Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius | Jorge Luis Borges And The Implosion Of Reality!

Before we get into that, the opening quote that I read is the opening line of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation from the procession of Simulacra.

And the eagle-eared among you may know that or may have caught on to the fact that that is a fabricated fabricated quote.

That line does not appear in the book of Ecclesiastes, but Baudrillard attributes it to the book of Ecclesiastes.

And what he's doing there is basically demonstrating a lot of what he's then explaining, you know, in, in his writing and, Um, but just by saying something and saying something that is true in his framing, uh, he's talking about the simulacra.

He's talking about how it's not that it's hiding the truth, like how ideology, um, will often cover up the truth even though ideology operates because there's some truth in it but it's spun and it's hiding it's obfuscating um the truth the simulacra isn't obfuscating the truth the simulacra is the truth uh and it's hiding the fact that there is none at all so it's this kind of impossible object So the simulacra is relevant or is kind of related to ideology.

It's related to the commodity form, being that it serves as this kind of floating signifier or this kind of empty set.

But it's not the same thing.

But what he's doing there by attributing this quote to Ecclesiastes, many people aren't going to go pick up the Holy Bible and read Ecclesiastes and discover, oh, this line is nowhere in the Bible.

Or, you know, when the book was published in the 80s, they didn't have the Internet.

They couldn't look it up.

They couldn't.

Google, hey, is this quote in the Bible? Or now, I don't know, ask Google AI, ask ChatGPT, hey, is this line actually in Ecclesiastes or whatever? So a lot of people probably got the impression, wow, that's interesting.

The book of Ecclesiastes talks about the simulacra.

And, you know, there was probably a lot of people were like, that doesn't sound right.

There's something fishy there.

So I don't think like most people thought this line was from Ecclesiastes, but I'm sure some people did.

And that's kind of the point of what's going on.

Those people who thought, oh, this line is actually in Ecclesiastes, it then became true to them.

And that...

Became a kind of simulacra that they would go on to kind of propagate.

Maybe maybe not It's not like everyone's out here talking about Baudrillard all the time But it's like on the internet a lot of the time Falsehoods kind of become new truths and they become productive and they produce kind of an order of reality or an order of simulacrum Or an order of simulacra rather and And they're completely unfounded.

It's completely untrue or ear real.

It's an ear real that produces a new reality and it lives on and it becomes productive and it generates more and more and it picks up more and more kind of material traction.

One thing.

I like to think of in in relation to this is Hassan Piker Hassan Piker He's in the news a lot lately He's an internet guy.