Drive through Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, walk around Soho and Chelsea, and you’ll see dozens of empty stores; commercial spaces for lease.
In Los Angeles, though, there has been a countervailing trend in retail: four years ago there were less than a few marijuana stores. Now there are at least one thousand. Clearly, consumers want to get out of their heads.
So why not a boom in meditation? Because it’s hard work. And, yet, we work out mental problems all the time through video games.
Games that shift the walls of our inner lives, games that can be laid over existing activities, games that create a bond between people. They are meditations. They are commercially viable alternatives to selling things that do not last, at prices that cannot hold for the purpose of filling a void that never goes away.
It is possible to imagine a thriving commercial sector based on delivering mental health. Through games.