Postmodernism is Good Actually: Jean Baudrillard's Philosophy | Plastic Pills
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- Опубликовано: 22 ноя 2024
- This video is a companion piece to my Society of the Spectacle video ( • Society of Spectacle |... ) and I wrote it by putting three different chapters of 80s Baudrillard into a blender: "Ecstasy of Communication" from Ecstasy of Communication (amzn.to/3KgBzui), "Ironic Strategies" from Fatal Strategies (amzn.to/3usNspr) and "The Implosion of Meaning in the Media" from Simulacra and Simulation (amzn.to/3KarO0F). They figure as a challenge to humanist social theory, including the Marxist humanism espoused by Guy Debord.
If you want more we discussed Baudrillard as "post-marxist" recently on the podcast: • Baudrillard as Post-Ma...
I also covered Fatal Strategies in a series of 8 videos on Patreon: / plasticpills
So, Baudrillard played a reverse uno on philosophers trying to wake up the masses?
Underrated comment
So philosophers ever since have been sophists and its just about the battle. Baudriallard then used something Lyotard called "retorsion", when you show an argument against you is in fact speaking for you - reverse uno, nice metaphor.
Nice
“ Politics is pretty much everyone that has a noncommittal low effort agreement that some guy, who sounds like he’s got a plan should run things‘ Haha, Love this quote.
Your happiness Depending on a group all agreeing to some political cause is a recipe for disaster. Good luck and god speed. I ain’t got time for that.
Yes and that's how we get these base humans at the "top."
Baudrillard introduced a very necessary perspective back to us. He provided us with vision of self awareness, allows us to take control of this framework we call ideology which we use to interact with eachother and the world. He provided us an opportunity to build mindfully, rather than let it be a product of contingency. Amazing.
I think a frustration is that we know that change won't come without collapse. We want to prevent the suffering brought by collapse, warning of its inevitability, lest we succumb to it.
We don't want to suffer while knowing we are destined to suffer if change is to come.
"Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to die"
@@selfsaboteursounds5273 “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.” - Ronnie Coleman
Baker's philosophy of can't have our cake and eat it too. We're too comfortable or complacent. I think we ought to burn the idea of money.
I don't know about all the conclusions of the video but the general thrust does flow with something I've noticed in my own organizing: people are busy, exhausted, and primarily want to spend time with their friends, family, and on their hobbies. Doing the "Glorious Revolution (tm)" tends to take time away from those things. So they're only going to bother if the real situation has gotten so bad as to be totally untenable and would rip them away from it anyway or if the action demanded of them is actually *easier* than the status quo in some way.
Thus, unless we're going to indulge in accelerationism (which I tend to hate with a violent passion), it looks to me like the real object of left politics has to be learning how to construct systems that make people's lives easier in a particular way that is counter-hegemonic. That is, make it so doing something like going shopping at your local food co-op is *easier* than going to walmart and walmart's inevitable attempt to crush the co-op puts it in the position of specifically making people's lives *harder* in a way that they are likely to resist. No grand speeches about freedom or anything necessary. Just a series of interlocking systems that draw people in and make useful conflicts inevitable.
There's some old theory that could still be useful in this regard, mainly to do with dual-power; constructing new institutions that serve the people while infiltrating existing institutions to make them less violent toward the people.
The better thing to do would be to pressure the legal system to broaden the playing field and limit the power of conglomerates and monopolies. Especially in factory farming examples. I don't know how we can design new systems that don't just encourage the platform owner to rig the deck in their favor. Uber eats and postmates
@@wraithwrecker_ definitely agree with this. It's been a guide to action for me. I feel like much of the criticism of this video can be said to be directed at those who spend their time talking about materialism while doing little to change material conditions. Even if we're to look at the evolution of the bourgeoisie, they didn't spend the majority of their time trying to "convince" people of their liberal-capitalist worldview before their revolutions. They built the damn institutions. All their talk was justification for what they were *already* doing and why they should have an expanded role in society. They actually changed material conditions until a crisis point was reached. While things won't be that straightforward for us, we need to be doing something similar.
@@SAGERUNE The answer to your question about how to design new systems is something to be worked out in practice so I won't waste both of our time by trying to spell it out. But I will point out that, by your own logic, pressuring the legal system would seem to be a waste of effort. The liberal system in a bourgeois-liberal state exists to serve the bourgeois-liberal elite. I'm not sure how we would pressure such a system that does not involve building institutions of counter-hegemonic power that can resist domination.
so you learned that you actually have to explain shit and give people a viable alternative?
wow
best channel ever. hands down.
Bro deberías colaborar mas con este chico
Una colaboración estaría de huevos
@@emilianobasurto548 he’s been on Pills’s podcast twice, if my memory serves
@@theethanatorem ohhh, that's true. Thank you so much, bro :)
Viejo hace falta más canales como este en habla hispana!! Pero pills es un genio
"Now, I am currently not in the mood for a mental breakdown today, so let''s just avoid the real."
--plastic pills
Maybe Pills was referring to Lacan's real (with a wink).
@@pugix You got the joke
Idk if I understood the video, but there was one thing said I already knew & think is important & which I find crazy that everybody around me left to right still thinks differently: Revolutions are not made by ideas. People didn't suddenly think the king is stinky one day after thinking he's pogchamp the other, there's open monarchists everywhere today & there have been anti-monarchists since the concept of monarchism. The thing that causes revolutions is material changes.
1916 Ireland
"Faith is not the opposite of doubt. In fact, doubt is a sign that you genuinely have faith."
- Paul Tillich
the final quotation/reflection reminds me of Roland Barthes's preface to Mythologies -- "[M]y claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which can make sarcasm the condition of truth." fantastic video, as usual!
