simulacra-kklessia (part 1)even virtually faker than the hyperreal thing (part one)

To realize that there is

serious debate in the pyschological/medical community about whether a diagnosis of
"The Truman Syndrome"
..that is, thinking your life really isn't really real, for real...
is legitimate...
(actually there is debate about the reality of both the diagnosis and the syndrome)....

Then you are really beginning to get in touch with the

• strange loop,
• Gordian knottiness (as in Gordian knot), &
• paradox
  

of today's virtual topic:

SIMULACRA.

I am convinced that this concept,

actually first perceived by Plato,
then Nietzsche
and
most famously by 1990s U2
and The Matrix ...

...and most classically classified by Baudrillard...

is really real and a real key to grasp and grapple with our postmodern, post-real, suprareal times.

You can read this news article to get started.

And to make the heady academic stuff as brief as possible, let's define some terms with Wikipedia:

"Baudrillard claims that modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are signs of culture and media that create the perceived reality."

He argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction — faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum) — Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality, (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which “bears no relation to any reality whatever.”

Simulacra and Simulation

And just for fun, ponder:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."

Do you remember the first time it hit you (it almost literally hit Truman here) that
the simulacra of your life may be real..or is it that the life of simulacra may not be real?:





Do you recall the first time it dawned on you that "the world (you) inhabit is in some sense counterfeit....even though (you) are completely real":




That maybe the Matrix of the world, or church, or culture was a "copy without an original"?:

>>If you question whether in addition to seeking to entertain,
U2's ZOO TV was really serious about waking us up to iconclasm/smogasborgasm and simulacra
read
Ian Robertson's Chapter 6("'Even Better Than the Real Thing': Postmodernity, The Triumph of the Simulacra, and U2" in the Mark A. Wathrall-edited "U2 and Philosophy"
And of course watch a bit of real/reelTV:
















from 1:15ff:


and:


What did you think "Even Better Than the Real Thing" was about, anyway??











>>If you wonder if simulacra was only a minor theme in The Matrix, watch:





>>If your face is on Facebook, ponder:

Virtual relationships: Facebook as simulacra

>>Ever been to Disneyland...SimulacraCity!
Does all that make your head hurt?:





More tomorrow:
now 16 parts to the series