Ministry of Reality
What would be, therefore, the duties of a newly elected political leader “of great power” (former hyperpower) like the (dozing) Jo Biden immediately after assuming his duties? Many and various – one might say. Correctly. However, the establishment New York Times with a signed article (Kevin Roose) on February 2, 2021 had to propose to Biden and his administration a duty unprecedented at first glance: …To solve America’s “reality crisis”…
Let us follow points of thinking on the issue of “reality crisis”, as they were then exposed:
Last month, millions of Americans watched Biden’s presidential inauguration and his speech, where he called for a new era of American unity.
However, many other Americans didn’t pay attention to Mr. Biden’s speech. They were too busy watching videos on YouTube claiming that the inauguration was a pre-recorded hoax filmed in Hollywood.
Or they were melting in QAnon group chats, trying to figure out why former President Donald J. Trump didn’t interrupt Mr. Biden’s speech to declare martial law and announce the mass arrest of satanic pedophiles.
Or they might have turned their TVs to OAN, where a presenter promoted the unfounded theory that Mr. Biden “was not actually elected by the people.”
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The confusing, chaotic information ecosystem that produces these misguided beliefs doesn’t just endanger some grand ideal about national unity. It actively worsens our nation’s biggest problems and creates more work for those trying to solve them. And it raises an important question for the Biden government: How can you unite a country where millions of people have chosen to create their own version of reality?
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Various experts I spoke with commented that the Biden administration should create a cross-agency task force to deal with disinformation and domestic extremism, which could lead to something like a “reality czar.”
It sounds a bit dystopian, I’ll agree. But let’s consider it.
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Someone could mistakenly think that the “problem” described is the truth… Wrong. The word “truth” in English is called truth; however, the author speaks of reality. About reality. There are serious differences between these two concepts, the concept of truth and the concept of reality; and the use of the second where someone would think that the position of the first has historical and political explanations and purposes, which we will see in the following.
Truth (a concept that has reached philosophical heights) is considered as something absolute; in contrast to reality which is considered empirical, sensory, and to some extent acceptably subjective. Truth can also be supported as timeless, as eternal; in contrast to reality which can very well be evolving, circumstantial. In other words, it is in the concept of reality (and not truth) that a degree of subjectivity and relativity can be accepted. Of course, this leaves open for discussion what this “degree” is, depending on various conditions.
That’s why, then, the NYT establishment talks about a “reality crisis” and not a “truth crisis”: because behind and within the words they use, they refer to something much broader and deeper than the reactions of Trump’s supporters. They refer to the shaping and control of subjectivity and relativity / differences in opinions and beliefs within American society. And, by extension, also in other (perhaps all) First World societies.
Under the terms “reality crisis” and “reality czar” lies the issue of ideological, “informational,” and sensory (let’s remember: the concept of reality is fundamentally empirical/sensory) management of citizens, under conditions (we say…) of the 4th industrial revolution.
Reality shows
Reality (and not truth) as a spectacle, as a branch of television programs, emerged in this very state and in this society where now some people, not by chance, are discussing its “regulation”, in the US, almost 30 years ago. In 1992 with the “reality show” series The Real World: seven to eight adults of both sexes, random and unknown to each other, were placed (for payment) in a common house in a city which none of them knew or had ever been to before, under constant video surveillance, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In the first “season,” the 7 random housemates lived together and were filmed from February 16 to May 18, 1992; the broadcast of selected/edited “episodes” began 3 days later. The reactions of American television “experts” were mixed; however, the audience embraced the series and its kind of dramatization of reality, resulting in The Real World continuing for 25 years, until 2017. Meanwhile, Big Brother was also warmly embraced (a Dutch invention, it began in 1999, and by September 2019, 448 “seasons” had been broadcast in over 54 countries…); Survivor (an Anglo-Swedish invention, started in 1997), and others followed. Within three decades, reality shows became a distinct international industry; but also a cultural/ideological phenomenon that spilled beyond the classical television of the time, introducing or highlighting new qualitative elements.
