Reality and the Culture of Simulation

Series One of Reality, Leadership and The Spectacle of the Real

A compilation of five posts published between May 15-27, 2022.

Part One

Understanding the Context of The Spectacle of the Real

Understanding the Context of The Spectacle of the Real. Reality is the context for everything we do in life. Think of it as a relationship that gives us constant feedback. We can drive a car, use a computer, or learn a language because reality gives us a response to learning to understand and to trust.

On the other hand, reality is hidden from us. All the means that we use to determine what is real are intended to obscure it. Photographs, movies, billboards, and the screens of our computers and smartphones do not present reality to us. Instead, we are given a hyperreality. It is a simulation of reality designed to magnify and obscure reality so that we become subjects to the spectacle of hyperreality.

Many years ago, I heard a radio interview of a professor of mass communication speak about a fundamental change that advertisers made in their approach to consumers. Advertisers thought that shaming people into buying products was the right approach. Then a shift took place as they began to sell the idea that we deserved the product. McDonald’s became famous by telling us that “You deserve a break today.” Is it any wonder that a half-century later that we live in a culture where people feel they are entitled to every benefit possible, even the exclusion of work.

This entitlement mindset is not based upon a hierarchy of merit. You don’t earn entitlement. You are endowed with it. Even when the hard edge of genuine reality hits, people deny that they are responsible for their hardship. They expect some person or institution to step in and take care of their unfortunate circumstances. Ultimately, this produces a dependent class of citizens.

The Image and Death of the Real

Many theorists look at this combination of simulation, hyperreality, and social conditioning as the death of reality. Jean Baudrillard conceived of this as The Murder of the Real.*

“For reality is but a concept, or a principle, and by reality I mean the whole system of values connected with this principle. The Real as such implies an origin, an end, a past and a future, a chain of causes and effects, a continuity and a rationality. No real without these elements, without an objective configuration of discourse. And its disappearing is the dislocation of this whole constellation.”

The question of the real had been a topic of curiosity for me since my college days. During the fall of my senior year, I took an American Studies seminar course titled, Identity and Consciousness in the Modern World. Four students and our prof sat around a table for three hours every week talking about the kind of topics I am now writing about. No course requirements except to produce a project and presentation.

My project took the starting point of the notion that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” See how the image on the screen can take many forms with many different connotations? My project was about static images on billboards. Now billboards have been digitized, and the sequence of images cannot be reduced to a thousand words, much less words at all.

I did my research while on a trip with a group of friends to Boston for Thanksgiving. I took pictures of billboards in cities and along the highways. The difference was telling. In the city, the billboards were image-based. Pictures of beautiful people in tranquil countryside with the name of the product they were selling.

The classic advert The Marlboro Man is this kind of image-based billboard. Out on the highway, the billboards said, “Gas. Next Exit.” My conclusion was that a picture may be worth a thousand words, but a word is worth one word at highway speeds. Images convey a host of ideas. On the highway, the simpler the message, the better the communication.

This curiosity about the real in modern life eventually led me to write an essay called The Spectacle of the Real.

“Living in the world of the image and the spectacle is a world where reality is an appearance and beyond our capacity to determine what is this real, true, and the way things actually are. This is a hyper-real world that turns reality on its head.

The dilemma we face is not directly with the spectacular or simulated realities. Rather it is not having a ground upon which to distinguish between the real and the hyper-real. Some people may choose to believe in the reality of the hyper-real world, which leads further into the world of spectacle and its consumer-driven nature. But reality has a way of confronting such an artificial world with economic collapses, environmental catastrophes, and the experience of disease, brokenness, and loss.”

To recover reality is not to challenge the simulacrums of our time. But rather seek to understand the larger context in which these simulations/spectacles function.

Baudrillard writing a dozen years earlier amplifies this thought about the spectacle.

“Let us be clear about this: if the Real is disappearing, it is not because of a lack of it – on the contrary, there is too much of it. It is the excess of reality that puts an end to reality just as the excess of information puts an end to information, or the excess of communication puts an end to communication. … The last and most radical analysis of this problematic was achieved by Guy Debord and the Situationists, with their concept of spectacle and spectacular alienation. For Debord there was still a chance of disalienation, a chance for the subject to recover his or her autonomy and sovereignty. But now this radical Situationist critique is over. By shifting to a virtual world, we go beyond alienation, into a state of radical deprivation of the Other, or indeed of any otherness, alterity, or negativity. We move into a world where everything that exists only as idea, dream, fantasy, utopia will be eradicated, because it will immediately be realized, operationalized. Nothing will survive as an idea or a concept. You will not even have time enough to imagine. Events, real events, will not even have time to take place. Everything will be preceded by its virtual realization. We are dealing with an attempt to construct an entirely positive world, a perfect world, expurgated of every illusion, of every sort of evil and negativity, exempt from death itself. This pure, absolute reality, this unconditional realization of the world – this is what I call the Perfect Crime.”

The spectacle nature of this hyperreality cannot be critiqued as a competing interpretation of reality. It has deposed reality altogether. It is an all-consuming culture. It would seem that we are not even given a choice, as between Yes and No. We are enveloped in a total culture of simulation that transforms our perception of everything.

This culture is formed by four patterns of hyperreality. There are the simulations that replace reality. There is the seduction of the image that transforms our perception of what is real. There is the nurture of a religious-like consciousness of belief in the truth of what the spectacle represents. And there is the control function where those in power control the means of communication and information sharing insuring that the spectacle’s presentation of reality is the only valid one.

