The insanity of the simulacra assures the inevitable fall deep into the abyss on non-reality. When closely assigning different symbols that become in themselves non-symbols, and then taking those same symbols and seeing them as only simulated images, we are left trusting nothing. We are left at the bottom of a chasm for which we ourselves created. Do I really sit at this keyboard and type these useless words, or am I merely simulating an action for which no real validity exists? Do I simulate breathing just because it is all the rage or do I do it out of necessity for survival? And the worst questions of all: Is the pain of solitude truly a pain from the heart or is it only an illness that I have created to simulate the experience of desperation?
It all amounts to nothing, yet it is all I know. In a paradox, it is all I can trust. I trust my existence by remaining skeptical of that very existence I treasure. The latter questions can never be answered, not even through death, because arguably death in itself is nothing more than a hyperreal, simulated experience. So why do I not attempt suicide? Perhaps because my hyper-death would be confused in the cloudiness of the simulacra. I will not be able to tell whether or not I only simulated my own death or if my own death really occurred. And I must think of the simulated occurrence that even brought me to consider any death at all. Am I in need of such compassion, companionship? Does such compatability truly exist? Am I ill from this longing or am I only going through the superficial motions of feeling such?
By example, I picture a moment, a man, people, living in a community of sorts. One day a man awakes to find his life upside down, his partner gone, leaving nothing but a note explaining that she has moved on. The man is forlorn, empty, devastated. His world is no longer his world yet it is the only world he thinks he could possibly know. As the day passes and he finally summons the courage to reach out for support, he learns that others this day have also experienced the same brutal rudeness. He gathers a few like victims and together they all sit, in silence, trying desperately to work through the pieces that led to such an abrupt severance. The vacating partners, at the same time, also sit together, somewhere on the other side of town, laughing and applauding their success in simulating a break-up and are now occasionally wondering when they will end the charade and return home so that the joke can be explained and that the act was nothing more than a mere simulation.
Here lies the quite obvious problem created by these acts. To the victims, this was not a simulation but a reality. To the actors, this was not reality but a simulation. What, then, defines the difference? Simple. The third order simulacra.
What is afforded humanity through this third order simulacra is the representation of a representation of a representation that allows true reality to be cast to the wind and the hyperreal to take control. In other words, it no longer matters whether or not these actors truly fled because the actual event was never really a part of reality to begin with. And for that matter, nothing we ever do, see, smell, taste, or touch will ever be a member of the first order simulacra. We are, in a sense, in the process of canceling ourselves out.
This leads to the more promising aspect of this consideration by finally realizing and appreciating the freedom imposed on us by no longer being a part of a tangible and valid reality. In the Sartrian world, this is perhaps analogous to that sense of freedom when we first experience choice. And with this freedom we are now afforded in the hyperreal the comforts of the absurd. Vertigo will no longer apply. Signs will mean nothing. Differentiating between love and hate will become irrelevant. It all sounds so simple, I grant, but we must all become somehow aware. The futilists will say Baudrillard was right. The nihilists will hail him as a god and the opportunists will keep selling their goods at an increased rate to a society that knows no better. I will doubt everything.
But in the meantime, I must make sure that I perform in correspondence to the simulacra. I must achieve everything and hope for nothing. In the words of Rimbaud, I must call to the executioners so I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I do this in response to all I have ever come to know. The symbols of love have become just that, symbols. There is no longer anything that stands behind that atrocious word. The iconoclasts defied the symbol of god to prove that nothing existed but a simple image. Love is reared the same way and must be exposed even more cruelly. In bitterness all becomes clear and the defamation of something so obscenely treasured stands as nothing but a testament to the rampant confusions that found life in the industrial age. Blindness would have been such a more preferable state were I to come to understand the importance of simulated insanity. I could have existed peacefully in the simulacra had certain circumstances not presented themselves so forcefully. But I believe I am all the better for my awakening because in the hyperreal, I might still be asleep.
As I sit next to tomorrow in hopes for yesterday I can conclude that no solution will ever be afforded the questions within the questions. When I look out the window I will see the same thing that has existed there for a millennium and wonder why I never saw it before. The shape will be different, of course, than it was in ths inception, but the meaning will remain the same. The regurgitated aftereffects will provide the world with the exact contradictions for which our lives are based. The simulacra will no longer be a simulacra but a void. Under a different pretext, this void will make everything clear and unimaginable. In this void will be a mirror. The reflection from this mirror will be a word, and that word will be regret. On that day I will conclude that this was all against nature and I will damn hyperreality accordingly.
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