Given the long history of both cinema and television in directing (reality: films, classic series), what was it that made reality-as-spectacle a new, popular, mass trend from the 1990s onward, initially in capitalist-developed Western societies? It’s not difficult to understand: the (average) social belief that in reality shows there is NO directing, since there are NO actors, professionals or amateurs, performing on a predetermined script… But also the legitimization of the expanded peep show, the indiscriminate act of each person safely observing the lives of others from a distance.
In this sense, reality—as—spectacle, was twofold. On one hand, the “reality of the show’s participants”; and on the other, that of the viewers. The former we can put in quotation marks, since even the camera angle (not to mention the editing) constitutes direction; while in many of these shows there were some “loose” scripts as well as “tips” behind—the—cameras so that the … outcome wouldn’t be boring. The second one, however, of embracing these sub-products of an industry (the television industry) that had reached a dead end, that was and is real reality!
What was/is the ominous reality in this story that has already grown for a generation or a generation and a half of citizens on the capitalist planet (apart, of course, from the indiscriminate nature of most of these reality shows)? The idea that reality is now almost exclusively a kind of social role playing in front of others. In the 1990s, the supremacy of appearance over being, and the supremacy of surface and image over depth, which had been timely predicted and analyzed by Debord in The Society of the Spectacle and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, had already been incorporated by the great mass of citizens; mainly of the “developed” capitalist societies. While professional acting began to steadily lose its distinct professional value, everyday acting, the everyday Performance/Display of the Self gradually but quickly became a social routine. This was the great success of “reality TV”: it easily convinced the great masses of subordinates that their reality IS a spectacle, IS and MUST BE appearance; and as such it must be “projected” in the literal sense of the word projection.
Although, therefore, reality could historically, locally and/or subjectively be determined without preventing individuals from sharing it by recognizing (not always easily) the limits of their subjectivity, it seems that from the ’90s onwards a reversal began to take place: reality no longer had subjective aspects but, on the contrary, individual appearance became the most acceptable reality and, at the same time, the measure of its appreciation. The eternal dynamics of narcissism not only became real (it always was) but through its massification began to become a “reality constructor”.
The selfie “culture” burst forth from this evolution just like Athena from Zeus’s head…
Avatar: the “beginning of pleasure” strikes back…
Freud is credited with classifying and distinguishing between two “principles” that shape our species’ social life: the pleasure principle (“principle of pleasure”) and the reality principle. Psychoanalysis traces the first to infancy and childhood, where “we create imaginary worlds to our measure and, in a way, live quite some time within them.” According to Freud:
… The Ego, when educated, becomes logical, no longer dominated by the principle of pleasure, but obeys the principle of reality, which also at its core seeks the acquisition of pleasure, but pleasure that is secured by taking reality into account, even if the pleasure is deferred and diminished…
It is a fact that Freud and psychoanalysis influenced Western societies for the most part of the 20th century; however, it also faced criticism (which in our opinion is valid in many cases). Freud did not deal with what “reality” is in his era; he considered it, in a formalistic way, as a network of restrictions, rules and balances that prevent or filter the raw “instincts” that dominate the “pleasure principle” in infants. This is essentially what is called civilization as a whole. However, a specific Freudian trend was particularly inspired from the 1960s onwards, giving a certain validity and priority to the “principle of enjoyment” for adults.
In 1955 (second edition in 1966), the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse published the book Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, which became the “gospel” of the anti-authoritarian movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The 1st chapter of the book began thus:
According to Freud, man can and does exist historically through repression, that is, through suppression. Civilization restricts him in all his dimensions.
It is certainly understandable that without this repression there would be no progress. Uncontrolled Eros is similar to death, having the same destructive consequences. For this very reason, instincts and urges must be curbed. External reality influences human instincts. The manifestation of primitive animal instincts remains always the same, but their course and purpose necessarily change so as to not lead to destruction. Thus, instincts continue to exist, but the path toward their satisfaction changes. The direct satisfaction of instincts becomes a conscious delayed satisfaction. Pleasure is forced to set limits and show restraint; the joy and carefreeness of play are transformed into labor filled with toil and hardship; human receptivity becomes exploitable productivity, and where there was never repression and suppression, there now exists a sense of security.