This pattern occurs in a linear, developmental progression. Each pattern builds upon the ones before it.

We live in a simulated world.

We are seduced to believe a certain way about who we are.

We develop a consciousness that becomes our perception of the world.

As a result, we are able to be controlled by the triggering of each strategy.

Let me describe each pattern briefly

Four Patterns of the Culture of Simulation

Simulation

Everything that is presented to us as a simulation means that reality is not available to us. We experience this simulation as a series of spectacles. The simulations are managed, moderated, and mediated through the vehicles of the media. This simulated world distracts us from reality as it envelopes us in conflicts and crises that demand our attention and engagement.

French theorist Jean Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation**, describes how the simulation of the real was something different.

“To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending. "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littre'). Therefore, pretending or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary." Is the simulator sick or not, given that he produces "true" symptoms?”(emphasis mine)

In The Spectacle of the Real, I follow Baudrillard’s description with this analysis.

“This is the game of appearances. In one instance, it is like the child pretending not to have the pilfered cookie that is in his pocket. Dissimulation is the lie that we learn as children where we hide what we have. It is a denial of reality, based on what everyone knows is true.

Simulation, on the other hand, is an imitation of the real.  Some simulators, like those that train pilots, are meant to mirror the real world as closely as possible. Other simulations are intended for the exact opposite, to create an alternative reality.”

As a result, the culture of simulation hides its true or real intentions. It is the beginning point of the subjection of us as persons to the control of the simulation.

Seduction

The seduction of hyperreality is the power of the image to frame our perception of the world. You can see this power in the 10-12 second TikTok videos. These videos do more to frame our reference to the world than a thousand books and hundreds of hours of classroom lectures. It is the power of the image that lures us into a world of a simulated reality. Beyond our experience, we come to believe that we can become anything we want, just as long as reality doesn’t interfere. What we are seduced to believe is a story, capturing our identity, defining our personhood.

Seduction operates in the same way that pornography does. The purpose of sexual pornography’s intent is to seduce us into believing that we are foremost sexual beings. It is an intoxicating world of personal expression. It seduces us to imagine how we might perform believing that technique is intimacy. To understand the reality of this world, watch the interviews that Mark Laita does with sex workers at his YouTube site, Soft White Underbelly.

The purpose of pornography is to define ourselves as sexual beings. The characterization can be applied to other forms of simulation. The social dynamic of politics is as powerful a form of pornography as any porn site. Religion, spirituality, psychology, and self-development all follow the same method of using images to define human personhood. Every category of culture has its form of pornography. To see it is to see how powerful the seduction of the simulation is and the seriousness of its effect upon our individual sense of identity

Consciousness

Consciousness is a very broad and multi-dimensional term. It incorporates the cultures of the East and the West, religion, and science. I’m using it here based on how I observe people over the course of my lifetime. As an ordained minister, I see the consciousness derived from the culture of simulation more clearly. In a world where religion has been marginalized, the religious impulse in people is expressed in a desire for a consciousness that provides access to a world of transcendent meaning.

The function of consciousness in this pattern of simulation is to frame one’s identity as a personal belief system. In this sense, consciousness is lived out in spiritual practices and disciplines. Listen to people speak about their spirituality, for example, it is often spoken of as separate from any institutional source. This spiritual consciousness operates within the boundary of the simulation.

If this consciousness represents a true understanding of a transcendent reality, then it must break the container of the simulation. It is similar to Neo’s choice in The Matrix between the Blue pill and the Red pill

The problem is that the simulation is a disconnect from reality. It can be said that the seducing of a person to believe a certain way about themselves is a kind of lie. As I believe we know, every lie requires more lies to support it and sustain it. This is why for many people their spirituality has created a false consciousness. What they believe about themselves and the world leads them into a state of uncertainty and fear. As a result, without an awareness of reality, we become subject to the simulation and its seduction and consciousness.

Control

Ultimately, the four patterns of simulation are designed to control each of us. Every spectacle presented to us every hour of every day is a moment of control over our self-perception. The spectacle is a reinforcing mechanism of the simulation. It is like a grand stimulus-response experiment. The spectacle is the stimulus. Our consciousness is the response. As a result, we are always under the control of the masters of the simulation. Ironically, they too are subject to the same patterns of simulation. There is now no one in control of the simulation. It is a culture that is self-replicating. Where simulation seems benign and welcoming, we allow it to invade our lives. Where the simulation brings hardship, we seek to retreat from it. In both senses, we are under its control.

As dire and apocalyptic as this seems, reality is always present. Every person, who is being seduced by some version of the simulation that encompasses the world, has within themselves the capacity to step back and take a look at what is going on. You may feel a certain way that seems out of character with your surroundings. What you feel is the world that awaits your choosing. We have been programmed to respond to simulations with compliance. And yet, reality lurks in the shadows.

Where Do We Find Reality?

While the above description characterizes the loss of reality, I also do not believe that reality is actually lost. Instead, I believe we are dealing with a loss of awareness of our agency as human beings. This is what the culture of simulation wants to foster, the loss of our human capacity to think for ourselves and act on behalf of others.

Harry Frankfort in his essay Freedom of the Will and The Concept of a Person describes how human beings are different from other animals.

“Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the-first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. ***

This difference is like when we realize that we are hungry. We decide to eat. An animal will eat what is available. We go to the refrigerator and decide what we would like to eat right now. Do we fix a hot dog with some sauerkraut, an omelet, or pretzels and beer? We decide based upon a wide range of considerations that never fully surfaces. Our second-order decisions operate where intuition and self-awareness meet.

