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I recall some of us working as Editorial Staff for one of the Surfing publications, discussing that the next strep in the evolution of Professional Surfing would be to create location driven contests where the end result would be a widely disseminated piece of entertainment media. That was around 1997 I believe. Most sports and indeed culture have followed suit. The rise of commentators as experts later coincided with the collapse of Publishing and the removal of Journalistic expertise. What resulted was a programming of the audience by nonexperts and insertion of prepurchased POVs into the viewers, which spread virally throughout culture, and created exactly what Eco describes. Many of us saw what headed in. That comedic film "Idiocracy" seems to have been somewhat prophetic.

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This is possibly my main preoccupation right now. Identifying what can be considered 'real' as opposed to some form of artiface. I'll be linking to your piece in my latest.

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It is a big deal, and growing bigger. In many respects, COVID, Trump, Ukraine, The Great Reset and the Biden presidency are examples of socio-political constructions of reality. The latest version is that of "nonmateriality." It is a set up for a transhumanist future.

Here are two columns where I describe the sequence of steps taken to get to this point. Transcendence, Immanence, and Materiality - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/transcendence-immanence-and-materiality. The Man in the Mirror - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-man-in-the-mirror. They set up my The Spectacle of the Real post from ten years ago - https://edbrenegar.substack.com/p/the-spectacle-of-the-real.

Thanks for commenting.

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What you wrote back then seems to have come pass in spades, especially the way the news media has degenerated, and how hard core porn is now ubiquitious.

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I’ve been looking at this for a long time. Trying to make sense of what I observed. I saw it in patterns of behavior where leaders actions did not make sense because it clearly wasn’t in the best interest of their organization. It was finally a decade ago when I came across Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard’s writings that it began to make sense. I think the case can be made that this has been going on for maybe 300, maybe even 500 years. It was the advent of photography, radio, television, and finally digital technology that finally came to fruition. So, when The Matrix came out two decades ago, it was science fiction. Today, it is science fact.

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November 22, 2023
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I hear what you are against. What are you for and how is that to be achieve? How many deaths are you willing to accept to achieve your vision of society. It is really easy to be a critic. Quite difficult to solve problems on the scale you describe. And yet that is what we must do.

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Ed, you've hit the nail on the head here. I've explored similar trains of thought myself, and come to similar conclusions. We live in a world of artifice, which (among other things) disconnects us from our true nature (call it soul, spirit, whatever term you prefer).

More thoughts on this subject here:

https://dystopianliving.substack.com/p/we-are-living-in-mythic-times

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November 2, 2022
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Then you’ll like this from Thomas Merton.

"A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy."

"There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God's inner life. He has made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity we best fulfill our own capacities to act and to be."

"Yet there can never be happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not because love requires a

return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love."

"Hence the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself."

"The gift of love is the gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received."

From: No Man Is An Island, by Thomas Merton

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