Thus, from the pleasure principle we now move on to the reality principle. These two principles constitute the intellectual mechanism which is comparable to the conscious and unconscious functions of the individual. The unconscious is dominated by the pleasure principle, which consists of the primitive instincts of man whose sole purpose is to maximize pleasure without the participation of reason. At some point, the individual realizes that absolute satisfaction of his needs cannot occur without pain. Thus, the reality principle emerges and takes the place of pleasure. Where there was momentary, uncertain, and destructive pleasure, a slow, restrained but full of security pleasure appears. Here it becomes perceptible that the reality principle protects pleasure through duration. Of course, the reality principle does something else too; it essentially changes pleasure, and when we say essentially, we mean that a subordination of instinctual satisfaction emerges. Gradually, man, from an animal full of unsatisfied urges, becomes an organized ego, now characterized by thought. He can now distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, and useful from harmful. This new thinking subject is characterized by the functions of attention, memory, and judgment. However, imagination manages to escape and a piece of pleasure remains. All this system opens the basis for the conscious and gradual satisfaction of our desires, only now our desires are directed by society and not by the individuals themselves.
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The constitutional upgrade of the “pleasure principle” inspired not only sexual liberation in the ’60s and ’70s but also (often manic) consumerism and neoliberal individualism from the ’80s onwards. This was not Marcuse’s intention; but capitalist materialist dialectics always have their way.
Amidst the general indulgence from the upgrade of the “pleasure principle,” particular attention was not given to a dual social movement: the “pleasure principle” broke free from the narrow age constraints of infancy; however, simultaneously, childhood became a significant social value for adults. Not only in the form of over-caring for their children, but also in the form of worshiping “eternal youth” (eternal childhood/adolescence). In other words, reality, as Freud conceived it in the early 20th century, was transformed by the end of the same century—thanks also to Freudianism (neoliberalism and consumerism)—into a visible mass, social trend towards rejuvenileism.1
The indiscriminateness, and the blurring of boundaries between public and private space and time through the continuous videography of “other people’s lives” (reality shows) was not the only “cultural/social form” that dramatically expressed this dynamic transformation. Adult video games, the playful engagement of adults (often with unprecedented dedication in terms of space and time) with virtual realities, is yet another expression of the (mass) transformation of “reality” in terms of subjectivity and enjoyment. The spread of video games is, of course, due to the proliferation of personal computers and the internet; however, it is particularly significant that, thanks to the latter and multiplayer games, a strategic leap occurred—from immersing oneself in a fantasy world during childhood to doing so in adulthood, and not even limited to the transitional adolescent phase of their lives. Moreover, the role of informatics as a new communication technology must not be underestimated in this leap; nor should the fact that the massive resonance of video gaming—and not any other (economic, occupational) use of computers and the internet—was the driving force behind the rapid development of both personal computers and the internet itself.
We will distinguish from this development as far as “reality” and its conception are concerned, a dynamic evolution from the first decade of the 21st century onwards, Second Life. It is not necessarily the most popular video game: it started in 2003 and by 2013 it is estimated to have had one million users/players worldwide. However, it is perhaps one of the most characteristic in terms of the issue that interests us here: the construction, continuous reconstruction and “life” within a virtual reality. Moreover, its widespread acceptance inspired other similar ones that followed.
“Virtual reality”: this is a term contradictory in its very construction! Either something is real, or it is virtual; with the latter often being synonymous with false, deceptive (e.g.: “virtual invoices”, “virtual execution”, etc.). And yet this contradictory term was favorably accepted, because it perhaps expressed a maturely contradictory (social) condition. Which perhaps can trace its genealogy either to watching cinematic films (especially at the beginning of cinema), or to watching theatrical performances (and the participation with the actors), or – even further back – to Christian iconography / “hagiography” as a method of constructing a “reality of the sacred” within churches.
