HYPER-REALITY ATE MY HOMEWORK

Hey folks,

So I decided something this morning. I decided that I’ve been subconciously laying threads about, in several of my posts, for a larger thesis. However, the interconnectedness of it all was partially clear, but not in full. However, that’s why I’m in school and take classes, to fill-in the blank spots of my analysis and place it in the context which I reach towards. Thankfully, over the summer, I’ve been taking a course on Science Fiction. Science Fiction you say?!? Yeah, it’s a great course which is focused away from pulp Science Fiction and more on books which have a deeper thread within, like Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle or Gibbson’s Neuromancer.

Somewhat suprisingly, these books have challenged me and become more than just a simple break-time course for fun. Really, I’ve been taken to task on my politics, my Reason and now – at last – my reality. What all of these books have done for me is allowed me to take my primarly Marxist critique of the world’s politics and social structure and apply a post-Modern twinge to it. Overall, this has left me more satisfied with how I conceptualize things.

To understand what I mean, one must accept that in the end there is no objective truth. This is the only answer I can really provide to the questions of the things I’ve read and, with my views on their being no universal religious truth, this was no stretch for me at all. Secondly, we must realize that we ourselves are moving away from ‘hard reality’ or simply reality, into what is called by many philosopher’s ‘hyper-reality’. This meaning of course that what we see and do and say no longer are focused on direct things but on things which describe or represent those things. So then, we are disassociated with the target which aim to describe.

Furthermore, due to this, the more we attempt to be precise and reach back to the essence of reality, the farther we move from it as we still are using points of comparison to reach a goal. One would note here that all language is an exercise in comparison, which results in the realization that an objective truth is difficult to reach. I would go has far as to say it is impossible.

But then, what does this mean in terms of our actual lives?

Well this state of being is heightened by Twitter and other such manifestations of technology. My previous post, really, lays that out there without naming names and simply saying “Yes, I’m talking about Twitter stealing us partially away from our conceptions” and like all media, new media in particular, it can do this. While eDemocracy’s flaws as I pointed out in the first real post I made, is an un-workable dream, and really, with the critques of new media a la Twitter. This now should be bolstered as well by an understanding of why there is no objective truth in a medium like the Internet as a whole, not even counting how this applies to the world overall.

So like I said about the mediums of the Internet and it’s subjunct Twitter, Hyper-reality is meant to dissociate us all from the actual and place us in a new, technocratic stage. However, as I pointed out with Twitter, with all the false independence which we seem to be given, it is hollow as we are still the puppets of another, larger entity. This then is why e-Democracy fails, because in partnership with our flame-warish urge to ram each others faces into large metal poles, we also become disassociated enough to be manipulated by hegemonic power.

Now while this is seen as totally bad, not everyone thinks so. Some people would say, well, this new conception is the right one and moving toward it gives all an open playing field. Personally, coming from a ‘socialistish’ ideology, I doubt that and partially blame how we have done things for the past few hundred years for comodifing things around us which aids in the process of that disconnection from the purely real.

So there you have it, a synthesis of ideas.

Woah, philosophy ho! Time to temper this with something else…

Enjoy folks,
- Brad.