Dad, There's A Simulacrum In My Eye
During a recent trip to the Aeropagus of Northern Greenville County (also known as the Travelers Rest Chick-fil-A), my son abruptly said to me “you know, I am afraid that the government is going to collapse” to which I replied that when I was young, I was afraid that it was never going to collapse. That was during my brief libertarian phase, right before I was Reaganized. I now pray that our Constitutional checks and balances can actually check and balance.
As an aside, Travelers Rest, or TR as it is referred to by locals, is best known now as the cute downtown beginning of the Swamp Rabbit Trail rather than a rundown destination place for members of the Dixie mafia. The Trail’s 22 miles follow the old Greenville & Northern Railway line down through Greenville. Built as a pedestrian and bike lane, the Trail has become a catalyst for growth allowing TR to rise above the one cop speed trap kind of town that it was when I was a young man.
My son had just come home for spring break and was flushing ideas out of his well-worn mind as we drove. I attempted to provide a mental strainer for him to pour his thoughts into but my Parkinson’s brain lacked the nimbleness needed to engage most of what he said. But that didn’t stop me from trying.
His concern about the stability of our government led to a discussion of post-modernism and the role of simulacra in our society. If asked before this conversation, I would have guessed that a simulacrum was some kind of bacteria or eye floater, but then science was never my specialty. Roughly speaking, a simulacrum is a something or someone that represents something or someone but then loses the connection with that object and becomes its own simulated reality.
I have borrowed heavily from my son’s recollection of his professor’s teaching about the French philosopher who thought this up - Jean Baudrillard. Which means that what you are reading does not even meet the definition of hearsay. To make it even more confusing, Baudrillard asserts that simulacra evolve through stages as discussed here:
. . . Baudrillard categorizes the breakdown of the image into simulation via four successive phases: the image first reflects a basic reality; then masks or perverts that basic reality; then masks the absence of a basic reality; and finally, the image bears no relation to any reality whatever, it is its own pure simulacrum.
To prove that I have totally misunderstood what my son was talking about, let’s pretend that I am a photographer and I take a picture of Baby Yoda in the wild.
Stage one: I post Baby Yoda’s image on social media.
Stage two: Baby Yoda’s image distorts into Dead Baby Yoda.
Stage three: Dead Baby Yoda goes viral as people share it online.
Stage four: Dead Baby Yoda’s image becomes a cultural meme where people have him saying all kinds of things that Baby Yoda would never say.
Baby Yoda is a pop culture icon but not an idol. At least, I don’t think that there are any Baby Yodites out there. But be aware, simulacra are a distortion of reality that could lead to idolatry, both religious and secular, sometimes mixing the two . . . like the Pope or Madonna (the pop singer, not the BVM).
The danger of idol worship comes when religious objects become more revered than the reality of what they originally represented. Christianity is rife with simulacrum possibilities. Icons, statues, crosses, crucifixes, liturgies, prayerbooks, scripture translations, contemporary worship styles, or Baptism can change into a simulacrum, but none more so than Holy Communion.
Believers have argued for almost two millennia whether the communion elements, bread and wine, transform into the actual body and blood of Jesus or should his command in John 6 to eat his flesh and drink his blood be memorialized as a symbol. Both simulacra can elicit belief. One belief susceptible to idolatry; the other to sacrilege.
Islam doesn’t allow images of their Prophet. They believe that it is a sacrilege. That is why Islamists murdered 12 people after a radical French magazine published a cartoon of their prophet. It appears that making a simulacrum out of Muhammad just isn’t kosher.
Our conversation turned to movies that feature simulacra. The best that we could think of were The Matrix and maybe Ready Player One. The later film representing how virtual reality gaming might be the true opiate of the people. I am sure that most “moving images” contain examples of simulacra. I don’t think that Baudrillard would disagree.
After all of these big thoughts, I wondered why simulacra exist, assuming that they do (see, I am starting to get this philosophy stuff). Do they deceive or reveal?
In the meantime, maybe we need an empathy-driven virtual reality gaming system that will allow people to simulate, for a short time, what (enter your favorite chronic disease) feels like.