However, in contrast to all these, the virtual reality of Second Life DID NOT have a predetermined “scenario”, an a priori defined meaning, a moral directive. Second Life was essentially a technology, a specific technical capability for each user/player to construct their own “life scenario”, a virtual life, a false, deceptive life as virtual; in function and in relation to the “life scenarios” of other users/players. In other words: a technology for constructing Another World. Life there!…
And this was and is the similarity/difference with the “fantasy worlds” of infants and children: they use that indefinite thing called imagination; in Second Life, technology has taken its place. The “fantasy world” of children (an expression of the “principle of enjoyment”…) is vague and fluid; virtual reality, however, is specific in form and content, “compact,” formally complete. And, not at all paradoxically if one thinks about it carefully, the company that promoted Second Life (Linden Lab) prohibited the use of this particular virtual reality by ages under 16: in order to enjoy the virtuality of life, one should first have accepted (at least initially) whatever reality exists outside cyberspace! The often manic underage players of Nintendo and Sony should wait to “grow up” in order to create a parallel, virtual life; to live within another, virtual universe; to choose to “be” something else…2
… Second Life users, called residents, create virtual replicas of themselves called avatars, and can interact with places, objects and other avatars. They can explore the world (called the grid), meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, build, create, shop and trade virtual assets and services with each other… Second Life also has its own virtual currency, the Linden dollar, which is exchangeable with real-world currencies…
Excerpt from the presentation on the English version of wikipedia.
Some (real) countries have opened embassies in Second Life: Sweden, Estonia, the Philippines, Israel, Malta… Recognized religions have opened churches… Artists created their avatars addressing other avatars; some (real) politicians made election speeches there; and recruitment companies (in the real world) searched Second Life for talented “collaborators” for their clients. At least one university opened a branch, a newspaper opened a virtual office, countless companies placed advertisements there; and in 2007, virtual street fights took place in Second Life between (French) supporters of socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal and the fascist “National Front” of Le Pen.
A capitalist society that resembles the real one without being “exactly” so!… In fact: a capitalist society that is constructed by the “dream selves” at the same time as it is the machine that constructs them! If Marcuse were alive and used the Marxist concepts he knew, he would speak about alienation – and he would lose his popularity! He had died, fortunately for him, since 1979… For the social, ideological, moral and aesthetic data of the 3rd industrial revolution, the construction of “virtual realities” was natural and acceptable; as well as the latent (?) childishness in enjoying them. Childishness as a constructor of a second, “other” life, within and outside the “first” one, the more or less unpleasant…
From the perspective of play, whether within or beyond the confines of role-playing games (and the “right to play” for adults), one could not say much. However, the transformation, the creation of avatars, and the intensity of their lives there—as if they were here—cannot simply be considered a game, regardless of how much freedom one allows in playing. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, whatever reality there was (with whatever subjectivity in its conception and lived experience) seemed least “negotiable” before the technological capability—and we insist on “technological”—of DIY virtuality. And to the extent that this virtuality became widespread, to the extent that role-playing became mass phenomenon, to the extent that, finally, cyberspace-time acquired value in the formation of (certainly individual) “identity,” one should speak of the radical relativization of the real; in the name of a certain expanded “principle of enjoyment.”
Donna Haraway with the Cyborg Manifesto had early on celebrated this development, considering it liberating (the emphasis is ours):3
My ironic faith, my blasphemy, has at its center an image, the cyborg (…). At the end of the 20th century, in our times, mythical times, we are all chimeric constructs, theorized and crafted hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is a condensed image of fantasy and material reality simultaneously, of the two articulated centers that structure every possibility of historical transformation…
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Pure and light as the new machines are! Their engineers are mystics of the sun who mediate a new scientific revolution connected with the nocturnal dream of the post-industrial society. These pure machines awaken illnesses that are “nothing more” than the infinitesimal changes of code in an antigen of the immune system, “nothing more” than the experience of intensity.
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The machine is not a thing to be animated, worshipped, and subjected. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our own embodiment. We have responsibility; they do not dominate us nor do they threaten us. We have responsibility for the borders; we are those borders.
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Let’s forgive Haraway: there, at the end of the ’80s and the beginning of the ’90s, she simply had no idea what she was mythologizing. And certainly, she had no understanding of what the (capitalist) machine is, identification with it, its incorporation, its generalized mediation. She didn’t know that the same things, in other words, would be said by the CEOs of every moderna…
Nor, of course, had it occurred to her that if reality becomes relativized, then perhaps it might become available to acquire owners; even “tsars”! No liberation at all!
