Simulacrum

[jazzy_dave]

The French theorist Jean Baudrillard contended that the difference between actuality and mere simulation had long since broken down and that this idea pervades the current politics we are in right now, which is encapsulated in the post-modern concept of hyperreality. There is a lack in the desert of the real and that everything is a hyperreal simulacrum. The sociologist Zygmunt Baumann, in his book Intimations of Postmodernity, summarised Baudrillard's portrayal of a culture in which "images represent nothing but themselves, information does not inform, and desire turn into their own objectives". This shines a penetrating light on the politics of today.

"We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning," wrote Baudrillard in 1981. This social media age surely proves him right. That is, the sheer volume of content, the dizzying number of narratives and counter-narratives, and the pace of the news cycle are far too much for any singular person to process. We are in an ocean of information overload and sometimes find ourselves on a raft trying not to submerge.

A possible solution then, to misquote Timothy Leary, is to turn on, tune out and drop out from the external social-political games.