American Avatar.

I remember some time ago reading of a Japanese guy dying while playing a computer game. Not a heart attack or electric shock, simply by being so engrossed as his avatar he lost sight of his real life needs. There seemed some sense of a brain meeting something so like itself it becoming mesmerised by its own reflection. There may have been more but they were just individual tragedies insignificant in the greater scheme of things. But reading items coming out of America today has made me wonder if something of the same could be happening to a nation. The body of America, its blue and increasingly white-collar workers, is being neglected, disenfranchised and left unfed as the top 5%, which conveniently describes both the earners and the bodily position of their brains, become increasingly besotted by their reflection in their computerised game of economic worth. There is something of the avatar about a billionaire intent on making more money. Why should the stalwart corporations of America be concerned with workers well being so long as they’re increasingly profitable? Why should its politicians be concerned with the people when they can manage their pole ratings by ad campaigns? The migration of ‘worth’ to the top 5% and the neglect of the rest is a direct parallel of those poor Japanese individuals. It’s scary to imagine a society dying in the same way. The possible national default centred on the rejection of the universal health provisions of Obamacare couldn’t delineate between body and brain, person or avatar, more clearly. One can be sacrificed for the intellectual pleasure of pursuing the other. That Japanese guy didn’t realise the obvious result. Perhaps he died happy, perhaps he died fearful and frail on the way to the fridge, we’ll never know, but so long as adding a zero to the balance sheet’s bottom line is more important than eating an apple America will be heading in that same direction. And don’t think God will save what is beholden to Caesar.