Bro. You actually understand Baudrillard better than anyone on RUclips. What more can I say? Kudos
You obviously don't understand french to dare to say that...
This is something that I've been thinking about for a while now and I'm so glad to see that it's actually being discussed. Humans are not dumb they are lazy and we are smart enough to find ways to stay lazy. We want everything to be as easy and comfortable as possible.
Fucking Gorillas spend something like 75% of their time sitting about "being lazy"...You ever see how swole a groilla is lol??...Nah, "lazy" is a term some greedy capitalist made up in order to make people work harder.
I know you said we communicate too much and ultimately messages are lost, but thank you truly for making this video.
He's saying the message you seek does not exist, stop seeking!
nvm, I don't actually know what you mean by message.
I’m literally just saying I enjoyed the video lol
"The strategy of theory should be a little more playful. Or artful. A little less self-assured. And maybe a little more fatal."
Very well said. And while I agree with many of the other comments that this is a great video on a great channel, I don't think it's enough to diagnose that the obscene is the scene and depth is merely illusionary. The illusion of depth must also be embraced. In metamodern theory I came across the term "depthiness" which seems to put this "illusion" in more neutral terms. An after all, "illusion" comes from "illudere", hence "ludus", thus hinting at the playful character of our desire to see something where there is only void.
I'm thinking along similar lines like he seems to believe that these soulless, corporate reality TV shows are the pinnacle of representing love even though you can't get any less artful than that
Very accurate representation of Baudrillard. I still think that Baudrillard has some of that disdain for the masses/mass though, and reading too much of him can only be described as an exercise in getting depressed. But he’s important nonetheless
love every person making videos about theory on youtube unconditionally but WOW nice to have one delivered by someone who can communicate so clearly
3:44 this point ( in the 90s ) was the moment I hated bauldrillard. I sometimes think Mark Fisher reached this moment as well. Back then there was no spectacle as we know and understand it today, there was no apparatus to virtualise us as content, that dictates that we should know each other as content. Most importantly our social exchanges were framed by a community morality embedded in rights that we acted out - you just couldn’t go around attacking people. Groups like churches, the military and even politicians had to come to your door to personally speak to you if they wanted you to do something. We haven’t begun to pull social media apart in the way we should be.
I disagree, I think there's nothing new under the sun in that respect. Imagine the state of mind of a mid-century middleclass suburban American. They have to carefully craft their image to portray middleclassness. Their house, clothing, decorating, interests and yard are all scrutinized continually. Planting the wrong sort of flowers, or having the wrong kind of hobbies or interests got people rediculed, berated, and othered. (Fussels book on class has more about this)
I don't see how this is any different than someone carefully crafting their online profile. The difference now, however, is that we are more free to chose which community we embed ourselves in.
"The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference."
"if voting changed something, they wouldn't let us vote"
@@karankaushikk yes. We protested. the feeling of disillusionment with voting was prevalent among those fighting for systemic change. However, history also shows that suffrage and political participation were critical in many movements to expand rights and bring about change, though not always immediately or easily.
I got rid of virtually all social media and gained a ton my focus and clarity to practice critical thinking, in addition, I’ve turned off ALL viewing and search history on RUclips and I cannot tell you how even withdrawing just a slivers worth from the culture of “spectacle” is freeing. This makes quite a bit of sense.
and yet you are here posting comments.... the fucking irony. you are PART of the spectacle you are trying to not be part of lmao
Herbert Marcuse "One Dimensional Man" and his concept of Repressive desublimation is a good follow up to this video essay.
I was a little skeptical of some of your videos at first (the Derrida video on Hauntology was my introduction), but on further examination I think you do a solid job of steelmanning some of the more interesting aspects of post-modern type thought. These topics can be very intimidating and confusing to say the least, but I respect the light you bring to the subject, especially in a climate that seems particularly hostile to these ways of thinking right now. Bravo!
Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Absolutely awesome video. The visuals are also incredibly good.
I love that you also went for the black and white supplemented with vibrant accent colors kind of aesthetic.
It’s worth viewing the debate surrounding AI just now. The leading scientist guy at Open AI (Ilya something) said about his work: “Imagine having the world’s best meditation expert in your home.” And his partner said: “AI is an extension of human nature.” Both of these insights point to just how banal it is, and to the banality of life generally. There is nothing interesting about it - beyond the phenomenological catastrophe of it all.
… I’m not sure what you’re saying.
Also, there’s no expertise in meditation.
You just be in the now which automatically silences your stream of consciousness.
There’s no grades or level or effort to it.
And ai is just an extension of human nature. Like cars or drawings or anything else humans create
What is the point you’re trying to make?
great video once again! I feel like this would be a great transition into George Bataille’s Theory of Religion or Solar Economics
One of the heavier and forward thinking takes. thanks for giving a new perspective!
Thought provoking video! And the fact that I happened to get THC gummy commercials thrown in every few minutes really help to accidentally drive home the point.
This has to be one of your best videos to date, it's a very interesting subject that opens up to more in-depth debates. I'm exhausted of talking about revolutions in classical century old marxist-leninist terms.
It is because these are the observation theorist see in the 1st world. The 3rd world, on the other hand, is doomed to harsh conditions, and capitalism will only make it harsher. People in the 1st world may sit there with their own little spectacle, sure, but there is no more obscene than imperialism.
Plastic. Your coverage of Allende’s Chile gave me goosebumps!
Do us 🇧🇷 a favor. Please look into the way Brazil came to be, it’s halted potential and how philosophy, culture, and external forces brought us to the grim situation half of our country is facing.
And if you get any ideas for a video, that would be awesome as well. Love from Brazil!
Persuasive.
Depressing and relieving.
I'm not sure I buy it, but there's no denying how compelling this position is.
I don't find it relieving, personally. I find it to be defeatist.