Artificial, virtual, augmented: choose reality!
We noted from the beginning that reality is to a large extent “empirical,” “sensory,” and by definition contains a degree of subjectivity; the question, of course, is how large this degree is. Since the early 21st century, and thanks to the expansion of virtuality through cyberspace, the term virtual reality has become commonplace; and certainly beyond any concern… Related terms such as artificial reality and augmented reality have become equally natural.
Due to technical capabilities, certainly; but definitely not only because of them! The dialectic between (capitalist) machines and social relations, beliefs, behaviors is what shapes what in a little while might perhaps be called “reality” only abusively; it is anyway this “something” upon which temples and altars are built, even when the faithful cannot discern the foundations of their “sacred” places.
The so-called social media are the most common and consumer-wise legitimized expression so far of this dialectical relationship between (new capitalist) machines and (restructured) social relations. Something much more than correspondence between strangers who have constructed one or more avatars on their behalf, a partition wall with second life and more generally with the “escapes” of video gaming, the “world” of social media, as real as one can decently use this word and as ego-fantastical as none of its “inhabitants” would like to admit, nurtures and is nourished by unrestrained narcissisms that are enslaved to the owners of the machines; in a way that escapes them.
Sometimes the clash between inflationary virtuality and the remnants of reality becomes tragicomic; as much as the reminder that these remnants still endure. On April 18, 2021, one could read in the establishment “Kathimerini”:
On Friday, at noon on April 9th, Mania Tekou passed away. Her life was, according to all testimonies, captivating. Mania Tekou was an economist, formerly a senior official at the European Commission’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while she later maintained her own office on Kifissias Avenue. She was soon to relocate to Geneva for yet another high-level position at the United Nations. Previously, she had worked in Kenya, where she lived and experienced a great love, which however ended dishonorably with the death of her Kenyan beloved one week before their wedding.
She adored her husband Bruno, whose father some claim was a Basque rebel, and his aunt, a French spinster aristocrat who left the management of her fortune to Mania Tekou, whom she also adored. She had great weakness for her two politician sons, one of whom studied at Cambridge, the other at Stanford.
She spent her first quarantine at her summer house in Pelion, drinking aged wine and reading books. Mania Tekou was erudite, multilingual, with refined, gentle, and sophisticated speech. She cared about the environment—she criticized the Acropolis Rally for environmental reasons—and she cared about workers’ rights and their well-being, to such an extent that in her Kifisia office she had bought heated footrests for everyone. She offered sharp analyses of films, and her literary associations were impressive. She was wealthy and progressive, well-traveled, successful, and socially connected—by the age of 54, she had met personalities such as Nelson Mandela, Joseph Stiglitz, and Václav Havel.In the Greek online reality, Mania Tekou appeared suddenly and unexpectedly at least a year and a half ago, perhaps even two years. One could say that her Facebook friends constituted the cream of the Greek online intellect and not only – journalists, writers, economists, entrepreneurs, with whom she exchanged opinions through comments on her various lengthy posts, or sometimes even via Messenger, discussing the American elections or some book, among other things.
Not everything was ideal in Mania Tekou’s life though – she had cancer in the past, and recently it recurred. Last week, she was hospitalized. On Friday, the account’s final post appeared in English – “Mania passed away,” the family’s announcement began. In a way, it was accurate. But then again, how can someone leave who never existed?
Yes, everything seems to indicate that Mania Tekou never existed – a quick search on the Internet yields no results, something particularly strange for a person with such a theoretically great international career – and that the Facebook profile was fake. The first suspicions arose when half an hour after the announcement of her death the profile was deleted. Later, when the whispers of her until recently online friends became a torrent, the possibility that Mania Tekou was non-existent became even more serious – not a single person supported that they had known her closely or even spoken to her on the phone.
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Mania Tekou was not a bot. Someone – some people? – devoted far too much time and energy building this persona, opening private conversations with real people, finding converging points with them through detailed messages, making many real users cry for the loss of a person they thought they knew to some extent – naturally raising the question of how well you know someone you have never met.