This second order-desire distinguishes our capacity for free choice. This free choice doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It happens in the context of the intersection of reality with simulation. Our choice can transcend the culture of simulation. We can choose to reject the simulation. We can choose to detoxify ourselves from a marginalized self-identity. We can choose to free ourselves from claustrophobic self-consciousness. We can choose to exercise our freedom as persons to choose not to be controlled by a culture of simulation. This freedom doesn’t come easily, but it can be realized.

What then do we do to discover the freedom of our human agency? What do we do to reclaim reality for our lives and for our world? What does that even look like in “real” life?

In my next column, I will describe a corresponding framework of reality that offers an alternative to the simulation – seduction – consciousness – control culture that dominants our world

*  Jean Baudrillard, The Murder of the Real from The Vital Illusion, Columbia University Press, 2000.

** Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, The University of Michigan Press, 1994.

***  Harry G. Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 1. (Jan. 14, 1971), pp. 5-20.

Part Two

The Difference in Context between the Simulation and Direct Experience

Context Matters

This series that I am writing on Reality and the Culture of Simulation is about Context. My purpose is to get at the question of how we identify ourselves. Are we defined by the socio-cultural context of social media? Or do we see ourselves as separate from The Spectacle of the Real?

It is an important question as it gets at not only Who I am or you are, but also How we come to define meaning in our lives. By meaning, I’m not looking at a string of words that distinguish us. Instead, I refer to Where we choose to participate in all facets of our life, and more importantly, What is our contribution to the world, our work, our family, and our local community.

I am articulating an understanding of context that helps us distinguish the real from the hyper-real. When we grasp the real in our lives, our perspective on who we are becomes more complex and nuanced. By complex, I mean more dynamic and simple, not more complicated and confusing. This is Why in the development of the Circle of Impact model, it is essential that we can define the Impact that we want to create. By impact, I simply mean a change that makes a difference that matters.

What is that Impact for you? It may not be possible to identify that until the difference between Simulation and Reality is understood.

The cultural context of Simulation organizes us socially. In the following story, politics intrudes into the relationship that I have with two guys. In one context, our past as colleagues in business is not sufficient to withstand a seeming difference in perspective. With the other, also a colleague, our friendship grew out of our shared work and has for decades transcended all the cultural forces that are aligned within the Simulation.

I am NOT Insane

A couple of years ago I was visiting a friend who had moved with his family away from the community where I lived. I was traveling across the country and stopped to spend a day with them. Over the years, we had many conversations about our businesses and especially about how we were choosing to take our businesses in new directions. Near the end of the day, he brought up the subject of Donald Trump. We had never had a political discussion. Though I knew generally his political orientation, he presented to me a litany of accusations about President Trump that if true would mean that he was the Devil Incarnate. I told him that I was neither a fan nor a hater of Trump. I simply saw him for what he was a flawed man like other men who was a disrupter of the political status quo. My friend tore into me with accusations that I was insane for not seeing things his way. I was taken back by his treatment of me. As I left to continue my journey, I knew that our friendship was almost irretrievably broken.

Several months later, the same thing happened again with an old friend. His litany of accusations was exactly the same word-for-word, line-by-line as my former friend. It was clear to me that both these guys had been programmed to see President Trump in this way. I made two points to my friend leading to a three-hour conversation that advanced our friendship because at its core is mutual respect.

I told him that his diatribe against Trump matched exactly what had been said to me by another person that he did not know. I told him,

“You know none of this by direct experience. You have been told this, and told so many times, you believe that these are your thoughts. They are not.”

Thankfully he heard me. Our friendship survived and now thrives at a deeper level than ever before.

This story illustrates the culture of simulation. Both friends were subjected to the seduction of believing that they were authorities on Donald Trump the man. I know a guy who had worked for the Trump organization in Manhattan. He knew the man. His direct experience presented a very different perspective than these two colleagues of mine.

The Spectacle Nature of Simulation

The four-fold nature of the culture of simulation – Simulation-Seduction-Consciousness-Control – programs and molds us to be a vehicle for the simulation in the world.

In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard describes how the portrayal of what is real becomes the hyper-real.

To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending. "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littre'). Therefore, pretending or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary." Is the simulator sick or not, given that he produces "true" symptoms? (emphasis mine)

The power of the image drives simulation. It is like a film. We are characters given a script and a role for every scene. And, yet, we don’t know that we have been given a script. It is like my friends above. They were given a script to use against anyone who disagreed with the dominant narrative about Donald Trump.

The simulation is not a documentary film that preserves reality. As characters, we each have a role to play in the advancement of the narrative of the simulation. It is not our story. It is no one’s story. It is not even like a film because then we could distinguish between the story on the screen and the reality of our lives. It is more like a utopian sci-fi fantasy set in contemporary times. It is like The Truman Show.

In The Truman Show, Truman lives in a simulation. He thinks that what he experiences is real. The reality is all these people are employees of a corporate media company. The simulation has to be maintained because it generates so much income for the company. Over time Truman begins to suspect that something is not quite right.

Simulations begin to break down when the veil between truth and fiction drops. The Simulation that we live in is the lie that reality does not exist. With every big lie, more lies have to be told. At some point, reality transcends the lie, and direct experience intrudes into our lives. It happened to Truman. It can happen to us, too.

This is the nature of the Simulation. We live in it as fish live in water. And like those in The Matrix who have taken the Blue pill. It is the context of our lives. Many, if not most, people cannot see the hyper-reality of the simulation.