@@dunningdunning4711 I get why you'd call it defeatist. At the same time, academics from the humanities (for whom I think this is the core audience of this critique) become trapped in a perpetual state of elaborating their moral revolt, and treat their expository work and theorizing as the groundwork of change.
At a certain point, ya gotta wonder why the business daddies don't take theory as a serious threat to their hegemony.
@@feruspriest “trapped in a perpetual state of elaborating their moral revolt” might be my favorite phrase since “intellectual masturbation”
@@Nich0Latte thank ya kindly!
@@feruspriest Not necessarily the groundwork, but useful for identifying issues, such as why revolution doesn't come (Gramsci, Althusser). There's definitely a lot of intellectual masturbation, but I think philosophy and theory both have important, although very modest, jobs. So much of "common sense" is simply the corpse of dead philosophies.
It's one of the best videos I've seen in a while, thank you for that. I do wonder if debord was as idealistic as you make him out to be, but then again back then he didn't have the hindsight we have now. I'll strive to make enjoyable theory from now on
I appreciate this channel so much - and I really hope that I get to see a time in which this channel engages with the perspectives of bell hooks; specifically, All About Love and The Will to Change, i think this might provide a catharsis to the perspectives of Baudrillard and Lacan and Deleuze and Guittarri - and I say this as someone who used to engage those thinkers and philosophers constantly
Giodarno Bruno has the best breakdown for love I've ever read. 17th centiry occultist/philosopher.
@@feruspriest thank you for the recommendation! Im excited to check it out
Follow up: thank you for such an incredibly clear overview here! Wow! I feel like everyone has incredible leads to follow as we may take deeper dives!
I have a lot of problems with Baudrillard, but wow, this video was a very accurate rendering of his thought.
The distinction between "uprising" and "revolution" becomes especially poignant with the starvation element.
"Fiberoptic buzz" gives "one hand clapping"
This is one of the greatest works ever.
Hope some day we can all focus on the important things.
I don't necessarily agree with the propositions in the video, but it certainly demonstrates a certain point of view quite coherently.
You touched base on alot of issues that I've been exploring all within 40 minutes. Very impressive, however there is points you hold that I contrast with. Particularly in sharing Baudrillard's view in eliminating sacristy in religious idealogy. Ontology is still relevant in contemporary philosophy.
Great video! I am living what was described. It isn’t easy to see things as they are. It’s very difficult and taxing at times. And, I can’t go back…to seeing mere representations, not totally. It takes discipline, practice and compassion. The longer I practice, the deeper my perception, the greater my interconnectivity. Reality is no longer a-thing. Ref: Transformation at the Base by Thich Nhat Hahn
How do you know you see things as they are? You mentioned a Buddhist monk, but letting go of desire is at the core of Buddhist enlightenment and the Left, almost by definition, has not done that. Having a vision of "the world as it should be" will always cloud one's vision of the world as it is.
Desiring to own the means of production as a collective is still desiring to own the means of production.
Collective desire is still desire.
Desiring to form a collective to seize the means of production is still desire.
Desiring to establish a perfected democracy to manage the use of the collectively owned means of production is still desire.
When your sight is clouded by desire, the innocent actions of others will appear as intentional subversion-see Lenin and his fixation on "wreckers." What did Lenin's vision of Communism produce? What did Mao's vision of Communism produce? Let go of the vision; focus instead on the rules for right action, acting in accord with them for their own sake, and letting that be your happiness.
True power is the power of contraction. There's a video on RUclips by Rabbi Simon Jacobsen entitled "Black Magic: The Dark Side of Kabbalah" that explains this in depth beginning at about the 13 minute mark. Powerful action is characterized by a combination of fervent hope and perfect resignation. If you desire nothing, no one can have power over you. They will always need you more than you need them. As Jude Law, in the role of Pope Pius XIII, says in The Young Pope: "Absence is presence."
This shouldn't be alien to Leftists, given the history of the general strike as a tool of organized labor. If living as a collective is the way and capitalism is bad, then find like-minded people and form a collective for the purpose of minimizing or eliminating participation in capitalist society at whatever scale is possible in the present. Instead of trying to convince society to provide a certain standard of living, be willing to embrace asceticism as necessary for the purpose of depriving capitalist society of however many workers and consumers you can. Look up the short story, Beggar Prince, from the Elder Scrolls games. Look up chapter 27 of the Digha Nikaya, Aggaññasutta. Meditate on these.
Then you'll see things as they are.
As importantly, embrace diversity on superficial points rather than trying to change hearts and minds to exactly match your views-don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, the tree that bends doesn't break, and so on. I referenced both Jewish and Christian ideas above perfectly aware that the Left hasn't been on the greatest of terms with them, historically. Despite that, I think you'll find the ideas themselves to be consistent with the overall idea I'm presenting here. Other relevant and similarly bite-sized artifacts of Christianity include the story of St. Mary of Egypt (famous for her asceticism) and the Our Father prayer ("give us this day our daily bread"). If you can vibe with those, some longer form stuff worth considering includes a video from the School of Life channel called the History of Ideas: Consumerism (which paints a very different picture of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism than most Leftist literature), the Abolition of Man and the Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, and the Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton.
To close, a particularly poignant line from the Abolition of Man in light of the general topic of postmodernism:
"You cannot go on ‘seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see."
Damn banger high-quality video. You also made the argument really well, saying it in different ways multiple times, good shit.
Communicating to get outside of communication is like "washing off blood with blood" however, direct experience does get out of communication by way of the most immediate where everything is like the nonexistence of the social in that it's too late and after the fact and not encapsulative of the phenomena itself. The apex of this thrust of postmodern thought was actually brought all the way to its zenith and beyond by the Tang and Song era Zen (Chan) Masters. There's lots of texts that have been translated too. I think you'd appreciate what's going on with that tradition. A book to look into if you are intrigued by this is the Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching by Dahui translation by the late Thomas Cleary.
