My wife occassionally calls me a selfish person; that is after quite a few decades of joint life and on top of a romantic background. I don´t carry a mirror; I think, I am quite alright but it seems many of my opinions are not shared by everyone. This calls to mind how difficult it is to get along well with people.

On a larger scale, society is very much that way; no matter how we try we can´t please everyone. Regardless of what we are discussing, there will always be different opinions. Remember people don´t pay you because you are good; nor do they marry your because you have a golden heart, you can´t win a contract just because you have a golden heart; even if you are Jesus Christ, there will be more people who don´t think like you than those who do.

I believe even Socrates would need a break from philosophy once in a while. A pro-freedom Pole having a disgust for religions can´t get along with an American pro-Muslim woman. Yet, they can talk about flowers and the stuff. They can talks about a zillion of other matters that has nothing to do with religion. This is exactly how common people get along; and it is a proven basis for tolerance a quality which is usually harder to find than faith.

aşkı meşki bırak işine bak

forget about love and the stuff and mind your business

You certainly have a point. Nevertheless, we must admit, no matter how advanced our societies can be, they all have structural flaws, shortcomings and persistent problems. Some of these problems may be related to our basic notions about freedoms and their limits wbich can be the subject of another lengthy discussion.

As you say, a "sensible" censorship (though these two concepts hardly fit together) might be what we are looking for.

No matter what we discuss it eventually turns into a fight of mind-sets, political choices and cultural values.

You seem to have some sacred castles in your minds. You think books and movies must be exempt from censorship. Books and movies could actually be very important sources of inspiration for some. You don´t seem to realize, they do not harm a normal mind; the real harm is done to people with the tendencies. Moreover, books and movies can contain criminal elements; what about child porn, torture, sadism etc. I would not move a finger if somebody put the producer of the SAW sequel in prison. No matter how interesting, I would not mind if Bonnie and Clyde were never produced at all. The same goes for a number of Tarantino movies. I like them too but one must consider their influence on certain individuals.

I don´t want to ruin your holy castles but in my opinion, a well-defined censorship which is well laid out, transparent and simple enough to be understood by anyone is a necessity. This is already in place in the TV and movie sectors. Books and Video games must also be kept under scrutiny.

You would say, I sound like a conservative; well I don´t call myself one. I hate to be classified into some category and have a need to sound like a member of a certain political group. Isn´t that a kind of censorship? Can´t we think without remembering certain guidelines produced by Mr. Unknown? Luckily, I have a nihilist side which is still going strong.

You see, at least some people are waking up to the reality... I wish the same happened in Turkey. I don´t think there is any sort of control regarding foreign video game titles. Nobody understands, nobody cares...

When you look around, you can see young people who have become obsessed to video games. I know a teenager who spends all his mornings trying to make virtual money to afford weapons to kill online opponents in the evening. The session continues until he falls asleep just before the dawn. All his life is virtual. He has the tell-tale signs of a looming obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Experts say, once the brain gets into this cycle, it becomes unable to learn anything that requires concentration. Affected individuals must let their brain rest for at least two months before getting ready for complex and long hauled learning activities. If this is not substantial harm, what is it then?

That´s a laughing matter. After returning ours. We must conquer Paris and New York too. There are bigger obelisks to be returned to Egypt in those cities.

I believe, many people have what may be called racist elements in their mind-sets. These racist elements remain dormant and they are rarely revealed outside the circle formed by intimate friends and family.

Since racism is a part of one´s social identity, it often co-exists with other social and territorial behaviours. There may be explicit or implicit racist elements in video games. We would expect at least the more obvious racist elements are already filtered out but some of the more indirect ones might still be there.  Since racism calls for reaction to reverse harm done by other races, it often necessitates violence which is amply present in video games. As a result video games may serve the first step for some. Games could help normalize certain unorthodox aspects of human behaviour. For many people t hough, this effect may not be seen at all.

Nevertheless, persons with exceptionally distorted mentalities do exist. Although extremely rare, these sick people are capable of giving substantial harm to society. It is obvious that many  of the offensive aspects of their personalities can be linked to violence they are exposed to in their environments but there are also cases where the source of violence can be linked to a mental disorder.

Unless, some paranoid people take a detailed look at seemingly innocent platforms like video games, there will always be another wacko who sees nothing wrong with doing the hunt in the real world. We need to be paranoid about racism if we want to stop it. Because racism is intertwined with our cultures.

Maybe, this is a bit far fatched but some Turks, especially the nationalist ones are crazy about finding any sort of link between Turks and other people.

According to some studies mostly originating from these circles, there are some similarities between the vocabularies of Turkic and Native Indian languages. For example, we use the word "tepe" which means a hill and one of the tribes use the word "tepük" hence the alleged similarity. These wannabe linguists don´t care about the fact that there are tens  of other languages among Indians which don´t even closely resemble the Turkish language.

The same circles believe in a legend which has it that a forefather of Turks was raised by a wolf later becoming a king.

If that is not the case, then we can point our fingers to the comic books such as Zagor, Texas, Tom Mix etc. My generation spent their childhood reading these books. Many of us favoured the Indians -a fact which might explain the current convergence.

If these are still not the case, we might look for a political reason; maybe Turkey considers this a chance to poke her nose into the US internal affairs. By establishing a link with an ethnic group many of whom don´t deny their grudge for the American administration, they might be hoping to bring America to an ethnic chaos. Since the US considers creating political chaos her own hobby, she might get a bit angry over this new role Turkey seeking to play.

I wonder what Daydreamer and Barba_Mama have to say about this.

What kind of a stereotype might be causing these initial reports?

Daydreamer, some people people do go to the extremes when it comes to religion. Bigotry is not specific to a certain religion albeit it is more common among ignorant people. Presently, there are many ignorant people among Muslims. With some countries, they may even be forming the majority. Still, religion itself is not the only factor that causes these tragedies. When you look around you will see millions of peaceful people in Turkey. Their belief is Islam. Islam doesn´t cause them to be violent nor does it compel them to commit crime or to lose their sanity.

You are wrong if you imply, Islam receives bad publicity because Muslims kill their women in cold blood. That would be a pretty tall assumption.

In fact, stoning to death is an Jewish tradition which is openly mentioned in the Old Testament. There is no mention of such a thing in Quran. Jews and probably Arabs had this tradition since their pagan periods. If we are thinking in theological terms, we can hardly condemn Islam for this form of punishment. The claims mentioned in the bottom note of the original message concern the Jewish faith rather than the Muslim one. We must realize that religion is of secondary importance when it comes to patterns of social behaviour. Basic traditions and the general cultural outlook of society have greater influence in such things. After all, many people don´t have the first idea what their holy book actually says.

You can´t stop ignorant people from believing thing that do not exist even in their own religions. Even today, certain people go to fortune tellers; some people still have superstitions. Many people do mix everything together and come up with their own religion. Ultimately, what resurfaces here is the desert law of the Arabs who used bury their daughters alive since they would be of no use to them in harsh conditions. These people had a culture evolved to help them survive in the desert. You know some British secret service guy comes with stick in his hand famously draws the borders among them on sand in straight lines and these tribesmen are divided into easily managable nations. They did not have the culture to run a nation nor to form laws and order on a fair basis. The default order was sheria and the management culture came from a distorted interpretation of Islam.

I am against turning this into a duel between the white knight and the dark one. These traditions can be apalling and they may spread fear among non-muslims. Nevertheless, greater tragedies are regularly caused by the men of the white knight who achieves to remain impeccable despite all the blood in his hands. To understand this point just check out the web to find out which countries the US and the allies have intervened since the last century and how many innocent people have they killed so far.