Knowing Through Direct Experience

In this sense, we are the product of the Simulation. Through our eyes and like-clicks, we become the valued commodity of the Simulation. Just as in The Truman Show and The Wizard of Oz, there are people and computer programs behind the screen messaging us to produce the correct narrative response to every spectacle every day. This is the programming that is behind the delusional belief in Donald Trump as evil. Because it is a core principle of the Simulation, no dissent or variation of opinion can be allowed.

Have you ever had a “gut” feeling that something isn’t right? As if something is missing or eschew, out of alignment, or just not quite right. We have all felt this way. Where does this feeling come from? When you have it, do you trust your “gut” and follow your instincts? Like Truman, are you looking for cameras?

Even as we live in the context of the Simulation, we also live in the context of reality. Machines fail. People misunderstand. You wear a mask or get a shot, and yet, you still get sick. Reality surrounds us and transcends the simulation.

As I have worked at understanding these two contexts over the past decade, I have come to appreciate the importance of direct experience. By direct, I mean immediately present, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The world of direct experience is still subject to interpretation by the influence of the simulation. We can misunderstand the nature and purpose of a direct experience. Yet, if you hold up the idea - think of holding out in your hand in front of you at eyesight, and in your hand is the idea that there is more to life than what you know - you have a chance of seeing beyond the simulation to what is real.

Discovering the Real

We access the meaning of direct experience by asking questions. The questions I’m presenting have helped people clarify what is happening in their lives. The key to understanding is knowing what you can do that makes a difference that matters. The impact of our lives is the reality that our lives have meaning that orients our life something positive and beneficial. Our lives are more than just a simulated story, but something measurable from direct experience.

Let’s return to the story of my two colleagues.  We can see a difference between them. With the first guy, his anti-Trump political narrative canceled out any direct experience that we shared. He had been Seduced to believe that he was an agent of truth about President Trump. He believed in his mission to convince people. He failed in his mission to convince me because I work hard every day to fight off the pressures to be seduced and controlled by the Simulation.

The direct experience that my other friend and I have shared for twenty-five years means that our friendship transcends politics. Not only do we share a common purpose in our work, but we have also been there for one another when we needed it.

Direct experience gets tied into the quality of relationships that we have. The essential problem with the Simulation is that all aspects of our lives exist in submission to the Simulation. The narrative demands our allegiance and our submission. As a result, we develop a religious-like consciousness to counter the psychic trauma that results. By asking questions, we can discover reality. When we ask them with one another, a shared reality of direct experience grows to break down the effects of the Simulation.

Five Questions That Everyone Must Ask

The following questions identified as The Five Questions That Everyone Must Ask have the purpose of bringing clarity to our lives and focusing on specifically what we must do, in this instance, to reclaim reality.

1. What has Changed? How am I in Transition?

2. What is my Impact?

3. Who am I Impacting?

4. What Opportunities do I have because of the Impact that I am having?

5. What Problems have I created? What Obstacles do I face?

Ask the questions in this manner.

Ask them every day about something.

Do not spend too much time asking them.

Keep a record of your answers

The Reality Context for Asking.

Looking backward in assessment.

Looking forward in anticipation.

Identifying what I need to do right now.

Planning for a meeting, whether with a client or your team.

The Results of Asking Questions about Direct Experience

Patterns of behavior emerge. A pattern is something that repeats itself. It becomes meaningful when the pattern is seen across a spectrum of situations, people, and locations. The fact that these two colleagues of mine had the exact same diatribe against Donald Trump was meaningful. It said nothing about the president and everything about their sources of information.

From Patterns of Simulation to Patterns of Direct Experience

The quality measure for the simulation is control and compliance. The quality measure for judging direct experience, for understanding reality, is simple based upon the Circle of Impact model.

IDEAS: from Confusion to clarity of values and purpose

RELATIONSHIPS: from division to respect, trust, and mutual accountability

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE: from efficiency to impact

SOCIAL STRUCTURE:  from a culture of crisis and conflict to one of shared meaning for impact.

In my next column, I’ll take the four-fold framework of simulation and describe its complement for the reality of direct experience.

Part Three

Learning to Observe and Understand Cultures

This post is a continuation of a series on the cultures of Simulation and Reality, (1) & (2). We look at this through the lens of culture. Culture is a popular subject in leadership circles today. It is viewed as another strategic asset for leading an organization. If a leader can create an organization’s culture, it validates the power of the position and the person.

I disagree with this assumption. I believe a senior leader can only join and lead the culture that already exists. Even an entrepreneur who starts a company will have to establish a culture through the relationships of the people who join him or her in the endeavor. Understanding how cultures form and are sustained is essential if we are to understand the four-fold nature of the culture of Simulation and by extension the culture of Reality.

Observing Organizational Cultures

My observations of people and organizations convince me that culture is not a strategic asset that can be deployed as a change process. Culture is a product of human creativity within networks of relationships. The material and the ideological develop out of human interaction through ideas and practices that are shared, accepted, then adopted by people. Culture creation is not a mechanical fix to a problem of disagreement between people or a breakdown of the functioning of the organization’s systems. Culture is the foundation of an organization.  

I came to this perspective on organizational culture by observing how organizations function. The patterns of behavior that led to the development of my Circle of Impact model of leadership ultimately pointed me to how a social structure forms. I am using the term social structure in a similar manner as I do in talking about culture.  

My observation process requires engagement, conversation, and reflection of what is actually taking place. This is a process of direct experience, not of abstract brainstorming. My methodology is the following.

By observing patterns of behavior of organizational leaders.