There's something off in this spectacle centric analisys... I mean, there's still starvation, the material conditions are still there. Lenin already identified that the centrality of capitalism exports some of their contraditions to peripheral countries and that's the reason revolutions occurred there. What we're missing is organization, the neoliberalism is making people get up, and if we're not there, someone other will be. Our role is to be organized and create a net of support and communication. We don't choose the time, when it comes we have to be there.
Great argument. I do think it’s a chicken or the egg situation. I think what people want is freedom. Freedom to create and engage with life how they see fit. The problem is that the “mass” has chosen to move in a direction that there is no time or energy for that level of freedom, so we delude ourselves into believing that we have freedom, within a certain boundary.
As an anarcho-futurist, I think that if there wasn’t a leader and the mass was guided by free association, we would find that we can lean on each other (and technology) thereby utilizing our laziness, (meaning producing as little as necessary to survive and to share with others knowing that they will share their bounty with us) and freeing ourselves up to then engage with life as we see fit.
I argue that we’re not just lazy, we’re burnt out. I know some people that lay around and veg out on theirs days off but I know many more that go out and create and engage and socialize.
The problem really is the mass. And if the mass were divided into multiple smaller masses, free to make their own way, you would see less laziness.
after watching the neomarxist video, I was thinking about how writing books won't help the cause. Thank god I clicked on this one!
This is a really interesting take with so much to unpack. It would be extremely interesting to talk about this/review it/critique it etc. from a lacanian perspective. Some things, like the primacy of the image/spectacle, the truth being outside, the need (and 'plague') of fantasies fit very well ofc, but then I'm at a loss when talking about subjectivity - for contrasting purposes the place of the Real in its formation and how it links to your position in this video, but also the place of the symbolic and imaginary. Would be very interested to attend a live stream and hear your thughts on this and other links/potential issues that I'm sure you've already at least tentatively thought about.
Not sure if this pans out well, but I was connecting this to Indian philosophies.
Those philosophies all seem to annihilate the individual from both above and below, so to speak. From above, nondual or materialistic metaphysics demolish the individual as merely parts of a larger whole which is effectively laughing at us parts running around with our anxieties on its stage of entertainment. From below, the metaphysics atomizes (literally in some cases) subjects to objects and processes of objects, also giving the philosopher something to laugh at -- why do we sacks of literal shit get so anxious about other shit?
Of course, the concept of delusion and dialectics, with the goal of true consciousness matches up as well. And there is a noted lack of social analysis ie. philosophy of history or politics like in the Western traditions, at least that I'm aware of as something similar to a Marxist worldview. Maybe worth looking into more?
@Annie Mouse thank you for the recommendations! I will check out those episodes
I just love this video, keep coming back to it
Problem with rating philosophers on their interestingness is that something interesting is the kind of thing that can be regarded as indifferent the next moment and displaced by something else. Thus, interestingness belongs to the economy of overproducing the spectacle, it can be recuperated, appropriated, and sold like Marvel movies. Such interesting philosophy ages and is discarded for something more interesting. The evaluation of something as interesting then has already relegated it to the ranks of the indifferent and soon boring. I don't think that's what Baudrillard was aiming to do.
I've been out since the Kayne stream, but you're bringing me back in
Damn Pills, your editing skills on point!! 🙌🙌 Great content!
Just finished reading Quentin Meillassoux's "After Finitude" and it seems like nice development of the postmodern philosophy. Was impressed by flawlessness of the logics and completely new argumentation. Would be great to listen your analysis and understanding of the Meillassoux, Latour, Harman sometime!
Damn.
“The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. And he is
not insensible who pays them the undemonstrative tribute of a
sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile that is not a grin.” Joseph Conrad
I genuinely do believe Baudrillard really was a necessary pendulum swing for humanity. Especially coming out of the 20th century where modernist ideologies and the meta-narratives that drove them ran the world. Especially his view of reality and his issues with Marxism and Debord, I really do think those critiques were very apt for the era. Though I think where he swings the pendulum a little too far is when he too ignores the reality in front of him in my opinion. That fundamentally it is more or less that the "consciousness" Marxists were looking to achieve is to live your life while being fully aware of the context of your reality (including the humans in your life) without the distraction of transcendental guarantees or ideological persuasions. In my opinion unfortunately Baudrillard's worldview and its endless skeptical categorizing (and most forms of Marxism with their ideological crusades) still blocks us from seeing the reality in front of us just as much as any other meta-narrative.
You simply keep slaying, even if it's your own work and theoretical framework on the cutting end of the axe. Mad respect. Excellent production as always. Much to think about.
Can't believe Baudrillard said "good luck, have fun" to everyone as project.
This might just be the pragmatist in me talking, but it does feel like this doesn't really provide any call to action in any meaningful way. Maybe if you're a theorist, but for me, an ordinary person, what am I supposed to do to make a change to improve my life and the lives of my communities? How am I supposed to resist oppressive forces with these ideas? I guess I don't see the usefulness in these theories as opposed to other theorists who may give "false consciousness" but still give a program of action that can be used to improve your life.
Mate, what Pills is talking here is UTTER GARBAGE! This is just someone in the comfort of his home neglecting the material for the idealistic metaphysics of post marxism and post modernist narrative of a world without structures (which a fabricated lie and a naive form of thinking). Go with Marx and marxist thought mate, you can't go as wrong as you can with Pills.
You're 100% correct.
There is a reason the CIA opened a firehose of money at postmodernism. It's an utterly impotent pseudointelectual collection of nonsense words practically designed to alienate any sane person
I cant see the replies on this comment for some reason
Why should you want to make your community better? Why not make it worse just for the lols
@@HumidPuzzleWagon because I’m not a 14 year old edgelord
Less boring,, relief, more interesting, fun - perhaps these have become our values, life-long goals. There’s so much more to living, to life.
