Simulacra and Simulation

Guest Post by The Zman

Logic dictates that it is impossible for someone to lie to themselves. A lie is the deliberate, and therefore conscious, telling of a falsehood. The person lying is deliberately trying to deceive someone. The only way lying can be successful is if the person hearing the lie believes it. Lying to yourself is an obvious paradox. This is true of self-delusion or self-deception. The real paradox here is that we have these expressions because the phenomenon seems to exist.

For example, the odds of knowing someone who has died from the corona virus is very low, unless you work in a nursing home. For the typical person, you are more likely to know someone who was murdered. In fact, in most of the country, you are four times more likely to know a murder victim than a corona victim. Yet, many people on the Left will tell you they know many people who have died from corona. They really believe this is true and display the appropriate emotions to prove it.

Adding to the intrigue is the fact that these people have had the math explained to them many times by the more skeptical. The same is true about the stories of overwhelmed hospitals everyone hears about, but no one has seen. The nurses and doctors posting TikTok videos of themselves dancing in empty hospitals had no effect on the believers in these claims. Even now, they are sure the “first responders” are nearing exhaustion as they heroically fight the virus.

It is not a coincidence that these people are sure Donald Trump is Adolph Hitler slowly imposing the Third Reich. People who otherwise seem calm and rational, despite their politics, become hysterical when talking about Trump. “He’s a dangerous dictator who is destroying the country” they bellow. It’s not just hyperbole. They really seem to believe that Trump is not only a man who wants to be a dictator, but that he is actually assuming dictatorial power. The lie is very real to them.

It’s not so much that they believe complete nonsense regarding Trump. It’s that their own reaction to the nonsense underscores the irrationality of it. After all, if Trump is anything like they believe, voting him out of office is unlikely. After all, he would use his magic dictator power to rig the vote or just ignore the result. Rather than reevaluate their beliefs, they are now creating another fantasy around with Trump secretly plotting to ignore the results of the election.

For these people, perception is reality to the point where reality is warped in order to make it comply with their pseudo-reality. Like fanaticism, partisanship untethers the mind from objective reality. Unlike fanaticism, which is temporary and disconnected from rational thinking, partisanship enslaves the rational mind, forcing it to create an alternative reality. This partisan reality is so powerful it blocks out anything that contradicts or disconfirms the alternative reality.

The most extreme version of this are the radicals that go on a murderous rampage in the belief they are defending their cause against dangerous enemies. They quickly move from disagreement to murder, because they quickly create a reality in which anyone showing the least bit of doubt is secretly plotting to kill them. Those who commit political murder do so in the firm conviction they are acting in self-defense. In fact, they have to kill their opponents for the good of society.

The thing about political murder is it is not irrational. If you truly think the only way your people can survive is to abide by a certain set of rules, then anyone trying to undermine those rules is a direct threat to your survival. Bargaining with such a person or offering them leniency would be no different than bargaining with a killer. The fact that political opposition is not the same as violent assault is the deception. The partisan has become convinced of something that is at odds with reality.

Compounding this strange conflict of realities is the fact the people in each are highly similar to one another, but seemingly incapable of seeing the reality of the other as the other perceives it. The people sure the hospitals are war zones, for example, look at images of empty hospitals or the statistics on hospital layoffs and it has no impact on their mental processes. It’s as if that information is invisible to them. In fact, it just confirms to them that the other people are dangerously insane.

In fairness, something similar happens when dealing with the MAGA people. Their blind loyalty to Trump and the old America is more endearing, but just as disconnected from reality as the “Trump is Hitler” stuff. In this regard, those looking hard at the world find themselves surround by people from at least two simulations that are derivative of reality, but at odds with it in fundamental ways. It’s as if there is a leak in these simulations and their simulacrum are leaking into the real world.

The question we face in this age is whether it is possible to maintain a civil society with an abundance of people embracing an alternative reality. Fanatics, eccentrics, lunatics and so on have been a part of human society since the beginning. The issue today is one of scale. Those leaky simulations have burst open and our reality is now flooded with berserk imitations of normal people, acting on a sense of reality that is at odds with objective reality. We’re being overrun by simulacrum.

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Anonymous
Anonymous

I remember reading somewhere the account of a former NKVD operative taking the few sacks of hidden grain from a near death starving “Kulak “family in Ukraine, convinced they were wealthy, well-fed and hiding grain on purpose to thwart the efforts of The Party. Only when he awoke from the madness years later could he recall the horror he imposed on his victims in the name of righteousness.

Glock-N-Load
Glock-N-Load

Hopefully, that’s what hell’s for.

ec
ec

Hell is for the unrepentant, Glockamole. Cervantes said of a critic; let his crime punish him. Guilt is a bitch.

“I talk to my conscience.” Doc Pangloss

Muscledawg
Muscledawg

Real actual guilt comes from having a conscience. Psychopaths don’t have a conscience.

Guest
Guest

Unfortunately Many righties (Including preppers) Believe in the pandemic. You can show them the low numbers etc. and they still believe, and still wear masks.

