Quote from: Dr. Gary E. Aylesworth, Eastern Illinois University, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005 link=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#6
Baudrillard presents hyperreality as the terminal stage of simulation, where a sign or image has no relation to any reality whatsoever, but is its own pure simulacrum (Baudrillard 1994, 6). The real, he says, has become an operational effect of symbolic processes, just as images are technologically generated and coded before we actually perceive them. This means technological mediation has usurped the productive role of the Kantian subject, the locus of an original synthesis of concepts and intuitions, as well as the Marxian worker, the producer of capital though labor, and the Freudian unconscious, the mechanism of repression and desire. From now on, says Baudrillard, signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real (Baudrillard 1993, 7), so production now means signs producing other signs. The system of symbolic exchange is therefore no longer real but hyperreal. Where the real is that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction, the hyperreal, says Baudrillard, is that which is always already reproduced (Baudrillard 1993, 73). The hyperreal is a system of simulation simulating itself.
(Red colorization mine.)Colorization is good! Colours are victorious over the grey, you're gonna love this one 4 just 1 day.
I sort of see what Baudrillard is saying, as it is more applicable to our fiat money forms and their countless derivatives, though I'm convinced now that they played a certain role in society to bring us to where we are. It's time to recognize that and move forward towards something more solid. Like Bitcoin with its PoW-secured blockchain, which is grounded in reality via its non-trivial hashrate component.
I prefer to think that states live within me, than the other way around, and for that I love and respect them.
Quote from: Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy (1988) by A. N. Wilson, p. 146. link=http://izquotes.com/quote/273222
The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens
Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.
Tribe is hyperreal and begets possession. Possession is real and begets money. Money is hyperreal and begets state. State is real and begets hyperreality.
Gold -> fiat -> Bitcoin -> crypto-fiat? -> ...?
Incompatible paradigms alternate in time (usually with some overlap), that's how reality solved one of its contradictions. By studying one branch of self-similar system, one can contemplate the idea of existence itself and one's place in it. Hyper-reality might be one of those branches, but it's hard to say what's real and what's fiction. It's a mystery!