Excellent video, this is my first of your channel's I've seen. Thanks for putting it together! Watched it 2x and dropping this algorithm boosting comment
The people never have the power, only the illusion of it. And here is the real secret: they don't want it. The responsibility is too great to bear. It's why they are so quick to fall in line as soon as someone else takes charge. They WANT to be told what to do. They YEARN for it
This man has had too much to think… we all have.
amazing video. i really like baudrillard and his stuff makes me happy. side note : I think it's an interesting paradox that you keep saying that you can't fix the problem with yet another book, while literally quoting from a book that Baudrillard wrote about 'not fixing the problem with a book'.
A nice reminder of studying cultural studies and critical theory in the 90s. Good times.
Summary:
- be a bit less boring
- aesthetics are key
- surface is the place to be
check
Imma resist the urge to call Baudrillard a total hack, because he wrote all of this stuff in the aftermath of may 68. A more constructive thing to say would be to call It outdated. Lately I've been reading Latour and I'd say that he does a pretty good job at articulating a new view that can withstand all the arguments and criticism that pills has summed Up.
The main criticism that I could object to his view, IS that, even though Baudrillard is Trying to break free from the sociological stances prior to him, he's still articulating a reified totallity, all right its no longer society, now it's hiperreality, but still is another good all totallity to superimpose on reality.
At the same time another objection that could be made, IS that his criticism to sociology on the basis that its humanist and predicated on false assunptioms, far from being and ultimate objection to the possiblity of sociology, it's a diagnosis of the failures of the sociology of his time. For example in Latours reassembling the social, or DeLandas Assemblage theory you can find new articulations of this phenomena that aren't reduced to the humanist tradition, but at the same time break free of Baudrillards hyper skepticism, and beyond his reduction of the social to the media sphere, towards a more material point view
Can’t get enough of the forlorn Bladerunner synth music 😩
There's something to be said for 'stress'. Increase the output (work etc.), or decrease the input (food etc.) without the other being balanced out and the outcome tends towards 'survivalism' effects like 'nationalistic isolationism' (I was going to use a censored 'f-word').
And it makes sense. People's 'ability' to consider others is lower-down the hierarchy. When push comes to shove; self-preservation usually wins out.
Turn up the stress, turn down the empathy. Want to cause division, a la Bre-xit - enact aust-erity first to make the populace easy to direct. This works on an amplified level too. Want a war? Enact fam-ine.
(Edited to get around AdTube's intentionally ambiguous censorship rules enacted to train us into self-censorship).
I can't express how much I enjoyed this
ditto
Ive had to watch this like a dozen times just to remind myself that the people I get into arguments with about why they should be against capitalism/imperialism are pointless since most people just want to come home from work and play video games. What a relief.
Magic is the ability to agree to agree.
Seeing this video, and then going to the art museum in cologne where they have those brillo boxes was a little surreal. Simulacraing my own perception of simulacra
I find it kind of fascinating when philosophers invent some sort of false binary, you know, spectacle vs. "the truth", and then just end up totally losing their minds over the paradoxes that the invention of the false binary brought them. Isn't this all just fucked up weird mind-body dualism again? You know, I'm not just a materialist or an idealist, I think trying to identify the relationship between these two things as being one that takes priority over the other kind of gets rid of the complicated system of nuances that are actually at play here. And I think maybe that's kind of baudrillard's deal, is that he tries to spell out a more complicated idea of the interaction between spectacle and reality, instead of the spectacle just being some bad boo boo garbage that we all have trafficked in, and reality being, like, marxism, and then everyone that doesn't get marxism is just some illiterate lazy fuckwad.
When you engage in a protest, you engage in spectacle in the sense that those who go to the protest may or may not be doing so performatively, you know, without large amounts of like, destruction, or whatever would make it more "real". Actually, that's the point, what the hell qualifies as "real"? A ton of people going out into the street can be turned into a spectacle, but I'd also be hard pressed to find something that's really as "real" as a shit ton of people taking off work to go march in the street and get teargassed by the police. A lot of the time that "performance", even the "performance" of violence, ends up pressuring governments or tangibly affecting people's lives in what I would call a "real" way. The KKK kinda have this on lock, they have grand wizards and shit, everything is a really dorky kind of spectacle to them, but then they're also like a stupid weird vigilante group that gets people killed and intimidates people into moving out of their neighborhood.
The most useful "spectacles" are just whatever ends up motivating people to go and do shit that will make their lives better. You believe in whatever idea helps you do the things, create dual power or whatever. And then I also find it super annoying whenever people chastise leftism more generally for being, you know, unwilling to become the system. As though leftism is anything more than a collection of messaging that's like, maybe against racism and maybe against the free market, with even that being an incredibly stretched definition, and then also somehow being a class of people that permanently is just assassinated and sabotaged by the CIA. You know, it's all an ideological underpinning, if only we could solve the lack of willingness to become the system, rather than, you know, leftists just not really being allowed to take power by a myriad of systems. It's like a roundabout reasoning where the only certainty with the definition of "leftism" is that it's just gonna end up being whatever fails.
Decentralize the power, now your state is too insecure, and whenever anyone wants to style on it, they gain the ability to with their centralized power (ignore the zapatistas, ignore the history of guerilla warfare just totally destroying any military force that actually wants to exploit the resources of a region). Centralize the power? Now you're authoritarian, and aren't willing to traffic your third world resources, and that's bad, so get dabbed on in a coup that installs a fascist leader (ignore the successful periods of states that end up retaining their leader for longer, ignore the voting base that ends up remaining resistant to the installed leader years down the line). Maoism? No actually, sweatie, that's state capitalism (ignore, you know, china or whatever). Organize for like, basic healthcare reforms? Too bad looks like that's gonna get rolled back in five years because it was just a gimme by the capitalist class (ignore, you know, any progress made from any protest, ignore how we got that healthcare reform in the first place). God forbid that anything is a process.
