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SIMULACRUM

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truth simulacrum

“Some people have observed that truth is relative to all other truth.  It can also be said that truth is a cooperative  effort of creators, solidified through mutual agreement, and the perception of those who view creation.”

~ Lawrence R. Spencer ~

Definition: “The simulacrum has long been of interest to philosophers. In his Sophist, Plato speaks of two kinds of image making. The first is a faithful reproduction, attempted to copy precisely the original. The second is intentionally distorted in order to make the copy appear correct to viewers.  He gives the example of Greek statuary, which was crafted larger on the top than on the bottom so that viewers on the ground would see it correctly. If they could view it in scale, they would realize it was malformed.

This example from the visual arts serves as a metaphor for the philosophical arts and the tendency of some philosophers to distort truth so that it appears accurate unless viewed from the proper angle. Nietzsche addresses the concept of simulacrum in the Twilight of the Idols, suggesting that most philosophers, by ignoring the reliable input of their senses and resorting to the constructs of language and reason, arrive at a distorted copy of reality.

French social theorist Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal.  “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth. It is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” Precession of the Simulacra, Jean Baudrillard

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

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GODISM TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

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I recently read two books by Robert Heinlein: “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls”, which is the sequel to an earlier book, “The Moon is A Harsh Mistress“.   His books are full of witty wisdom, revolutionary revelation and practical philosophy.  Many of the ideas of the so-called “New Age” movement were written by Heinlein, who was, ironically, a military and scientific man, as well as a scholar and fiction writer.  Here are two of my favorite statements from these books….

“The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly. Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely ‘Godism’ turned upside down.”

Light_dispersion_conceptual

godism upsidedown

“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, “I don’t know”, then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”  

–– Robert Heinlein, from the book THE CAT WHO WALKED THROUGH WALLS