Reality and the Culture of Simulation (4)

Reclaiming Reality

May 26, 2022

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 extend 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 the 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.

Similarly, we are 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 that said that 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