Simulacra and Simulation

[th3fall3n777]

Did anyone ever notice the name of the book that Neo keeps his hacking disks in the first Matrix movie? The book is "Sumulacra and Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to the present day. 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; Baudrillard believed that society has become so reliant on simulacra that it has lost contact with the real world on which the simulacra are based.

Neo hides his illicit software. In the film, the chapter 'On Nihilism' is in the middle, rather than the end of the book.

Morpheus also refers to the real world outside of the Matrix as the "desert of the real", which was directly referenced in the Slavoj Zizek work, Welcome to the Desert of the Real. In the original script, Morpheus referenced Baudrillard's book specifically.

Keanu Reeves was asked by the directors to read the book, as well as "Out of Control" and "Evolution Psychology," before being cast as Neo.

Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:

First order, associated with the pre-modern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.

Second order, associated with the industrial revolution, where distinctions between image and reality breaks down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The items' ability to imitate reality threaten to replace the original version.

Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation break down. There is only the simulacrum.

Baudrillard theorizes the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomenon:

Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.

Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.

Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the process used to create them.

Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.

Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.

I was hoping that we could get a discussion going on what these concepts and how they affect us today?

[Samael]

I have watched "The Matrix" film on one occasion, but it was for no other reason than to enjoy the fight sequences.

I would actually argue that the distinction between "objective reality" and "that which we use to represent it" (e.g. language) lacks greater distinction than people admit or perhaps realize. We don't actually experience "reality" in and of itself. Our interaction with both macrocosm and microcosm is through a proxy -- namely language. The experience of a square, for example, is not of a square in its purely abstract form, but as we understand it through translation (from pure abstraction to geometric object). Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason writes critically about this relationship between noumena (the essence of a thing) and the phenomena (the expression of that essence). It seems appropriate to deem language as the phenomena meant to express "objective reality" or those abstractions that sit behind ordinary perception of the cosmos. The introductory section in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit lends nicely to this train of thought. I believe it's in section 73 specifically that he discusses the "medium of expression" as not expressing the thing in question (in itself), but that the medium of expression is simply representative of the thing in question through the colouring of the medium. In other word, what someone might call "pain" is not "pain" in and of itself, but pain as understood through their "medium of expression" (their language).

I don't think I'm making an argument at this point so much as elucidating an idea relevant to this thread. The relationship between representation and the represented is definitely fascinating in so far as how representations (e.g. symbols) colour, shape and give texture to our experienced interaction with self, other and society as a whole.

Purposefully manipulating language (and please note I'm not simply referring to letters on a page, but linguistic constructs as a whole) to direct and curtail the development of individuals, societies and the international community is probably one of the many worthwhile avenues though which aeonic "re-shaping" can occur (even for the magically inept for that matter).

[Astaroth]

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