Bottom line is there is no perfect utopia or situation. I think that is where spiritual teachings and esoteric text really help us to transcend material ideas as individuals... philosphies are too limited as eveyone is also too different to agree on something, when your mind is able to transcend material bs most of the time, you will not really be concerned with what happens outside of your body. I think the best goal any single person can atleast try to achieve is inner peace of mind. Easier said than done if someone lives in a warzone but I think it is better than waiting for the world to change to your will
there is a small booklet from 1977 by baudrillard titeled "the agony of the real"...in it there is a very interesting passage where he refers to the events of may 1968 in france...what he says there (10 yrs after these events) is that basically his generation was the last(!) generation that lived in the double of history aka lived in the euphoric and catastrophic perspective of a revolution...i think these events of mai 68 in paris...these events shaped what the "real" meant for him...and everything that came after that was mere agony of the real..a copy of an original that no longer exists..in one word: he was a nostalgic
Great video! We (the masses) need this kind of content.
“In a world that is really upside down, the truth is a moment of the false”.
Thanks!
I knew this quote inconciously!
The ecstasy of Communication is one of his best short essays.
I feel a tinge of capitalism realism in all this... Perhaps it's not so much about a deeper, hidden meaning that we're (not) supposed to uncover, but really something as simple as not being deprived of basic material conditions, not being alienated from the product of your labor, not having your humanity denied. These are all very materialistic things in a sense, and it's hard to dismiss them as a grandiose spectacle when you're constantly deprived of their realization. Yeah, politics is a spectacle and who gives a fuck anyway? But class struggle is as real as it gets at the end of the day.
At the very least, I feel like it must only be dominant in the more culturally postmodern, core regions of the capitalist world system. I have reservations even there, but I really just can't see how Baudrillard's theory would be more relevant to a garment factory worker in Bangladesh than Marx's, for example.
But people know who the billionaires are, know how fucked inequality statistics have become, and arguably, there's more than enough easily digestible leftist content on youtube to "wake the consciousness of the masses". At this point, it's safe to say they don't care. Or rather, will not care unless they're starving. And even then, they'll probably turn to fascism, cause that's the easy choice: just keep deferring responsibility to a political grand daddy figure who'll take care of you and do all the complicated stuff for you.
@@alynames7171 Nah, Marxism might not be relevant to them, but the Marxist that provides in the historical moment (starvation, enough frustration, fear) a direction for change wherever these "change" might be leading. Since its almost guaranteed that the "change" gets perverted from the outside or within it doesn´t really matter.
@@alynames7171 Totally agreed.
@@alynames7171Baudrillard wouldn't necessarily disgaree
I like your videos... Nobody understands Deleuze but you got me to take a second look at Baudrillard...
I don't even have the heart to try and explain this to my little neoliberal friend.
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:30 🌐 *Postmodernist perspective sees social media as a continuation, not a departure, from the traditional spectacle, blurring the line between reality and the spectacle.*
01:49 🤔 *Baudrillard's strategy questions the existence of a "real" social that can be reclaimed, suggesting it was a theoretical after-the-fact construct.*
02:41 📢 *Baudrillard challenges the idea that more communication will lead to social awakening, arguing that excessive communication, especially through anti-social media, deepens the ideological dream.*
05:07 🧠 *Debord's perspective emphasizes consciousness as crucial for societal change, envisioning intellectuals awakening the masses to economic relations.*
06:35 🤯 *Baudrillard questions the inevitability of mass consciousness, challenging the Enlightenment fantasy and suggesting that the model of consciousness as a choice is flawed.*
08:53 🤷♂️ *Baudrillard challenges the Marxist view of ideology, questioning whether people truly desire freedom and suggesting that theorists might be alienated from the masses.*
11:12 🔄 *Baudrillard proposes dropping the concepts of "consciousness" and "the social" from societal analysis, arguing that the masses' choices are often unconscious and unrelated to ideology.*
13:30 🎭 *Politics is portrayed as a spectacle, revealing the performative nature of political scenes and challenging traditional ideas about rational decision-making in politics.*
16:22 💑 *Relationships and love are demystified, with the spectacle exposing the "scene" as a theatrical production and questioning the deep meanings traditionally associated with them.*
19:28 🌐 *The spectacle, according to Baudrillard, reveals the superficial nature of human desires, highlighting the preference for sign exchanges and seduction over deeper economic concerns.*
21:05 📺 *The end of the spectacle blurs distinctions between true and false, transforming information into a medium where the message is independent of the program.*
23:51 🛋️ *Baudrillard argues that people are not dumb but lazy, preferring to let politicians fail while they enjoy the spectacle, challenging traditional notions of political engagement.*
24:45 🌐 *Baudrillard suggests that "society" is better explained as human + communication media, not necessarily human sociability, politics, or intelligence.*
26:51 🔄 *Baudrillard challenges the idea of individual subjectivities shaping society, arguing that the Mass, influenced by mass media, is an object, not a subject.*
27:45 📊 *Baudrillard criticizes Debord's idea of awakening the masses, claiming it leads to hyper-conformism and suggests that the Mass resists changing history.*
29:15 🔄 *Overproduction of meaning, according to Baudrillard, perpetuates the system's logic, and the strategy should be to stay on the surface and resist seeking depth where it doesn't exist.*
30:16 🎭 *Baudrillard advocates for theory to be less serious, more playful, and artful, aiming to dismantle ancient illusions rather than escaping ideology.*
31:21 🔄 *Baudrillard's escape from illusion involves taking the world's side against subjects, recognizing that history is already dismantling the illusion of the "real real."*
31:51 😌 *Baudrillard's perspective offers relief by asserting that individuals have no agency to control or change the meaning in the universe or the direction of history.*
32:20 🤔 *Baudrillard embraces nihilism not as a lack of belief but as a rejection of holding illusions sacred, suggesting that philosophers should be rated on interestingness rather than illusory depth.*
33:27 🙌 *Baudrillard appreciates the audience's support, emphasizing that they are true producers of history, challenging the conventional notion of subjects and agency in society.*
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Nodding along with what you say, quite digging the exposition, reaching 10:33, I must be the weasel: this statement heavily depends on how you define “revolution.”
