The Simulation Is/Real
On "The Implosion of Meaning:" Reality has become "coded"... The crisis of communication, meaning, and the "Imperial Boomerang."
Hey, let’s talk about the movies! The Matrix (1999) was an allegory about being transsexual in a reality that would not accept that particular authenticity, but obviously had appeal beyond its intended “information.” The “particular” is a gateway to the “universal.” Metaphors and allegories don’t work because of their particularities; but because they are rich soil from which gardens grow. Anyway. The primary impetus of the artistry of The Matrix was an inability to be oneself: We are so far beyond that. Forget about it, hope you enjoyed that allegory while it was relevant. Let’s think with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who is best known for his theory that reality has been replaced by “simulation,” i.e. language itself has ceased to refer to anything real but rather only signifies other signifiers; signs pointing to signs pointing to signs. In his most well known book (featured briefly in The Matrix) Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard offers 3 ways to think about how information functions:
Information means everything, or information is meaning: with enough information no one will be deceived (The “Negentropic” view, that systems naturally move from disorder to order): “We believe in SCIENCE in this house” … the general focus on the value of “data” as a good in itself. Form without content, after all, “race science” is still science…
Information means nothing in particular, but is objective: information does not carry or imply political values, it neutralizes meaning, where “meaning” becomes a subjective viewpoint that can be overcome: “Well, we are just scientists - we aren’t political.” This standpoint implies that ideology does not exist or is a mirage of “bad data.” This view imagines, like the surveillance state, that while we don’t have “truth” yet, the “truth” is within our grasp if we collect more, if we know “more.”
Information creates meaning. RFK Jr. is the best example in our time, you make up your own information to form imagined—but real—meaning. This is the allure of conspiracy culture exemplified by the seemingly ubiquitous phrase “Do your own research.” Do you consume information as a “brand?” Information becomes social itself; from Alex Cooper to Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro— the podcast and social media revolution—what information you consume becomes your identity and you bond with others over what information you consume and enjoy.
Well the thing is, as Baudrillard says, information does not produce meaning; the opposite is true. Information “Devours communication, and the social” (80). And we have advertising to thank for that. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, was perhaps most famous for his 1929 campaign promoting smoking cigarettes with women coining the phrase “Torches of Freedom” (Read, obviously: Phallus… everything is so stupidly simple, ain’t it?). And long story short, the “Social,” i.e. how we form a community and relate to one another, becomes a kind of information cult that has now reached the highest offices of power. It didn't even take 100 years. The government’s top “health” officials have now made the internet real life. The “MAHA” movement responsible for all of our health has prioritized influencer-based wellness fads like returning cane sugar to sodas and frying french fries in beef tallow. One might think of it as the ruling class sharpening their knives: you will clog your arteries and we will close the hospitals, but at least you get to have a burger like your grandfather did (who wasn’t a self-pitying sack of shit like you are, by the way). How we relate to one another morphs into information, or what we feel becomes what is “true” and “false.” That is how “beef tallow and cane sugar” become, according to the United States Government (power itself), “Health Foods.”
So, Israel. The “Real” is fake and the fake IsReal. We were told that “Babies were beheaded” on October 7th 2023 by the most powerful people in our society. Repeatedly. We were told everything Israel does is the fault of Hamas. We were told that everything Israel was doing was “necessary.” I can’t even begin to detail the ways in which Israel’s genocide has been justified and morphed in popular media. But the point is no one ever had to prove their claims about Hamas “beheading” infants or “microwaving babies.” That’s because the fake information creates “real,” or “actualized Reality.” As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would say, these are the “powers of the false.” Deleuze was speaking about the transformative and creative power of art (where “untrue” expressions create powerful and real feelings in the world) but we live in a world where those powers are used instead for death and misery, where people’s desires become so centered and so strong-willed that information becomes nothing but that desire. It is almost the worst of all possible worlds (apologies, Leibniz).
And this is what spawns a society where masked agents of the State do not need a warrant or even a badge to attack or even kill you and send you to El Salvador or “Alligator Alcatraz.” The “fake” and the “real” have collapsed into one thing. If someone knocks on your door with body armor and an assault rifle there is no need for a badge, only for a man to say “Immigration and Customs Enforcement” or “Homeland Security.” No different from a child in black tights jumping from the counter top saying “I’m Batman” … except for the body armor and weapons, of course. In this sense, an abundance of information has created a reality where information no longer verifies or authorizes: all that matters is the brute force the abundance of information has allowed to prevail.
As I’ve said again and again: Israel is the central contradiction of our society. We cannot be free as a society if we give ourselves over to the farcical whims of Zionism, as Zionism itself is a not just a lie but a cult that insists that genocide is a positive value. Every dollar that could give the unhoused homes or provide healthcare goes to Israel or Argentina. As long as they’re allowed to pretend they are the true owners of the land they occupy and as long as they’re allowed to use that lie to facilitate an apartheid society and then a genocide, that will happen here, too. It is not that Israel controls American politicians (although Epstein…) so much as American politicians see Israel as an aspiration of how information creates a society brutally partitioned by force. This is what is happening at Paramount, with the billionaire Zionist Larry Ellison charging Bari Weiss with making CBS News a Zionist source of information. If only the Fake could be as Real as Israel has created an entire Nazi-esque society based on pure nothingness, pure lies. It is no coincidence that Israel and Artificial Intelligence research go hand in hand. We are experiencing a larger project of replacing reality itself with a falsified reality, and Israel is the model: a nation imagined from a story book they insist is historical but, of course, is not. Information has become sociality has become authoritarianism.
And we have to see how liberalism itself has no answer to this. Democracy is overcome by the people who construct or manufacture information. “Information” itself is now as easily forged and manipulated as gold or steel. There is no “Science” or “Just the facts, ma’am” way out of this. Conviction, which is often derided as child-like in the face of "facts” - is the only way. What are our, what are your values? We cannot find ourselves thinking that beef tallow or constructing new prisons will save us: we cannot be saved from ourselves. The very existence of Israel is the model for replacing reality with a lie that kills us all with impunity. It’s out in the open. With the proliferation of social media, everything on the internet, etc, we don’t get any closer to reality: we get so many realities we don’t know what to do. The only guide will be your values. Science sure as hell can’t save you, democracy overcame science and reality itself already.
And what’s the takeaway? That whatever is missing—in your life, in your job, or in your relationships—it isn’t “information” in any capacity. Data is not what is missing from utopia. I am not delving into all that here—obviously—but the problem AI purports to solve was never a problem in the first place. Israel is the central contradiction of our society; this means that what “AI” represents is the coding of life into Zionist terms. Don’t believe me? Just look at the $45 million contract Google signed with Netanyahu’s government to explicitly amplify Israeli propaganda in its search results.
If any of this is news to you consider how Israel is testing and using genocidal AI programs like “Lavender AI” and “Daddy’s Home.” There will be no “peace.” So what is “Real,” anyway? The Real is what we’ve been running from: our absolute dependence on one another. What “AI” and all this simulated “information” offers is a personalized experience of the world, it fools you into thinking that information itself is the rich soil of meaning — and it isn’t. The more your world becomes personalized, the more it becomes controlled and bought by forces like Israel and the Trump family. Please, choose your values and act accordingly. Things are going to become more and more absurd — board up your windows. Information will not save or protect you. What allegories and metaphors can we imagine and grow that rise above “Our enemies are idiots who don’t respect ‘information!’”