Why killing needs to be presented as a game? You want to teach children about life and death? Get then to a slaughterhouse. No? Why not? It's just teaching them about life and death...
For better or worse, killing doesn't have such bad associations. Many of us regularly play video games where you kill people, and if you turn on the TV you'll see a lot more depictions of killing than depictions of slavery.
I don't see the moral difference between taking a gun and shooting a kid and bullying and harassing a kid until they are driven to take a gun and shoot themselves.
Both are horrific, but the latter seems even more horrific because it includes not only death, but psychological torture before the death.
“Murder is one of the things not allowed in our society.”
“Oh, you can kill whoever you want. There will be consequences to your killings, but you can still kill people. You just have to accept the consequences. Toddlers & children understand this.”
Pedagogy /can/ go off the rails if it places other goals above the elimination of human killing. I know this is self-evident, however there are many hidden killers out there so consider this a billboard.
Somehow that is better. It gets people who are involved in it to get their hands bloody. That is necessary when taking lives. It should be damaging to ones psyche and it should be difficult and stressful to kill. It should not be a push of a button. Go blow up kids herding goats all day, then pick up your own kids for soccer practice in Langley at night, that's what we are up to now.
You've identified the problem - deonotology - but not the solution. Anyone who kills for a living, is violating the most basic rules of human life, that have been taught us since we rose from this Earth: life is sacred. You can't educate a dead man.
I think our current culture is biased to feel weird about killing. Historically, killing was often a form of entertainment for the public, and a matter of course for getting the nutrients for life.
With age I came to conclusion that anything making killing of any kind even remotely fun is utterly wrong. It might be necessary with dangerous insects, but it should not be fun or recreational.
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