to return to ideal levels, and this is what's called "cravings"
Furthermore your body naturally produces Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins and Oxytocin, but if you artificially add them, your natural levels can be reduced.
What would you say if I told you I know someone who had an addiction to chapstick? Sounds a little crazy, right? Like they just have a bad behaviour, and not an addiction? Wrong. It very much is an addiction. By repeatedly using chapstick that formed a moisture barrier, their lips stopped producing enough moisture on their own. This meant that they suffered from extremely chapped lips very quickly between applications, and a very slow and painful process of weaning themselves off was required. That constitutes an addiction.
It is no different than using cocaine to increase dopamine levels, and then feeling like crap when it wears off. Use it enough, and your body relies on it to raise those levels, and won't bother doing it on its own. This leads to addiction, where repeating the action is the easiest or even the only way to get those levels back to where your body wants them.
Obviously both applying chapstick and snorting coke are choices and behaviours, but that doesn't mean they can't lead to very real addiction.
Apply this knowledge to gaming. Video games, especially ones with an element of chance, are specifically designed to make you happy when you win. Why else would casinos work when everyone knows the house has an edge? Is it such a leap to think that some people may fall too deeply into this and become dependant on that chemical rush released by getting that unique drop from a boss in game, or getting a higher rank in some online shooter?
Elvenar is a very low energy game, more pretty than exciting, but just yesterday I figured out that after winning all my desired set buildings I still have enough keys to be guaranteed the 3rd GP. I felt myself grinning, and was pretty happy about an ultimately meaningless bunch of pixels. That grin was a shot of chemicals released into my brain. Multiply that by 1,000 fold for people who play action packed fast-paced competitive games for many hours as entertainment. Those spikes in chemical levels can lead to an imbalance over time.
Again, yes, playing games too much was a choice in behavior, but once your body becomes addicted to those chemical levels, the choice becomes less your own.
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Your views on depression seem to be a little uninformed as well. I used to be of the old-school opinion that depression was BS, and everyone "gets sad" you just need to "get over it".
Then I met someone with clinical depression who was getting help through medication. At a social gathering two of us had the brilliant idea one night that if her depression pills make a depressed person normal, then for a normal person they'd make us super happy, right? Oh so wrong.
It turns out that her depression medication was about chemical
balance, and when we messed up ours, we both got a real glimpse into what depression is. Thankfully we weren't alone and didn't hurt ourselves, but from how I felt for the next several hours, ending everything seemed like a better option than continuing on.
I hate that I can't better put into words how horrific an experience it was, like 10x the worst moment of grief over the death of a loved one that lasted for hours without diminishing, but for
no reason, and I think that might have been the worst part. Because there was no external reason to be depressed, no event that had occurred, no trauma, nothing, there was therefore no reason to feel that it would ever end. There was nothing to "get over" there was no reason for it to get better, and desperately clinging to the idea that a pill is temporary, and the effects must eventually wear off was the only pinpoint of light in the darkness.
I can't even imagine what life is like for those who have depression as their
normal state, but I can have empathy.