Over the weekend, I read and discussed Jean baudrrilard’s Simulations and simulacra, and it presented me with lots of intriguiging questions about the world I live in today. Baudrillard discussed a lot of the tropes that we face in daily life such as the existance of disneyland, the movies- Matrix and Apocalypse Now, and the existance of commercial television. baudrillard argues that a lot of the media that we are subject to today is a simulation, ie, it does not exist as real, but is in-fact replacing the real with its visions of what reality looks like.
Some examples of simulations in real life are the existance of war films. While we know that the wars were real, we are aware that these films are make believe yet we believe them to be accurate visualizations of war. They are actively replacing our conciousness as visuals of the real event when in fact they are concieved of reality but are in their existance false.
Some Simulacra that we encounter daily are the existance of the iconograpy of god. This Iconography is a representational device that represents something that isn’t real. Thus, does this make the representaions false? much to think about.
The last question that he posed also got me thinking. If the whole world is full of simulations over reality, does it even matter? Aren’t they just the new reality at this point?
In my opinion, yes while it doesn’t truly matter if what we experience is the reality or the simulated, it is important to differentiate between what is truly real and what is not. History repeats itself and by changing notions of what history was, we change what the future could be and that is a very dangerous power to have.
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