In my research over the years, I identified three distinct patterns that can be found across the spectrum of organizations. One was a lack of clarity of thought. Second, relationships that lacked respect, trust, and mutual accountability. And third, the inability of leaders to define the impact that their organization sought to have.

These patterns point to poorly sustained cultures and broken structures. These patterns are so evident to me that one or more are always present in the organizations where I have contact. This is not a judgment on any particular person or organization. Rather, it is the recognition that everyone of us and every human institution is always flawed in some way, always breaking under stress. Many organizations cannot see this because they have never operated with an alignment between the dimensions of Ideas, Relationships, and Structure. When alignment is achieved, a culture of shared leadership develops. In our present situation, living in the midst of a global culture of Simulation, this alignment is very difficult to achieve.

By learning to think for yourself through your own self-education.

Recently realized that almost everything that I have done during my career I was not trained to do. Being an independent learner taught me how to observe and find meaning in patterns of behavior that reveal what is actually going on in situations. It is why it was easy for me to see the basic problem in the COVID-19 response as a system problem, not a public health one. I described this perspective in my short book, All Crises Are Local: Understanding the COVID-19 Global Pandemic.

I studied systems theory on my own, and then applied it in my work. Culture is a systems function of human interaction. It touches every aspect of an organization. Unless you do your own research, you may think that the Simulation is reality. It isn’t. It is the simulation of reality, a false reality, and one designed to confuse, divide, and stop you from creating an impact.  How do I know this? Define the impact that you personally create through the Simulation.

By talking to people of all types.

Of all the things that I do to observe what is happening in the world, simply talking to people is by far the most important. Every person has a story to tell. Every story has meaning and insight that can be valued. Every encounter can be filled with affirmation and validation. Several years ago, I realized that the core strength of my work was these encounters with people. I invite myself into a conversation where I ask people to share their experiences. It is born out of respect, and before the conversation finishes trust and mutual understanding have been established.

The curiosity that drives my encounters with people, also fuels my desire to learn new ideas. When I hear a story or an anecdote about something that is unfamiliar to me, I begin to do the research to gain a significant enough understanding to intelligently ask questions that help me learn more. The deep lesson is that you cannot gain an understanding of the world by just reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching lectures on YouTube. You have to develop the facility to talk with people. I know that people do not do this because they fear looking ignorant. We are all ignorant about most things in life. It is only when we realize that our lack of understanding is the best entre’ into getting to know people and learning about the world. It is how real self-awareness happens.

Understanding What Culture Is

These practices of observation helped me to see the real origin of culture. It comes from the interaction of people where there is a shared purpose to their relationships. I call this a persistent, residual culture of values. As a culture, it persists because it resides in the relationships of shared experience. This culture is found in organizations where people tend to have a long tenure as employees.

I once did a values statement process for a large company that had gone through an executive leadership transition. On my first day with the team selected to work with me, I asked: “How far back in time do we have to do to when this was a happy company?” The union president said, “Twenty years. We were a family back then.” This is how a persistent, residual culture of values outlives twenty years of executive leadership that was not interested in the company’s residual culture.

The wisest leaders learn to identify, join, and nurture this residual culture. This is why I do not believe you can treat culture as a mechanical device to leverage improvement in organizations.

Before we can understand the culture of Simulation or the culture of Reality, we need to embrace the idea that we can not only learn about culture, but enhance it through our leadership initiatives.

In the next post, I dig into the origin and nature of the culture of Simulation with a comparison to the four-fold nature of the culture of Reality. It completes the description that I have begun here.

Part Four

Reclaiming Reality

The Medium is The Message

This is the title of a famous chapter by Marshall McLuhan from his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McLuhan was one of the first to capture what we are witnessing now. A culture dominated and mediated through electronic technology.

“In a culture like ours long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced in our affairs by each extension of ourselves or by any new technology.” *

Digital technology is an extension of ourselves in ways that the old analog systems we live with could never be. The Simulation is the medium of digital technology. It has become a ubiquitous global culture as its reach through social media, smartphones, and digital communication extends our reach globally. We have now a globally distributed culture of connections.

Three years after writing The Medium is the Message, McLuhan published The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. It was a dual release as a book of images with statements in a wide variety of type fonts, accompanied by an audio version. Here’s a trailer for the audio version.

“’All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.” **

The Simulation is the next, possibly, the last, maybe even the most complete extension of ourselves as human beings. It is an all-consuming environment where we lose our individuality. We disappear, becoming a sign and a symbol of the Simulation. You can see it in social media when a particularly ugly spectacle takes place. Post after post repeats the same message. It clearly shows that the Simulation is a vehicle for the mass programming of reactions. You can see that there is no thought. Just an emotional outburst to justify one’s righteous belief in being correct. The Culture of Simulation, through its seduction and consciousness-raising, turns normal everyday people into political sleeper cells who have been waiting to be triggered into relevance.  We are no longer fully human in the sense that our ancestors were.

We are more of a product feature of The Simulation. The film The Matrix depicts this subjection of people to serfdom as they are farmed as an energy source.

We are also subjects of a similar machine. Instead of being an energy source, we provide the validation as consumers of the products and political ideologies that drive The Simulation.

Growing Detachment from Reality

Where we are today did not just appear out of thin air. It has been a steady march toward The Simulation for centuries. The steps can be described as inching further and further away from reality. Albert Borgmann described this process in his book, Holding On To Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium. *** This cultural progression leads to today.

Borgman focuses on the role of information in our engagement with the world. It touches on the question of how we understand the Simulation in relation to reality. He speaks of information and reality in three ways.

