Is it Ella or Memorex?
Fake child-bride wedding triggers probe at Disneyland Paris
Do our air force pilots still say, “Bombs away,” when those thirty thousand pounds of high explosives plummet to earth? Perhaps President Trump would instead bomb some hard rock mining sites in Nevada with dem fat boys. Such economies of scale would open up gold and silver veins in seconds and create an open pit quarry which seems more in line with “America First” instead of ripping Iran a new ass for Netanyahu in a misguided attempt to say, “Ayatollah so asshole.”
Oh well. Sadly, truth is the first casualty of war. Call it what it is, the murder scenes thus contained within each human mind aren’t visible or realized by most consumers without critical thinking.
I couldn’t sleep last night. Our latest iteration of American foreign policy visa vie war with Iran is no way to begin summer. I know because I was born on the summer solstice decades ago in San Franciscos’ Mt. Zion Hospital. On that day anyone looking out the hospital window to the Golden Gate witnessed troop ships President Truman sent sailing off to Korea. America, despite her consistent peaceful protestations has what I characterize as a forked tongue policy.
Again, what happened to truth, justice, and the American way? Yes, postmodern cultural consumerism demands good advertising and propaganda to be sure. Something else perhaps more insidious could have inserted itself and was predicted fifty years ago. The late sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard had a theory of “Simulacra.”
Simulacra sounds like an additive put into beverages, but naw, it’s part of his philosophy describing our postmodern technological world of images, symbols, and media, whereby, Baudrillard suggested the technology takes over nature but doesn’t stop there. The coded production takes control of the construct and the audience. What’s that? We’re being deprived of the real for virtual. Simulacram don’t merely mediate reality nor are they intentionally deceptive, nor hide a reality, but, “They simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to people's current understanding of their lives.” Technology and media seduce, exploit, and simulate the resulting hyperreality into our current matrix. You want the truth Neo? The idea for the Matrix film was Baudrillard’s Simulacrum world.
A 500 year old Piri Reis map of the world is supplanted by a later series of world maps and a Mercator map atop those is a perversion and further distorts land masses and our understanding. Thus Bauldrillard’s thinking was that the masking of original works meaning no longer exists in original form. Postmodern arts and culture became commodified; literature, sculpture, painting, and so on all reproduced for capitalism, controlled simulation for profit.
Disneyland is, he says, clearly imaginary. “But this distinction between the real and imaginary in Disneyland is nothing but a desperate attempt to hide the fact that there is no difference.” He continues by saying, “Reality is the cultural code that pre-establishes life in America which is manifested in Disneyland. Disneyland doesn’t let you be a child; it hides that fact that you are a child.”
When Baudrillard says original meaning never existed; Never existed? Think of CGI; deepfakes, photoshop and audio creations. Thus new simulacra are illusory in nature yet these similar images and symbols become internalized as ‘real’ shaping people’s perceptions and thinking anew. The blue and red pill meme is one such simulacra and went viral years ago.
Not so fast, are you saying the symbolism and constructs of our White House, Defense Department, legacy media, writers, and corporate global media is a pretentious reality, thoroughly artificial. Pretty much, yea. The point being that such a hyperreality is based upon false or inauthentic reality; such as the we saw in the Matrix film.
All of America is Disneyland. “Hyperreality creates the illusion of distinction between right and wrong, truth and lies, and the illusion that order can be restored.” Society thus saturated with simulacra becomes bereft of meaning. We shall see, or will we.
Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and philosopher. “Man’s search for Meaning,” was his memoir while a Nazi death camp prisoner and survivor. Suffering this particularly horrible life crisis inspired his creation of logotherapy. Logotherapy became the third wheel of the Vienna school along with Freud and Alder.
Frankl posed that the primary purpose for a person is in finding meaning in life, an existential will to purpose. Freud’s will to pleasure and Alder’s will to power is seen everywhere today.
And there were a few critics who claimed Frankel’s therapy was redolent of authoritarianism, as opposed to agency. Another critique was to Victors personal religiosity creep, however, if you don’t see yourself as a spiritual being so be it.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy in essence incorporated logotherapy. I’ve mentioned before while an ADHD adult I’m availing myself of cognitive behavioral therapy or vice versa. I’ve been down the rabbit hole with Freudian and Jungian therapy. Talk about a matrix through time and space. I think it’s clearly evident America and most people are experiencing our present existential crisis.
I’ve presented the subtleties of simulacra, our shifting technological and computer global matrix. Our western culture is not just getting unreal, but has a history as such of really messing with our minds. Time for my meds. Down the hatch, bombs away!