Ok, so just reflecting on Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations. I'm thinking that to say that the real isn't or never was real as such but only exists in its negation is a kind of a contradiction but also kind of makes sense. The real seems to exist and not exist at the same time depending upon which level of the 'real' you're looking at? In this sense, the real seems imagined, just as is the ideal? But is the reality of the real really that nothing exists (or that everything exists) and that our world of reality within the space that we can actually think, is a fabrication of sorts so that we can make some sense of the world? In effect, we are kind of intentionally making our 'space' smaller (in order to create space) and thereby implementing boundaries so that we can create some form of meaning in our lives because innately in fact there is none?
We know that this somewhat fabricated boundary is not the entire 'truth', but we figure that a smaller amount of slightly distorted 'truth' is better than being able to glean absolutely nothing from much more data than the human brain can make sense of. At what point did society become aware of the huge volume of data out there? And at what point did society become unaware of the futility and loss in trying to understand it all? Without this small portion of something, there is everything and nothing, too much and too little. Is this like Freud's notion of 'aim inhibition'? This scenario seems to suggest that you need to give up the notion of having less of 'everything' in order to at least attain more of 'something'. As a society, we've forgotten it seems that it is optimal and necessary to 'settle'. Likewise, we've forgotten the risk involved in opting for what seems like a 'better' life, and that by so doing we are required to gamble everything that we have. This seems also somewhat reminiscent of game theory.
From the premise that everything exists, a blank slate upon which nothing exists would be necessary in order to begin to make sense. To conceive of a blank slate as being innate is impossible, how would you be able to build anything without even the barest of codes to direct any forthcoming data? How could phenomena emerge from nowhere, it would seem logical that you would need some type of 'matter' along with some sort of 'directed' 'force'. On the other hand, to conceive of a blank slate as a constructed 'overlay' for the purpose of designing a world where meaning is made makes more sense. Would the notion of a 'blank slate' mark the point at which we originally became human? But how would you invisage of creating the means to think if you didn't already hold the capacity to do so? Or perhaps it was at the point at which we became more attuned to or placed more value on our thoughts over our feelings? This would have to have been the result of a slow evolution that somehow involuntarily yet persistently maintained a force or capacity to move to a point where its momentum could be 'locked-in' and embedded through the practice of rituals, customs, ethics, morals, routines, habits, religion, philosopy, science etc.
And yet we all see the world differently, we each carry a different vision of reality. Rather than all being in one large 'bubble', could we all be in our own individual bubbles? Either way, we all must still have access to something other than ourselves in order to change and to imagine. Do we all still have access to the everything (but which in terms of humanity is considered nothing) which we dip into intermittently somehow? Or do we all swap information and kind of exchange 'visions' with each other whenever we interact, each of us already 'carrying' a portion from the pool of everything that we already and always have embedded within our identity? Or do we activate in each other through interaction the dormant data stored within each others identity's?
This suggests that anything outside of (human) identity doesn't exist or in terms of humanity has become nothing. So this is saying that only what humans carry (culture) exists or thinks or lives? What about animals and objects, they exist. Animals are alive, a table isn't. But they both exist. The table is an extension of human life, it carries codes and data about human life that will be carried and reinterpreted through time. And what about automated and programmed forms of technology? Is this what space is ie. all the matter that isn't considered useful or relevant to being human? Like all the atoms and particles and chemical elements filling space that we can't see are considered separate and unrelated to being human and don't exist? But force takes up space, is force also matter? It kind of is. Something needs to be something in order to do something to something. It can't be nothing doing something to something. With the same token, that very 'space' gives us life as we draw it in and out of our lungs.
Jean Baudrillard I'm understanding to be discussing a reversal or unravelling of this process which has apparently begun to occur with the industrial revolution, then the mass adoption of television and likewise later the personal computer. Simulacra and simulations seems to map a loss of awareness or knowledge about why we originally constructed our sense making reality. But I've just watched the Matrix and I think that it suggests that the apparent discourse about 'too much data' of the sense making reality is in fact a means by which to stop us from thinking and to keep us within a state of control and passivity. I'd just like to finish some other ideas I've been working on this week on Simulacra and Simulations, then I'd like to look more into the idea of The Matrix. It's interesting though that I wrote this blog after my next blog which looks in much more detail about simulacra and simulations yet this blog comes first chronologically. Thinking about Baudrillard's detailed discussion on Simulacra and Simulations somehow seemed to have the power to transport me back in time and to think about origins!
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