Politics, Religion, and Video Games

I know, I know, it is considered rude for a casual conversation to contain the following items. However, I simply cannot stay quiet about my three favorite subjects of all time. The first two (politics and religion) seem to be stuck in the same rut. Both of these realms seem to lose the everyday person by being too polar. One side wants to hold on to some tradition or another, that has some serious flaws, because it represents some distant "good ol' days." On the other hand you have those who want to throw out the baby with the bath water and trample on tradition and begin to make a new tradition that is just as flawed as the previous one. Why? I don't know! However, I do know that both could take lessons from the video game world. The video game market has climbed steadily since the 70's due to some interesting observations. The first of these observations is the strength of tradition. The video game has not changed much in the last 30 years. The same genres and characters are still around today as the were years ago. Instead what has changed is the interaction the player has with the game. Know players can control 3-dimensional characters in a 3-d world. They can choose what they will look like and are not forced to be confined to a set pattern or mold. In other words, the basics of the games has stayed the same but the player has been given freedom to explore and find out who they are. Would not politics and religion benefit if they followed video games? I don't know. But I think that politics and religion would benefit from allowing those who participate the actual ability to participate. We cannot even vote directly for our own president for crying out loud! And it sure would be nice if churches allowed people to be people some of the time. It is sad when the two fields that influence so much of our lives fail to see what is so important in the lives of people. I know that video games are not the answer for it is wrong in our world but they sure do get blamed a lot. Instead of condemning the video game and all of its influence maybe politics and religion should take time and see how they can reclaim their turf o' influence back from Mario and company.