Pokemon

by Kate Bonamy

In class this morning, people started blurting out what they loved doing just cuz, or jouissance, for short. I was too embarrassed to tell them that I loved playing Pokémon up until now.

I am just amazed, because on the onset, it seemed that that video game is the very opposite of our lessons in Philosophy. For example, a Pokémon can be very easily totalized into knowing its stats, its type, and its nature. You literally have a list of what you need to know about the Pokémon. You see every trainer as an obstacle. You battle them so that you can get them out of your way. You take advantage of the experience points you gain from battling them. There is even an item called repel, the very opposite of our task to relate. You can very well know the ins and outs of this game.

I only shared a gameboy with my siblings, and none of my cousins played with us. So for the first time, I battled with another real human being, my classmate. I am really so glad I found a playmate! It was so different from playing with the trainers in the game. There is a sense of knowing the game too well, but unlike normal battles in the game, there is a very significant sense of surprise. I was surprised with the moves he taught his Pokémons and how he would strategize them. I did not even know who he had in his team.

I compared this to knowing a person too well, yet there will always be an element of surprise with that person. This means that no matter how close you are to someone, you will never be able to fully grasp the other. Clearly the surprise in my story is due to the fact that I am now playing with another thinking human being. But if a game is capable of giving us this element of surprise (technically, at least), then a relational human being is more than capable to do so. Just like in this game, I was the one who approached to battle, sometimes in life, we would have to reach out to experience the other. Unlike in the finite programs of Pokémon, we would always be able to see the infiniteness of another human being once we begin to look at more than what "we need to know about them" but actually acknowledge them as a human being entirely different from us.