I can think of turns, evolutions, moments around a catalytic event, which are transformational - indeed, revolutionary - which fall short of the spectacular image of an armed proletariat storming the Bastille. [^1]
This doesn’t rob anything from your thesis; it just makes me think, if your thesis is correct, that if change is to come in the future - good or bad - one form it may take will be gradual, resulting from a compact between the bureaucrats and the intelligentsia.
Perhaps whoever can capture the imaginations of the bureaucratic class and the intellectual class can enact a transformation - for bad or for good - as effectively as the fascist who hypnotizes the brownshirts and the jackboots.
Of course, that’s a vision of change many of us in our hearts would decry as elitist … but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily inaccurate.
The hard part is objectively analyzing one’s own class position and asking whether such a conclusion just reflects one’s petty impatience with the great recalcitrant mass of humanity.
^1. They actually stormed the Paris Opera first, speaking of the masses and the spectacle…
Not everyone will engage with politics to the same degree, and we can't expect most people to care that much today. So, if we want to affect positive change then those changes have to be incremental and easy to assimilate. Revolutions caused by starvation are not the only way to change, nor the better way. Those of us radical enough to question the foundations of society must boil our strategies down into small and specific proposals that can be snuck in through the system and change the rules of the game.
17:16 - heyyy! That Baudrillard & the bachelor video is very good. As is the follow-up bachelor in paradise video.
Just watched the beginning:
Yes, we just have too much self-referential communication about leftism. The channels that do talk about leftism should tie that communication with movements that directly improve people's material conditions: From vegan consumer boycotts to establishing local food cooperatives.
Is it possible to find a photo of Baudrillard where he ISN'T smoking?
Once a photographer took a photo of him for a book jacket and he wasn't, but Baudrillard got mad, lit one, and told him to retake it.
Funny this video comes up as I was just instructed to read a paper written by this guy as part of my University courses. In it, he's talking about this idea of how that consumption operates in terms of experiencing, using, or destroying something only to then recreate or echo it at a later time in some bastardized, festivalized, or parodic form; with one example given being of how that dead-serious historical events are reenacted for fun and entertainment a century later. That, of course, strikes me as a very useful theory for thinking about how "cultural appropriation" racism operates in the USA and elsewhere (even more egregiously - China's Han-dominated "state capitalist" government's commodification-genocide of the Uyghur), which is something that a Marxist dogmatist would probably have a harder time explaining. Would be interested to see more of what he's written.
Reality is finished. Thank you Plastic Pills.
What is dead can never die. What do you think it is that finished?
Bro the sonnet took me out lol, made me think about the state of music as a "spectacle" lol Genius !
I probably do have the kind of ridiculous ego that still believes in my ability to feel cosmic love and speculate on such forces. But I also believe that love, as I have come to understand it, is in those moments when a special connection and multiplication of things happens and something new and beautiful eventually emerges from that moment...It can happen in the day to day if you're lucky, or it can happen in the sheets, or it can happen anywhere, but what defines love to me is that it's special and ultimately beautiful.
I also can confirm that I really like how intelligence works....I like to have a greater understanding and appreciation of how things work whether they be ugly or not...its fun. I don't want to be dumb, I can't be dumb, I like to manipulate things and create. I also hate watching others use their power in ways that I don't think they should. Most people just want to hoot, root and toot, fall into semi or complete oblivion, and let that be it, but I fundamentally never been so inclined and so have naturally never let this dictate my self/life.
Maybe I have a much bigger ego, maybe its how i'm wired, not so much intelligence, that makes me this way, rather than be like the vast majority of my fellow apes that are happy to play the game of codified signs and exchanges in order to be a real coomer.
unconscious investment (desire)>preconscious investment or 'interest'. more d&g! this stuff is too good
Great video, a good anecdote for modern living. Ah, the absurdity of it all, there are people that absolutely enjoy the spectacle of being seduced all for the sake of fake amusement. Like last week I told someone to consider researching emotional resilience, she both burst out laughing and crying at the same time. That’s really something to see.
I love you, man! For telling it like it is. It all makes sense now. ❤
What's "good" is entirely, 100% subjective. Nothing is good for everyone, forever. Good is perfectly fluid, and changes day to day, as does it's counterpart. Good, is only as real as WE allow evil to be. Pills argues from the perspective of Plato's Cave of subjectivity, and subjecthood. Good luck with that.
I learned Baudrillard far before I understood Marxism.
I found it difficult over the last decade to pretend that Marxism showed better explanation for what was going on with culture than post-modern concepts like simulacra.
With the simulacra, it’s easy to see how the outcome of millions of choices to consume communication has grown naturally out of technological innovation, and how the subject cannot only choose to partake of the spectacle, but to be a part of targeting the spectacle precisely to themselves.
That is the feedback loop that connects the viewer to the spectacle is now much more personal. So the viewer has the perception that their context is THE context.
It’s kind of how the Wachowski’s made the Matrix with the intent to make art of post-modernism and views like Baudrillard, but instead the Matrix falls closer to Marxism. In doing so, in reaching their goal IN A WAY, they are now in the public consciousness more separated from their goal than before.