Anonymous
Anonymous

The mask thing is really depressing — I can certainly understand if one wants to be cautious in the face of a possible illness, but the masks just don’t work, you can’t block viruses with these home-made fabric masks. You can believe anything you want but it just doesn’t work. I work with asbestos abatement and I gotta shave my face before I head out to a job, I wear a custom-fit N95 ventilator and I have to tweak it regularly, even then stuff gets through. I’m careful with all my equipment and it’s a boring, tedious job to keep my equipment within spec — ain’t no way in hell your fabrics masks do jack shit to keep out the Satan Bug, if you really believe there’s a killer virus out there. If you really wear a mask because you’re afraid of getting sick, do yourself a favor — just stay the hell home and away from everybody.

TN Patriot
TN Patriot

All the more reason to avoid most people.

Anonymous1
Anonymous1

The alternate reality that Zman is describing, exists only on TV and other MSM dispersal organs. These outlets tend to attract people who are not very curious, and who’s lives are “so busy” they don’t have time for any other explanation that what is being fed to them.

unfortunately, this appears to be the majority.

A majority of: fresh out of college, indoctrinated, youth, super busy soccer moms making home videos of their cats, and, a legion of retired teachers and state workers.

in other words, Pajama People.

ec
ec

super busy soccer moms making home videos of their cats..

That does not compute, either they are cat ladies or soccer moms.

ec
ec

I don’t know what Z-man was going for, his article makes Kanye West seem focused. Is he talking about simulations or about mass delusion or about never-Trumpers? He seems to think Trump is a true representation of reality and that the never-Trumpers are fighting against a shadow on the wall. It could also be that their old reality is the original simulacra.

TC
TC

No, EC, what he’s saying is that most everyone thinks Trump is either evil incarnate or the savior, but the reality is neither of the above. There’s no shortage of delusion and denial on the right and left, and I think this is by design- the more people on the uniparty plantation, the longer the abuse can and will continue.

ec
ec

He could have been clearer, particularly when he seems to use simulation and simulacrum interchangeably. There’s no shortage of delusion and denial on the right and left as well as in the middle. The silent majority may be just as confused about real reality just watching the shit show of the far right and far left.

What is truth? – Pilate
Far out! – Tommy Chong

TC
TC

Maybe he gets paid by the word?

Science Of No Mind

We have been trained in Aristotelian logic, which is linear, one-dimensional.
Life is not Aristotelian at all, it is Hegelian.
Logic is not linear, logic is dialectical.
The very process of life is dialectic, a meeting of the opposites.
A conflict between the opposites and yet a meeting of the opposites.
And life goes through this dialectical process.
Hegel says life moves from thesis to antithesis to synthesis.
Then the synthesis becomes a thesis again.
Once the thesis is there, antithesis is created.
Again they start creating a new balance.
A higher synthesis arrives.
That’s how life moves.
Thesis needs antithesis.
Unless there is a thesis opposed by an antithesis there is no dynamism, life becomes stagnant.
We ordinarily understand two things, the positive and the negative.
Mind moves between the positive and the negative, the left brain and the right brain, reason and intuition, the masculine and the feminine, for and against, the left and right.
But mind has no approach, no way to go beyond this polarity, this duality, this dialectic.
If we continue to chose only one part of the mind, we deny the opposite part.
Then there is bound to be revolt.
But there is a possibility of a synthesis.
This synthesis is the goal of all religiousness, of all mysticism.
The meeting of the opposites.
The whole experience of the awakened ones emphasizes only this one thing, which is beyond duality and dialectics.
Intelligence is a state of no-mind.
To realize this transcendental experience is to transform the individual.
Set Intelligence as a Universal Existential Constant!
Intelligence is always in the present.
It is ever present within us.
The only authentic values are those which come from your center and spread outwards, not vice versa.
That’s exactly the meaning of education: drawing the water out from the well.
Education means drawing your inner being into expression in your living, your day to day life.
Your honesty, your love, your compassion, should come from your inner being.
Only awakened individuals working together can transform the societies of the world.
The person who is working for enlightenment can find a bridge between the dualities, because without finding the bridge you cannot transcend them, you cannot go above them.
And the bridge is there, it has only to be discovered.
Before enlightenment, growth is dialectical.
Always divided, always finding something which joins it and then again another division and another division.
You have to pass through a process of dialectics, because where we are now, with mind, we are under the law of dialectics.
To get free from dialectics is one of the major projects of spiritual evolution.
It is very easily possible if one works through meditation.
Because that is the only way to find out the golden mean, the middle point which is transcendence.
The moment you have found the middle point between.
You have entered into a new area, unexplored.
One must accept the total human potentiality, bringing everything within oneself to a peak without feeling any inconsistency, any contradiction.
The secret key is balance through awareness.
And one who learns how to balance through awareness becomes capable of knowing what life is, what existence is.
We call our home the universe, because it is One.
Still the oneness has multiplicity in it, variety, distinctions, differences.
The oneness is not a monotonous oneness.
The oneness is not dead, it is alive.
And the oneness is not static, it is dynamic.
Oneness gives you the most important insight into existence.
Existence is everywhere alive – this very moment.
You will always find life itself – herenow.
So in one way enlightenment is the end, the end of the old mind.
In another way it is a beginning, a tremendous beginning.

https://whenwardisappears.wordpress.com/

Muscledawg
Muscledawg

Geez! John Lennon regrettably paid that fucked up yogi a small fortune for this same kind of “enlightenment”.

Muscledawg
Muscledawg

There goes zman again…taking both sides. The left is fucked up, and, so is the right.

“something similar happens when dealing with the MAGA people. Their blind loyalty to Trump”.

WTF

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