Hordes of students converge to catch an imaginary animal at Florida International University.
What's next? Will people break into houses if there's some rare Pokémon inside? It seems that people are losing all connection to reality, and what little ability they had to determine right from wrong and the sensible from the stupid. People have turned into zombies, with technology having almost full control over their daily lives. It's 'the rise of the machines', just not in the way that Hollywood imagined it.
Let's go into a few particularly unbelievable instances of what I'm talking about.
First, there were two people who thought it was worth the risk to break into a zoo at night to try and catch some Pokémon, and were eventually found by police sitting next to the tiger enclosure. The young woman later told a reporter, "It wasn't the most responsible thing, but hey, gotta catch 'em all." These young adults were risking incarceration at best, and death by police or zoo animal at worst, for a game, and they seemed to have absolutely no emotional reaction to the situation and its dangers. As if for them the line between the game and reality had completely disappeared.
Next, we have a video of people playing Pokémon Go beside a body of water in Germany. The video has a man commenting on both the sheer number of people around him playing this game and the complete lack of awareness they had of their surroundings because they seemed incapable of looking up from their screens. What happens during this man's rant is priceless. But we have to remember that this was two people who were simply walking around and didn't hurt anyone but themselves. What could have happened if these people were driving a car, and just how many people out there are playing and driving right now?
In another incident, a man posted a sign telling Pokémon Go players to stay off the lawn of an apartment building in Vancouver and instructs them go to a nearby pub, drink a beer, and rethink their life choices. Why? Because dozens of these Poké people were turning up at all times of the day and night, constantly disturbing the tenants. One player even said during an interview that the desire to "catch 'em all" means he would have to continue traveling across the land, searching far and wide, for new Pokémon - even if it meant trespassing on private property. To quote, "Basically, there are some Pokémon you have to catch... there's no option sometime."
Except that there is another option: don't play the game! But that is simply out of the question for him. Never mind respect for others or their property, what's important is that I 'catch 'em all'! Those who play this game apparently lose all sense of themselves, and can think of nothing except how they're going to find their next Pokémon, regardless of what it costs in real terms.
Now, there is an innate need for human beings to enter dissociative states from time to time that is being supplanted here, and this need can be fulfilled in a conscious way - in which one can experiment with certain ideas and gain important inner experiences - while at the same time not being fully bound and restricted by the stressful aspects of 'ordinary' waking life. But with PG and other such entertainment phenomena, there seems to be no critical evaluation of the usefulness of this means of dissociation. They see that millions of people are doing it, and join in the 'fun' without thinking about or questioning it - unconsciously driven by various needs, desires and programs that have been inculcated in them since birth by their society and its cultural norms. Never mind that the game developers have ties to the intelligence community, that by playing the game you're essentially doing the CIA and NSA's jobs for them, that by agreeing to the terms and conditions of the game you have to waive certain legal rights, or that this could be the beginning of a more nefarious type of technology. Those little details are of no real importance apparently.
Even less important are the world events that these techno-zombies are distracting themselves from.
For instance, recently there was the release of the Iraq Inquiry (Chilcot) Report. In it we find basically what we already knew, that Tony Blair knowingly lied about Iraq having WMDs and that he manipulated evidence and people in order to further the US's agenda of invasion and intervention in the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq not only saw the deaths of over a million people, but it also led to the creation of ISIS. By engrossing themselves in 'Pokemon Go', millions of Westerners are not seeing this clear signal that their leaders are to blame for the scourge of global terrorism.
There was also the release of 28 pages of a 2002 US congressional report showing that members of the Saudi Arabian government were involved in funding the alleged 9/11 hijackers. Now, the US government has known this for the past 15 years, and yet they've retained an intimate connection with the House of Saud this whole time. Since many terrorist groups get their training and funding via the Saudis, and the US government knows this and does nothing about it, then, once again, by engrossing themselves in 'Pokemon Go', millions of Westerners are not seeing this clear signal that their leaders are to blame for the scourge of global terrorism.
Then there's the Clinton emails investigation. What is known is that Hillary Clinton used a personal, non-secure email server to send and receive classified documents, and that by so doing she provided a number of people without security clearance with access to Above Top Secret government documents. So not only did she violate the Federal Records Act, she also threatened the US' national security, which the US government likes to constantly remind everyone must come above all other considerations - including the rights and privileges of its own citizenry. Yet when push came to shove, in this instance, the FBI simply rewrote the law to keep Clinton out of prison, and has made sure no one can talk about the investigation to make sure things stay buried.
The double standards and duplicity in the above are absolutely disgusting, but who can think about justice and government accountability when there's Pokémon to catch? If only a fraction of those playing Pokémon Go would devote as much time to learning and sharing why the world is the way it is as they do playing this silly game, the world would be transformed almost overnight. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be on very many priority lists.
So by not paying attention to what is actually going on, by not searching for the truth, by not doing anything creative to fight against the machinations of the psychopaths in power, the masses of people dissociating unconsciously with things like Pokemon Go are aligning themselves with the chaos and destruction of the psychos. They are giving their implied consent for the atrocities by remaining silent, which is attracting even more suffering in the form of natural disasters that have become so frequent that they are now 'the new normal'.
But even though Mother Nature doesn't pull any punches, there is still hope for those who pay attention to the signs and network with others to spread awareness and actively create a better world. For them, for those who consciously choose to align themselves with the creative forces of the universe, the future remains open.
Thank you. Good read.