There is Natural information that is about Reality.

There is Cultural information that is for Reality.

There is Technological information that becomes as Reality.

How do we make sense of this?

You read something online about a person you know. You are intrigued with questions. What you see there doesn’t make sense to you. It feels like it is out of sync with reality. Your knowledge of the person through direct experience provides you with information about the real person that you know. But you have questions.

You begin to dig. You find information, news accounts, and a podcast interview that shows you a side of the person you didn’t know. This cultural information adds context and dimension to the person that you know. Now, you are disturbed because the person you know through direct experience seems not to be the person who is being describe online. You now have doubts about your relationship to this person.

You find that your social media feed is sending more and more information to you about this person that you thought you knew. You are disappointed. You are also having doubts about whether you can trust anyone you know. The online information about this person with whom you have had a direct relationship has now created a totally new reality for knowing him.

This is how The Simulation seduces us. It presents us with information that is intended to challenge our grasp on reality. If the seduction works, then you cut yourself off from this person. You possibly become an advocate for the cause that counters the story of this man. After all, you may feel traumatized by being fooled. What is worse than being fooled, admitting that you were?

This is how we lose touch with reality. We counter this scenario by valuing direct experience over the simulated experience online. In this instance, you go to this person and ask about what you have seen. You may discover that there is an ulterior motive behind the reports that you read and viewed. There is a political agenda aimed at destroying this person’s reputation. This is how the Simulation works.

Albert Borgmann offers.

“… when it comes to leading our lives in contemporary culture, the question of the presence of things and persons is very much open. The leveling distinction between direct and indirect knowledge and of the difference between the nearness and farness of reality is not the result of a wrong move in epistemology (how we know things), but a reflection of the historic decline of meaning. Cultural landmarks, dimensions, and distinctions are dissolving. Everyone is become indifferently related to everything and everyone else. This process began with the modern era, and it is now approaching its culmination through information technology.”

Borgmann wrote those words over twenty years ago. He wrote them before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube were created. McLuhan provided his perspective of the coming culture of electronic communication sixty years ago. And here we are faced with a Culture of Simulation that detaches us from reality and, in many ways, one another.

A Contrast in Cultures

We can see this contrast in the difference between the historical culture of the United States and the global monoculture of the Simulation. The United States’ motto is E Pluribus Unum. We are a nation of many states, regions, and distinctive cultures united by the values and principles of the Constitution of the United States. The global monoculture of the Simulation rejects the distinctive cultural diversity of national and local origins. It favors a global administrative culture of control. The contrast between the global Center and the local Periphery is similar to what Goethe wrote two centuries ago, “Divide and rule the politician cries, unite and lead is the watchword of the wise. “

This contrast was presented to me recently as I made a three-week, 15-state, 5,000-mile trip across the country. The geographic, ethnic, economic, and social diversity of the nation presents itself at every turn. Whether talking to two miners in Green River, Wyoming, a psychotherapist in St. Louis, a corporate executive in Dallas, a university professor in Logan, Utah, a bartender in Ft. Collins, Colorado, a coffee shop barista in Laramie Wyoming, a hotel night clerk in Grand Prairie, Nebraska, or an agri-business office manager from Florida, conversations about our individual life experiences showed me how much our life experiences have in common. When we turn away from The Simulation, to know Reality requires that life cannot be lived without direct experience. It is this reality that I find is the check against the subversion of ourselves by The Simulation.

This culture began to emerge in its current form through the disintegration of traditional beliefs and practices beginning in the 1960s. A culture of rebellion and social dynamism emerged that was peripheral to the central socio-political culture of the country. As a movement, it showed that there was a persistent, residual culture of values that had many different expressions around the country. It lacked a societal center. As a result, it remained at the periphery and was never able to transform from a negative, often destructive reaction to American culture and the politics of the time to foster a positive, creative unity for society. Ultimately this peripheral culture found its center in The Simulation through its commodification by corporate business and the political parties. As it became a part of the culture of The Simulation, it became the primary representative of the global monoculture of The Simulation.

The old traditional culture lost its Center as it turned to create localized centers of “persistent, residual cultures of values.” It was not a global monoculture but a culture of local communities, ethnic origins, neighbors, families, and individuals. In many respects, it didn’t have a chance against the power of the image of the screen and the marketing budgets that saw the creation of a mass consumer culture based on the socio-political values of The Simulation. 

The Simulation, therefore, is a non-emergent, artificial marketing campaign of the first order. Its seductive power convinces people that their participation in The Simulation constitutes a liberation from past oppressive cultures. The reality is The Simulation brings its own oppressive culture in order to foster a global monoculture of control.

The Center of American society can no longer hold the Periphery.

Without a Periphery, a unified society based in a persistent, residual culture of values is not possible.

The Culture of Reality

As I noted earlier, reality is the domain of direct experience. We learn from it. We embrace its adventure and challenge to broaden our experience of life. Here is a four-fold model that corresponds to the culture of Simulation.

In this sequence, Reality is the context for testing ourselves in the world. As we test ourselves, we learn what we can and cannot do. We learn how to function in diverse situations. We learn to discern truth from fiction. In essence, we discover ourselves in action and participation. We are not ideological abstractions socially bound to a global monoculture. Instead, our sense of identity expands as we experience life.

