Darryl Shirley You acknowledge you follow a passion that keeps you engaged in a self-imposed shell or artificial reality - more so now because of the new demands of modernizing and constantly changing "digital society". The digital world is where it's at - people aren't getting information from TV, bookstores, coffee shops, or social group meetings as the post WWII generation did (baby boomers). Nothing wrong with that - you go where the action or need is that utilizes your skill. Stepping out of that bubble to seek human contact demonstrates you haven't lost yourself, and you are human!
E. Writer Indeed. My shell is the reality, but the virtual digital environment i engage in daily, like this one, is the digital reality we've traded for the real physical world 🌎. The digital world can make fake things seem real. Can trick us into believing falsehoods. Or be used to alter reality or deceive us. The world has become an unstable place as a result.
Frank Hutton Thus my continued, regular embrace of the real (physical) world, which isn't subject to belief. That embrace keeps me...(wait for it) grounded.
E. Writer Everyone believes they're not influenced but they are in some form. When we watch the news, the media is creating a narrative about the world. Most people believe it. Remember all of the police shootings in the 2010s? Seemed like there was a new major one every month that made national news. We rarely hear about them now. Remember Qanon? We never hear about it now. News media and social media immediately ceased talking about it in 2020. The reason we don't hear about these things (and this is just one or two examples of the manipulation), is because someone with power is choosing what the public should be angry, frightened, suspicious or excited about. We don't choose what's interesting to us, that's chosen for us. Thays why I disconnected. It's all a manipulation and we are all unwitting participants, whether we agree with this fact or not. Two months ago, every news story was about a certain group going from neighborhood to neighborhood. Suddenly that stream of information stopped. We don't get the news, we get a narrative.
Frank Hutton I don't believe I'll ever believe I know what "everyone" believes.
There is a civil war in Uganda between over 200 CHIMPS. I dislike links to media but felt this is a very neutral story.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr71lkzv49po
Andrew Morgan I'm certain I read a short story by Flannery O'Connor, I forget the title but the central character is a little girl named Mary Christmas. You won't find the name Mary Christmas anywhere. This story has vanished entirely. Little Mary is only a character, whose life exists only in a few written pages. She is unhappy, brutalized by some old bugger who accompanies her and who summarily strangles her. But in just those few pages, she is brought so vitally to life. I'm not sure anymore whose point of view is portrayed. I think it is the killer's. And the reader is left to mourn for her, to feel deep empathy for her, to feel her loss of being, this fictional character who never made it off a page. Or has she? Does she live in our memory?
E. Writer Thanks for sharing this story. I will definitely find where I can read it. Simulacra is something different. It's when something that is copied replaces the original. An example that Jean Baudrillard mentions in his book is this photo or I think painting of a famous ruin. The ruin is no longer there, but only the image of it remains, and is what people remember. The image has replaced the real, original structure. I constructed this video to demonstrate Simulacra. Its a copy of a copy that is representing me. It is my image, but is not my voice. If I leave this, over time it will replace how I sound amd appear to others by memory.
Darryl Shirley This is scary
E. Writer Hey Darryl! Yes, and it's so convincing. Someone on BP just said to me, "I didn't know you were British." I'm like I'm not. Bit it goes to show how reality can be warped. How anything can replace truth.
