RE: The Age of Distrust

[holoz0r]

Baudrillard. Not his "end of history", as placing fin at the end of chapters: The Berlin Wall, The Twin Towers, The Pandemic, such globally "influential" events are happening with increasing frequency that perhaps, in the coming years, we will become disillusioned to the paradigm shifts of the world; the ever turning pages just repeating a single word: lies.

Trust has to come from a place of respect. I feel as though there is a great divide in respect between the electors and the elected. There's even bigger a gap between the electors and the appointed, the bureaucracy that informs, that helps decide, that gives the illusion of a choice.

Democracy only works if it changes things. The bureaucracy, advisors and minds are still the same, regardless of who holds the honorific title of "leader".

Comments

[ericvancewalton]

I've never read Baudrillard but it sounds like I need to. Where do you recommend I begin?

Respect is, indeed, important when it comes to trust. I've heard, time and time again, that a lot of people running for office (especially candidates from the old money elite-class) look down upon and even despise the electorate.

[holoz0r]

I start the super lazy way:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/

The Sexy one is Simulacra and Simulations, but he is becoming increasingly (if that was more possible) relevant on his interrogations of society. Quote from the site above, below.

Baudrillard, however, declared the end of political economy and thus the end of the Marxist problematic and of modernity itself:

The end of labor. The end of production. The end of political economy. The end of the signifier/signified dialectic which facilitates the accumulation of knowledge and of meaning, the linear syntagma of cumulative discourse. And at the same time, the end simultaneously of the exchange value/use value dialectic which is the only thing that makes accumulation and social production possible. The end of linear dimension of discourse. The end of the linear dimension of the commodity. The end of the classical era of the sign. The end of the era of production (Baudrillard 1993a: 8).

The discourse of “the end” signifies his announcing a postmodern break or rupture in history. People are now, Baudrillard claims, in a new era of simulation in which social reproduction (information processing, communication, and knowledge industries, and so on) replaces production as the organizing form of society.

Sounds like our current time, no? He is "hard" to read... because French - but oh so prophetic.

[ericvancewalton]

Thanks for the link. This gives me something new to dig into and I'm excited about that. I bought the paperback version of Simulacra and Simulations on Amazon. He totally predicted our current time. It amazes me how some people can so clearly see the direction a society is headed. How have I never heard of this philosopher? Oh yeah, I can thank the American public education system for that. Lol.

[holoz0r]

I still remember borrowing my copy from the university library. I looked for any excuse to include Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag into my work.

I own books by all these, except Baudrillard.

That website is super useful for pulling out the greatest hits of philosophy, imo!

[ericvancewalton]

Thanks again, you've piqued my interest! Amazon is telling me Simulacra and Simulations will arrive tomorrow. : )

[holoz0r]

That reminds me, I need to order more cat food. :p and maybe... some philosophy too - depending on the cost.

[ericvancewalton]

Lol, they have it all.