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This is a draft of an essay that I am currently working on... the Pokémon part is finished though. This is similar to the thread of people being able to give up on Pokémon. I am unable to give up on Pokémon.
Paradise Lost
Many of us have feelings of nostalgia. Some of us yearn for a better, halcyon past that would act as a bastion from a decaying entropic world. One has to confront the unpleasant reality that time absconds our precious youth. The passing of every second enervates us as we slowly lose our physical vitality and mental acumen. The passage of time does not represent progress, but decay. How does one attempt to find order in a world marked by the inexorable trends of decrepitude and entropy?
Eden:
I rail against the malevolent effects of time as I savor the beatific memories of my childhood. One of my vivid memories was watching Pokémon episodes. Despite its puerile connotations as a "children's show," I regard Pokémon to be the zenith of an epoch of innocence. One's perception of Pokémon will inevitably be subjective because our experiences with Pokémon would be different. Realizing the limitations of my views, my only recourse was to use the first person while arguing the Pokémon represented innocence and freedom. This might be the perspective of a person who was ten years old in the late 90s, but some parents might see it as an inimical force that enervates one's wallet.
The anime is a chronicle of the adventures of Ash Ketchum who wants to be a "Pokémon master" – a nebulous term that was not rigorously defined in the anime. In order to demonstrate his absolute and relative accomplishments as Pokémon trainer, Ash must participate in Pokémon battles against other trainers until a Pokémon faints. The Pokémon attack each other (these attacks might involve unordinary techniques such as breathing fire) with their trainers verbally commanding them during the battles until a Pokémon is rendered unfit for battle. In order for Ash to achieve his goals, he must travel around to collect gym badges from gym leaders - skilled Pokémon trainers who award a gym badge after he/she is defeated in a battle. A prerequisite of eight badges needed to compete in the Pokémon League where he battles against elite trainers. While Ash was defeated by Ritchie in the Pokémon League, a trainer who he befriended earlier, Ash becomes dejected. His entourage and Ritchie console him afterwards encouraging Ash to renew his resolve continues his quest to be a Pokémon master thus brushing off his loss.
The battling element might imply that the Pokémon are merely servants as means to achieve a trainer's end, but the Pokémon assents to the battles because of their loyalty to their trainers and their eagerness to test their strength in battle. Unlike cockfighting, the Pokémon's welfare is respected. In official matches, a presiding judge saying, "[Pokémon name] is unable to battle", preventing supererogatory harm inflicted on fainted Pokémon. Even if a Pokémon is injured during battle, it is not something that Nurse Joy could not fix at the Pokémon Center which the trainers need not pay for this service. The anime does show that the protagonist does empathize with their Pokémon and does not regard them as game pieces as Ash does put his Pokémon interests above his own. For example; he released his Butterfree when it found a mate; Ash attempted to let his Pikachu go when it befriended wild members of its own species because he wanted Pikachu to be happy, but Pikachu returned with Ash to continue on their journey; and he stayed up all night to help thaw and warm his Charizard who was injured from a battle.
The series does have many appealing aspects: Ash's Pikachu, Misty's Psyduck, Jigglypuff's lullaby, the good background music, memorable battles, and the remarkably strong camaraderie among Ash, and his traveling companions, Misty and Brock. But part of the appeal of the series is based is absent from the Pokémon world. Ash does indeed face adversity and hardship during his adventures that he overcomes with this tenacity, but consider the adversity that he does not face. He does not have to deal with pervasive mundane problems that are germane to the real world such as racial, class, and religious conflict, poverty, nor natural resource depletion. The only evil he has to face is an incompetent and banal form: Team Rocket; the trio of Jessie, James, and a bipedal talking cat Meowth (a Pokémon) who attempt to purloin Ash's Pokémon, but repeatedly fail.
