In order to prepare for Perspectives we must know what we are writing about and be able to narrow the reader's knowledge into a specific point. This will help increase the overall effectiveness of our writing and communication of our concept. This can be helped by completing this exercise.
Hi Al,
ReplyDeleteOkay - so I still think there's a tension/imprecision at work in your structure here - a question of emphasis.
It seems as if you're ultimately arguing that 'hyperrealism' is like the 'crystal meth' of escapism; for example, it is possible to say that reading a book is escapism, that watching a film is escapism, that Tinder is escapism etc. In other words, talking about escapism is talking about 'being alive' and 'being human'. To say that humans live for escapism is a bit of 'non-observation' because it is so obvious and is true for everyone on the planet, and has been true for all time.
However, you seem to be talking about 'bad escapism' - which you're describing as 'addiction' - and you also seem to be saying that 'bad escapism' is actively encouraged by 'hyper-realism' and thus 'hyper-realism' creates addiction. Personally, I don't really see the usefulness of trying to define the conditions comprising an 'unbearable reality' - because this will be different for everyone and is entire subjective: it might be true that if your life is utter shite, you're likely to want to escape from it, but it is also true that very rich people with perfect lives and relationships etc also end up addicted etc. It's also true that people with horrible lives 'don't become game addicts, so I don't think you could really write about this scenario with any real meaningfulness.
I think you need to look again at what you're saying about hyperrealism - you seem to be saying the completely immersive simulations are more likely to promote addiction in their users/inhabitants, and you seem to be making the point that this is somehow different to 'gaming addiction' wherein people might just want to play PacMan for the rest of their lives (which might being addicted to winning, as opposed to addicted to the pleasures of a wonderful simulated world).
I also think you need to make distinctions between the 'worry' people have around the perceived effect of these immersive simulations and our inability to leave them and the actual reality of the situation. For example, you could certainly prove that we're worrying about losing ourselves to these spaces because of the stories we're telling about them - The Truman Show, The Matrix, Westworld, Black Mirror and so on... but these manifestations of our concerns about 'losing ourselves to the hyprreal' are ultimately fictional. They're significant because we're obviously exploring our Baudrillardian anxieties about our grip on reality, but they're not evidence for addiction and they're not documentaries. I can't help feeling that you could and should be discussing these fictional explorations as part of your dissertation.
Hey Al - can you get your Perspectives OGR up on here asap so I can share it with Andrew? Thanks.
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