I am not universalizing my own experience to rationalize the value of direct experience. Yet, I have gone through so many transitions, or tests, in my life that I know I have a far greater capacity to make a difference than I would have ever thought fifty years ago. The reward from the choice to learn by direct experience is self-knowledge. To understand ourselves is not to identify a label by which to define ourselves in public. No label ever completely encompasses the richness of each individual. With this self-knowledge, we can enter into any context and know how to respond to the opportunities and challenges that await us.

The four-fold nature of the culture of reality as it relates to us as individuals is this.

Reality

Reality transcends every aspect of our lives. We’ll never, ever, embrace the fullness of reality. It can be harsh and rewarding in the same moment. Reality is the context in which the Simulation operates within. The Simulation denies that reality exists which its Control function is the experience of reality that we all share.

Testing Identity

The testing of our identities develops us to be the very best persons we can be. We take tests. We climb mountains. We swim long distances. We read long essays. We give presentations. We study new languages. We travel to foreign places where we are unfamiliar. Every day is filled with moments where our sense of identity is tested. As it does, we learn who we are and who we are not. As a result, confidence and resilience grow.

Self-Awareness

With Self-awareness, we translate what we learned through the testing of life, into a presence of mind that shows us the value we bring to a situation. We learn to live to participate and contribute. We long to become persons of impact who make a difference that matters. We are not conforming to the control function of society. We are taking initiative to better society. With our self-awareness, we learn how to talk with anyone regardless of how different from us they are. We learn not only to engage them in conversation but possibly to develop relationships of shared respect, trust, and mutual accountability. As we live this way, we become our full, complete, and real selves. And as we do, we come to see that our potential for making a difference that matters is constantly growing and expanding.

Freedom

Instead of living a life under the control of the global monoculture of the Simulation, we are free to create and fulfill the life we are given. As we do, we discover that our lives are not meaningless but full of meaning.

I came to this perspective long ago. It was born in my spiritual journey as a believer in Jesus Christ. It has less to do with institutions and rituals but with the spiritual nature of reality. The Apostle Paul, in the second chapter of his Ephesian letter, says, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” To embrace reality, rather than The Simulation means that we embrace the idea that life is found in living out a purpose that we have discovered through living each day.

Almost four decades ago, as I delved into the study of leadership, I found myself then pushing back against a version of The Simulation where leadership is a role and title in an organization. It was not my experience, not my direct experience with people who had made a difference in my life. Out of my experience came the conviction that “all leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.”

The culture of Reality is a culture of participation and contribution, of discovered meaning, and a life of fulfilled potential. This is not what the culture of Simulation offers us. 

******

*  Marshall McLuhan,

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man - https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Marshall-McLuhan-dp-0451627652/dp/0451627652/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1653482843

**  The Medium is the Massage – Book - https://www.amazon.com/Medium-Massage-Inventory-Effects/dp/B0000CO31L/ref=sr_1_11?crid=37KYIIAENG2YV&keywords=marshall+mcluhan&qid=1653483031&sprefix=marshall+McL%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-11

Audio - https://www.amazon.com/music/player/albums/B00V82TCP8?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1653483167&sr=8-1-fkmr2

Trailer - vimeo.com/148512573

Side A - youtu.be/-jqmDTGsGL0

Side B - youtu.be/HU1veD0rEFY

***  Albert Borgmann, Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, The University Chicago Press, 2000.

Part Five

The Spectacle of the Real comes to Uvalde, Texas. What should leaders do?

This is the last in a series that explores the Culture of Simulation as the context for most of our lives. A facet of this culture is The Spectacle of the Real which is a manufactured, hyper-real response to an event. Politicians and media figures who unleash The Spectacle of the Real politicize an event before facts are known or analyzed by the authorities who are directly involved. They politicized these events because the culture of Simulation is a culture of exploitation and extraction.

The Spectacle of the Real comes to Uvalde

The shootings and deaths of children in Uvalde, Texas are a tragic example. The community’s loss is NOT The Spectacle of the Real. The public beyond the community of Uvald’s response is. The event is treated as a national or a global event because it can be used as a political lever. It extracts from the tragedy commercial benefits. Eyes on the screen, whether with social media or cable news, translate to a financial return. What is the basis for extracting money from a local tragedy? A face and a voice on the screen who has no direct ties to the event.

The massacre is a local tragedy. We should let the families and citizens in Uvalde grieve as a community. When politicians and public figures declare that “Something must be done!” they are not saying, “Leave the families alone.” They are saying, “We have not politicized this local crisis enough.”

This is what The Spectacle of the Real does. It takes the direct experience of a group of people and turns it into a spectacle of comment and righteous anger. The result is that the people in local communities who would normally be on the front line of care, law enforcement, and mental health professionals, now know that a national, even global, public is always watching over their shoulder. It ultimately means that The Spectacle of the Real, whether intentionally or not, creates the conditions for more of these events. YouTubers and the news media can no longer be considered the watchdogs of our society. The citizens in local communities must now recognize that they have to watch after the community because everyone else is waiting and watching for them to fail.

The Impact On The Leadership of Local Communities

The culture of Simulation changes how leadership is conducted in a local community. There are two types of leaders that we need to see. There are institutional leaders, whether elected, appointed, hired, or in a position because of local longevity. Then there is everyone else.

I see that “All leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.” In a local setting, it means anyone can step forward and take some kind of action that matters. I can’t and won’t critique the local leaders of Uvalde. They don’t need me adding to the confusion of The Spectacle of the Real that has invaded their community. However, as a member of your local community, you can begin to think about what should I, my family, my neighbors, and the rest of our community begin to do to mitigate the potential of a tragedy like we’ve seen.

YOU need to take initiative to care for YOUR local community.