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Was it a social experiment? Work for a doctorate? A work of fiction and we will see texts from the profile being published in the future? Was it perhaps a satire of a specific type of person, a wealthy, well-traveled, successful left-leaning woman with an apparently perfect life, a satire so subtle – and perhaps unsuccessful – that no one noticed it until now?
Our interest lies in this major “cultural” event, in a “provincial” society like the Greek one: none of the fanatical “friends” / followers of this virtual persona, none of those who wept with a black tear upon hearing the news of her “death,” had ever wanted to get to know her up close; to have a coffee with her, for God’s sake! The (un)reality of Mania Tekou exceeded their needs, proving useless in the face of her overwhelming virtual “presence.” Her polished virtuality had long since surpassed (based on the “principle of enjoyment”…) the possibilities and joys of ordinary social reality, of everyday direct social acquaintanceships and relationships.
Yet, precisely for this reason, the virtual persona was absolutely successful—because all her “friends” / followers were already virtual themselves, perhaps even “pre-virtual,” at the slightest remove from the “fantastic,” without realizing it! One only needs to see them from Mania Tekou’s perspective—that is, from whoever pulled her strings! What were all these people? Exactly the same as the revered Mania: “accounts,” and nothing more!!! Avatars of themselves. “Accounts” that may have lacked in social experience or intelligence—but nothing beyond that! Put simply: in this festival of virtuality and artificiality, only the operators of “Mania Tekou” were “real,” to a certain extent subjective, just enough to pull off the trick! Everyone else was already virtual, in the sense of deliberately socially detached from reality: content with this mediated, virtual relationship; perfectly so! Steadily and imperceptibly, the “second life” becomes the first…
These, of course, are known much better by businesses and the state “security authorities”. In a world of generalized falsification, systematic lying swims like a fish in water. What reality will stand up to it? Virtuality claims (and steadily conquers) the status of reality; and depending on the circumstances, the status of the singular reality.
Yet it is capitalism – no wonder! How can this ocean of relativity, fluidity, narcissism in constant flux be capitalized? The upcoming applications thanks to 5G communication technology are the acceleration and deepening of virtuality, towards heights (unimaginable until now). Virtual and augmented reality are about to become not only as “real” as possible, but also economically, commercially and disciplinarily exploitable.
We will not describe (with whatever poor words!) this upcoming “new wonderful world”! You will have the joy of discovering it, admiring it or rejecting it (rather in vain both…) in the coming years. We must emphasize this, however: capitalism has reached that point of “development” where it will no longer sell or impose only goods, things, services, individual customs and behaviors… It will sell and impose realities! The trade and/or imposition of “realities” is the total (and ongoing) transformation of the packaging and contents of life; if we can speak that way. There will be a repertoire of “realities” that each person can rent, and within these to “enjoy” the corresponding experiences. (The recent mythologization of the concept “experience,” these feverish rashes of the egotistically un-lived, as well as all transformative subcultures, are social symptoms fitting for this transition to post-humanism or augmented humanism or whatever else it’s called…)
the “tsar”…
We started with a suggestion to the new administration of a declining superpower to undertake the “normalization of reality” (and not the “restoration of truth”!) and, genealogically, we soon concluded that “reality” is already becoming a commodity (a kind of hyper-commodity perhaps) or/and a “new normality,” legally definable. Are these two things related to each other?
They are!!! In a world (capitalist) that is inflationary in terms of “realities,” there must be some kind of regulation. A higher-order “reality,” the reality of power under conditions of the 4th industrial revolution. Under this, of course, (virtual or/and augmented) realities will be allowed, mainly for the enjoyment and experience of the masses; under the strict condition that they will not conflict with the superior “reality.”
The search for a “reality tsar” is, of course, a linguistic acrobatic feat. However, it may indicate a kind of governance under these multi-reality conditions: absolute monarchy…
Isn’t this, perhaps, the appropriate introduction to these grandiose or sanitizing terror campaigns as they have unfolded and continue?
Ziggy Stardust