Layered over our city is another reality, a virtual world of Pikachus and Squirtles and… lots and LOTS of Drowzees, for some reason. (What’re you implying about Columbus, Niantec?) The Grandview post office is now a Pokemon gym, complete with twenty-somethings hanging around outside defending it. Short North wall murals are now Pokestops. Public spaces like Mirror Lake and Goodale Park are full of gyms, Pokestops, and newly-minted Pokemon trainers. And all over the city, people are walking around looking at their phones even more than usual.

Pokemon Go, a new mobile game from Nintendo and Augmented Reality Game pioneers Niantec Labs, was a massive hit from the moment it launched. And for good reason: For a generation of gamers, going out into the real world in search of Pokemon has been a lifelong dream. And at the low, low price of Free (with microtransactions) there’s little to stop anyone with an interest from downloading the game and playing along.

There’s Mars, the god of war, perched in a parking garage in Dallas, annihilating the enemy with utter impunity. Mars, you sicko! Just listen to President Obama:

“By definition, if you shoot people who pose no threat to you — strangers — you have a troubled mind. What triggers that, what feeds it, what sets it off, I’ll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents.”

“There is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks or any violence against law enforcement. Anyone involved in the senseless murders will be held fully accountable. Justice will be done.”
– President Obama, at the NATO summit in Warsaw, July 8, 2016

hat the President expressed is a conventional wisdom meme, and it is both inadequate and false in so many ways, but it reflects the unhealthy American zeitgeist all too well. Probably this argument will offend some people, but its purpose is to get beyond the popular willingness to be offended and get to a more considered place of comprehension. But first we have to find our way out the mental squirrel cage that keeps our public discourse from viewing our country, our world, and even ourselves with any kind of healthy sense of wholeness and interconnectedness.