We all need to take our eyes off other people’s lives and communities and focus on our own communities. If you want to contribute to making something better, you start locally. Don’t first think politics.

Think - Build Relationships of Respect, Trust, and Mutual Accountability.

If you don’t have those kinds of relationships, why? You and everyone in your community are responsible. If your elected officials don’t have those kinds of relationships, why? You are still responsible. Even in the midst of failed leadership, you are responsible. I am too. We all are.

Last night, I was sitting at a bar eating dinner in a community that is not my community. The woman and her husband turned to me and started a conversation. We talked about gathering a circle of their friends to talk about how they can support each other and their community during these strange times. You can do that too.

Taking personal responsibility for your community means that your desire for justice can have a direct outlet that goes beyond just hitting the like button and leaving an emotional outburst. When dealing with the people and places where we have a direct connection, the impact that we can have is tangible. You can go touch it. It is real. I know. It happens to me every day. Why? Because I am intentional about it.

Here’s the Problem

There is just enough that is real in the culture of Simulation to seduce you into thinking you are making a difference. Because it feels like it does matter, all those likes and comments make us feel influential, needed, and valuable. The Simulation is really an empty experience because there is very little that is direct about it. This is why it requires the creation of a religious-like consciousness. It feeds a false sense of righteousness. Because it is really empty of impact, it leads further and further away from reality. Once you have been programmed to respond as a member of the shock troops of The Spectacle of the Real, then you are under their control. You have lost your individuality and your agency as a person.

At the organizational level, the effect of the Spectacle is the loss of authenticity and trust that is essential for local leaders and institutions to serve their communities well.

Am I saying that your participation in the Spectacle of the Real is going destroy your community? Yes, it can.

Particularly, if you never have a tragedy like what happened in Uvalde. The community will slowly sink into disconnection as it focuses on the Simulation of global issues.

A false consciousness will take over your community as it divides along social and political lines. The Simulation rids the members of communities of the feeling of being directly responsible for where they live. Every relationship becomes a transactional one: Thinking - What am I getting out of this?

All the masters of the Simulation want from you is your compliant voice echoing the narrative that they release through politicians and the news media. They don’t want persons of impact. They don’t want people who think for themselves. They don’t want you to feel responsible. They want you to be dependent and quiet until they need your voice.

Am I saying that you have been programmed to respond as you do? Yes, I am saying that you have.

You have been fooled and seduced. As a friend told me, “People would rather be fooled than admit that they have been fooled.”

I am also saying that you can change. You can change your mind, change your lifestyle, change your relationships, change your local commitments, or, simply put, change your life. You do not have to be dependent, living in a seductive dependency upon some social narrative that leads to a false sense of how you are. You can know yourself and be able to enter into any situation and thrive.

This is the difference between The Culture of Simulation and The Culture of Reality.

What Am I To Do As A Local Citizen?

Be careful in what you say.

Speak authoritatively only about what you have direct experience, and only about that experience. As I was told as a child, “You have two ears and one mouth. Use them accordingly.”

Be informed. Don’t Trust Hearsay / Gossip.

Learn about what is happening in your community regarding how law enforcement and mental health professionals are addressing issues in your community. Look at it this way. Social media is a gossip platform. You trade in gossip. It will come back at you eventually.

Be engaged with the people in your community.

Go meet elected officials. Volunteer in agencies that are addressing local human needs. Do your own survey. Ask people what they think. Listen. Ask questions to clarify. Thank them. And tell them what you are learning.

What Am I To Do As A Local Organizational Leader?

Do the three listed above. You are first and foremost a local citizen. Second, you are a local leader.

Be realistic about any change initiative.

When the call goes out “To Do Something”, follow up with a question, “What is the impact that you want?” Impact is a change that makes a difference that matters.  

Be careful of grand gestures.

The temptation when a crisis erupts is to do something to demonstrate your care and concern. It raises expectations that make it more difficult to implement needed change. Instead, do small things that matter. The fifth principle of the Circle of Impact model of leadership is “Start Small. Act Locally. Share Globally. Take the Long View.”

Be the champion of your people.

Champion people, not the community. The difference in focus is that people identify with people and identify communities with organizations. They need to see that you believe in them. I have learned that “when you believe in them to be persons of impact, they will begin to believe that they can be persons of impact.”

Be humble and focus on the values that unite the community.

Don’t play politics. Constantly remind people of the values that unite them as a community. The community already is constituted by “a persistent, residual culture of values.” How do you know what those values are? In every conversation, you have just to ask, “What are the values that matter most to you?”

Be resolute and resilient in strengthening your community in preparation for a crisis.

Assume that The Spectacle of the Real is ready and waiting to come to your front door. Just as most communities have crisis response protocols for organizations, create them for your people. Prepare them to be resolute and resilient with the moment arrives.

The Transformation of Leadership

There has been a split and a shift in how leadership is understood and conducted in our society.

The shift that I see is how institutional leaders feel less and less accountable to the people that they lead. They are now accountable to the masters of the Simulation.

The split that I see is between the executive level of an organization and the managerial and worker level in organizations.   

The split and the shift have had the effect of eroding the integrity and trust in the relationship between people and organizations. As a result, greater pressure is placed on managers to lead their worker teams.

This split and shift mean that there is an opportunity to elevate the leadership capacities of people. The Spectacle of the Real points to communities becoming leadership-starved. To reverse this, we need to help your local community members to gain the confidence that they can take responsibility for the welfare of their community.

The future is local. Now is the time for local leaders to lead their communities to find new strength and hope for the future.