outdoor paintball: one of my new passions.

Before you start the war; while you take on the dress and boots, and helmets you shake like hell, because the bullets go with 350 km/hour. But when you take your position, your adrenaline is so high that you forget all about the fear of expectation you had just two minutes before.

When the game starts, the fear is on, because you're never sure when/if the pain will take place. You realize that your inner beast takes over, because no constructive idea can contain your fear and potential pain. The production of adrenaline explodes.

You also start up with a strategy (who to defend and who to attack, etc.)... we're usually 4 against 4. But the strategy always dissolves, because fear force people back in a more "in utero"-stage!

Think about how spoiled we are, since we sweat and shake all over the body of the thought that you'll soon be a target for paint bullets; just because it hurts. It almost drives you mad - your pulse goes up and you don't feel well. Paintball is just a game... I wonder how soldiers feel just before they storm some town in a real war, where they actually can die of it (not to forget how the civilians feel?).

I think paintball is interesting because I'm a pacifist. As a pacifist I'm obliged to face my inner beast, and realize that it's a side of me and any human being. Such a harmless situation like paintball is a source to big amounts of stress, because your physics, moral and patience is very low. Therefore you shoot wild around. Few minutes after you've started, you already forget that the one you shoot at actually feel pain. He's just a target / an annoying obstacle. Because you're afraid to be shot yourself, and therefore you skip all that you learned about ethics and morals.
Can soldiers in real wars then be considered as organizers or trouble-solvers rather than beasts? I don't believe people can solve problems or act rational and just, when their mentality is dominated by fear. And I think all soldiers are afraid.

I think it's very fascinating to face such aspects of ones own humanity. And only people who really think about such issues, can call themselves pacifists.

 

Paintball is tons of fun. I love paintball.

 

Definately! At least it's a good hobby for boys at my age, who reject to leave our boyhood behind (like me and my paintball-friends)!

 

I do not like it too much... another war simulation for violence driven creatures.

 

That's just something wimps say...just messing with ya...but you could look at everything that way if you wanted to. Like American football. Or soccer.

 

War comes out of something, that is to be found within ourselves. The reason of wars are ourselves.

Paintball is a game for people who reflect about the war. (ofcourse there are always some rednecks also at the area though - they shoot wild around like lunatics...) but perhaps you would be surprised, if you realized how many hip peaceloving freaks actually play paintball (?) It's a simple and harmless game, that can help you to reach a very little piece of understanding (but: an understanding) of how real wars feels for the implied.

p.s. I hate Counterstrike and all the other violent (and unrealistic) games. I never play such games, and in fact, I'm against them, because they idealize violence. I don't think paintball idealize violence, because you're active yourself and therefore forced to reflect about your actions.

I don't like violent computergames. I'm only interested in reaching a state of which is similar to how soldiers think (in a smaller scale, though), on my own body. I would like to understand what the term "war" means.

 

...It's really not only a matter of how the individual soldier feel, but maybe even more important: how the individual soldier act in the context of the psychology of war.

Are soldiers able to create a democracy, while they're in a permanent state of fear?

...As I mentioned before, I think Apocalypse Now is a fantastic movie (I actually think Shadowplay mentioned it before me), because it describes the war as a concept of madness very clear.

 

I don't believe any people are actually driven by violence, but I think we're all driven by fear.


) / ) (""") ) * ("" @@ ’_) ("") ("") (’’)
\/_( *)_( (_ */"" @@ (_) (_( *)_( .)<,

 

I agree almost all the thing about, but except of the part about computer games, I love net playing games like Rainbow Six where you're on a command, and it's not the same feeling that you describes at the beginning of the thread but it seems the same, because you don't know where are the other and if you play as a team you've to be organized and have a strategy, and you can get really nervous.
I don't think that games like this idealize war, I think it's the same thing.
Of course there are always people, as Wolf says, that become real freaks with all this staff, but for me it's like the same experience. I've never played paintball, but we're always planning to go and I would like to do it so much.
I hope i can go soon.

 

Perhaps I'm just the one who speaks without knowledge (about the computer games) in this thread. Perhaps there are more realistic simulations than I can imagine (you mentioned such!).
I'm probably speaking without knowledge when it comes to computer games. I bow my head, and eat my lack of experience then.

But still... when you shoot your enemies in computer games, all that happens is the digital passive sound "aaarghhh" coming out of your loudspeakers, and then you see some former enemy turning into some red, bloody burp, but it's just senseless graphical metaphors for pain and death.
On the other hand - when you shoot somebody in Paintball, or if you get shot yourself, s/he/you yell: "AAAARRRGGGHHHH - GODDAMNIT ASSHOLE!!!!!", because it physically hurts like shit - see my point?
People are first of all driven by strategy in computer simulations (in good computer simulations, second driven by a constructed form of fear), but in Paintball it's more like a mix-up of "I wanna win" and "I don't wanna feel a paint bullet on my skin once again ever!!!!".

Paintball is just a simulation, but your body is not simulated, which is the case in computer simulations, no matter how realistic they are. You can lean back while playing computer, cuz your body is not present at the battlefield; you just play a character. That's not the case in Paintball - the character you play there is your own physical self; your own body.

But games in the class you describe here, migle, probably don't idealize violence, if such games are so realistic that you describe. I definately see your point, and I swallow (some of) my words.

love,

) / ) (""") ) * ("" @@ ’_) ("") ("") (’’)
\/_( *)_( (_ */"" @@ (_) (_( *)_( .)<,