Baudrillard, Corona and Floyd

“Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.”
― Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard writes about the Simulacrum, which is the replacement of reality with its representation.

We get distracted from the reality in a systematic process of generalization, disinformation and even socialization. I don´t want to get too deep into philosophic approaches, but I´d like to entertain the idea, that Baudrillards has a point when he talks about misconception of reality. In his essays: The Gulf war will/is/did not happen he shows that for the population not involved directly in this conflict the war was not real. What happens when we “inform” us about a current event is that we put on the news and get flashing images and soundbites that are promised to be unbiased coverage. But if we are honest, we´ll just see a general view of a complex situation, which is embedded and growing out of a specific point of view. To be more precise, we are always mislead by not only our own perception but a perception altered by nations interests, socialization of a whole culture and human development in general.

In context of development aid and the view of the global south, we are never fully aware about different world experiences and problems. Too fully grasp what the living reality of the poorest people on earth is, might be near impossible. I don´t condemn the approach to understand these realities by consumption of information but want to emphasize, that we´ll never have complete knowledge of anything.

In addition to the lack of complete vision, we´ll never should have the ultimate feeling of a complete comfort with our democracy. The situation with corona and it´s consequences for third world countries is difficult to imagine and only time will show if handled it correctly.

The death of George Floyd and the following protest show the failure of our “first world” society and the danger of pretending, that we are better or more evolved. In conclusion, I´d like to say, that we are far from perfect and need to keep growing into an ideal state/world society. Same growth and development can´t be presumed for other nations and countries. An individual way should be found and complexity should not be ignored and always has to be kept in the back of the mind.

I should alter this text at one point, because I´m not content with some describing words and see a separation in the last paragraph. One world, million worlds but one love and always be in doubt.