Since Ash inhabits a world tailor-made for a callow ten-year Peter Pan, he is free from mundane responsibility such as paying auto and student loans, mortgages, and utilities. Ash seems to be impervious to the adversities of the real world, but he does not enjoy creature comforts perpetually; for example, sometimes his party has to camp out when they are not in proximity to a Pokémon Center. The inhabitants of modern day tent cities struggle to satisfy basic physiological needs at Maslow's pyramid while living with an absence of safety. Unlike the former who were evicted from their homes due to economic stress, Ash is free from such despair as he can reach for the apex and attempt to fulfill his "self-actualization" needs. Despite the competitive nature of the battles, it might imply that the Pokémon world is very competitive, but Ash does not have to struggle in the Hobbesian jungle of the global labor market. He does not have to participate in "a war of all against all" facing not only against intranational competition, but international competition. Would children be interested in the show if it portrayed a realistic world? Would Pokémon be popular if it included the "adventure" of African-American teenager trying to get a summer job?
Maturity has positive connotations of completion, individuality, freedom, and progress in one's life; Pokémon, in contrast, is an antonym of maturity. Looking introspectively at my own maturity, I have progressed in so far that I have a more limpid understanding about the conditions of our own world. Much of this knowledge can be expressed in a rather unoriginal epiphany: the real world is far crueler than the Pokémon world. I feel maturity is a force that should not be eagerly embraced or seen in a benignant light, but fought much like diseases that are correlated with human aging. I consider Pokémon to be an essential part of my identity and I am proud of this. I have seen many who "matured" and abandoned Pokémon lose their identities like Alzheimer patients under the influence of the progressive destructive force of beta amyloid plaques. By attempting to resist this process, I have become an anachronism; I try to retain the childhood of the nineties into the adulthood of the new millennium. A key challenge of maturity is to retain the innocence of doves, yet develop the wisdom and perspicacity of serpents, in a world inhabited by ravenous wolves (Matt 10:16). As Benjamin Parker stated to Peter Parker -- "with great power comes great responsibility" – he implies that power would be fettered with the obligation of responsibility. Unfortunately the converse of Uncle Ben's aphorism is a statement of pabulum – "with great responsibility comes great power" –because it commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent and does not conform to any observation of reality. "No taxation without Representation" was a political slogan of the American Revolution; "no responsibility without power" is the slogan of my discontent with chronological maturity.
Like Adam, I see a sealed paradise of innocence and freedom guarded by cherubim with a flaming sword which I was banished from, and now I have to deal with the agony of toiling in the wilderness. The discussion of Pokémon was to illustrate a simple point: it was meant to decouple to notion of progress from the advancement of time while attempting to elicit levity and frivolity associated with childhood. The creator of Pokémon, Satoshi Tajiri, shares my sentiment of escapism and protest of "progress." Before the exploitation of Pokémon by capitalist interests as Tajiri had no credentials in business or marketing, it originally reflected the sentiment of conservationism. The series was based on Tajiri's childhood penchant of catching bugs (similar to catching Pokémon) in forests and rice paddies. He was despondent, however, when the forests and rice paddies disappeared to make room for new buildings and parking lots, and felt regretful that future children would be deprived of his past experiences. One could contrast Tajiri's childhood with contemporary Japan – a country that experienced two lost decades, deflation, and an abysmal job market that causes many young adults to live as hikikomori; people who live in their parents homes and rarely leave, in order to escape the vicissitudes of the macroeconomic environment.
[I wanted to discuss how there has been little technological progress so far. The essay is not about Pokémon, as it was meant to provide a comparison between the past and present. I wanted to argue how the tech bubble represented overoptimism of technology that did not come to fruition, and how the current economic crisis is not really a credit crisis, but a crisis of innovation or a technology crisis.]
Many of us have a great amount of faith as we live our lives. The Tech Bubble represented faith that technological advancement would lead to future prosperity. Religious faiths are often forward-looking, and attempt to provide a similar spirit of optimism; an optimism not for events in this realm, but in another. While the soteriology of various denominations differs, Christianity expresses the belief that the resurrection of Jesus marks the His triumph over sin and death, and provides hope for eternal with the Father. I, on the other hand, do not possess this type of faith, or faith in technological progress. Instead of being engrossed in the future and yearning for eternal life with Jesus or a techno-utopia, I focus on the past. My long position in Pokémon can be construed as a short position against technological progress and religious eternal life; it shows my discontent with the future.
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