In this same way, we the creator of our feedback loop (what the Zennials call our “algorithm”) becomes the embodiment of ourselves in the space of communication, but we become disembodied in the real space of tangible and human-to-human culture.
So, in this process of getting just about closer to the art we are looking for, we are truly never there, and our self becomes the imprint of our desires and feedbacks in the data stream. Our journey is recorded, not for us to see, but for others to see and try and grab our attention.
It serves to point out that the near-approach-but-never-reaching of the desire is the most effective part from the perspective of those who sell the spectacle.
Even if it the climax of spectacle is reached (and for me personally that was the ride of the Rhohirrim in The Return of the King back in the early 2000s) the point is that I have submitted myself to the process of the spectacle, and I do not know how to climax culturally in any other way.
This results in a kind of de facto permanent state of consumption, for me personally looking for the next Chateau fight scene from Matrix reloaded.
Consequently, there is a kind of inherent sexualization of meaning that we all accept as a culture by being willing to give up our creative abilities and all communicating to each other and saying, “hey, this, right here… this is a meme. Know it. Use it..”
The problem lies that the material reality is not only not permanent, but the space of communication, all of the possibilities, must at some point be occupied by the next generation. If I assert that my experience of cultural climax should hold more sway over that of others, I now toe the line of cultural tyranny. And… the children must be free to play.
They are as children, and in the same way that I experienced climax in becoming an adult, so must the next generation.
Consequently, if we commit to the spectacle, we are accepting that someone’s voice will always have sway over someone else.
This is where the connection to the material begins, because if we accept that the space for meaning in culture is either limited by the amount of communications that can be made or by ability of a group of people to share in cultural climax, then the alternative then is that of creating for oneself.
But, this is where the physical space becomes real in the pursuit of meaning.
Because we cannot run from the eternity of the spectacle without some access to the real.
Consequently, if the real is something that someone else owns en masse, our attempts to find a vacant space for us to create, even if only for ourselves, now enters limbo. For we neither can create in reality and find meaning in the activity of creation ourselves, and we cannot hope to occupy space in the larger contexts of culture.
A good example of this would be Dune. The hero’s journey in Dune is decidedly anti-heroic. Luke would have continuously basked in rebellion, even against the alliance, probably at some point becoming a religious extremist. Frodo would have gone back to the shire, and with his friends, their descendants used their means to create a housing crisis in the shire to their gain.
Neo becomes trapped in a super hero franchise.
Like reproduction and sex, we are committed to the absurd if we think the climax is all that there is, and that it cannot possibly lead to far less enjoyable outcomes.
I imagine the same can be said of the preceding generations, and that same will be said of the latter.
So the answer is indeed silence, a place where theory finds itself limited as much as the rest. Perhaps not on our own, but surely in cultural spaces we all consider the spectacle.
In the end you make a good point, which is that Baudrillard is arguing that theory can’t take itself too seriously. This is because the average person, when partaking of the spectacle is in of themselves not truly seeking something great or large. They are merely enjoying the moment.
I made many references to great and cosmic tales, and yet someone watching the Bachelor or bachelorette was themselves not necessarily looking for meaning in the spectacle.
I think this is also were baudrillard is right, because each generation can find and seek meaning somewhere, and suddenly the interest is gone. Like children in a garden, we might find a bug that keeps us entrances for a day, like say debating whether a dress is black or white, but that cultural experience can just as easily evaporate from one day to the next… which it often has.
What people think is still important, in so far as what they think informs their behavior, and in so far as their behavior actuates an economy
❤thax I never could’ve done that deep understanding of Baudrillard on my own😮blew my mind
I think this made me a bigger standpoint epistemologist than ever
What revolution has Postmodernism led?
The revolution against sanity and the working class. It's been doing a pretty good job as far as I can see
i love how at 8:26 the piss lens filter happens.
Maybe I missed this point, but a key feature for me when it comes to “new philosophy” is the question of what is it supposedly asking us to do. And maybe it is just me, but Beaudrillard seems to be suggesting that we shouldn’t be fighting against what has us miserable and distorts our thoughts and actions. Why fight against something for what is deep down, when there is nothing deep down. When the suggested action is give up and stay the course I don’t find it to be a good philosophy. Everything else seems like a performance of word games.
A really good one of yours!
And nice that you know to use our subjectivity when money needs to be extracted😂
Entrepreneurial Capitalism needs people to accept 'individualism' unquestioningly.
Because it is the theoretical axe that divides any populace,
makes the population fragmented, alone and manageable.
Turning the 'endless possibilities' of the post-war West into a pure Capitalist dystopia.
There can be 'no mandates' for change with a completely divided population.
With politics in the West made redundant, the population are made impotent.
Identity politics is Capitalism personified. It divides and obliterates collective meaning.
It helps destroy the single plateau theory. That we all have exactly the same basic needs.
Which we can all work together to achieve.
Individualism - It subversively divides and weakens the population.
That's why it is the Capitalist West's lynchpin idea.
By embracing it, you can never escape the Capitalist dystopia.
By embracing it, you wholeheartedly embrace your own individual greed.
And you live in a playground full of possibilities to enjoy your personal avarice.
Capitalists understand the fact... that the secret to human potential,
is having a series of collective objectives. Objectives people can understand and believe in.
Humans can achieve anything if bound together as one. Every collective dream is achievable.
Individualism means the few can control the many... for their own, petty individual aims.
Capitalism is the story of how personal or individual greed became normalised,
and defeated the innate power of 'modern' humanity.
so collectivism where a few control many but for "THE GREATER GOOD" is the solution?
yeah no thanks
capitalism is already on its way out anyway grandpa... maybe read less dusty books or for starter at least your late marx