Seeking Wisdom in a Simulated World

Our imaginations are constantly being seduced by the simulated reality to which we have surrendered our existence. Powerful agencies with vested interests have mastered the principle that the best way to control a society is to overload it with confusing information and then herd its members to a carefully crafted version of the preferred reality. In a situation characterized by information overload, people will intuitively look for the largest information cluster (an information cluster is a grouping of mutually referencing pieces of information) and accept the view of that cluster as 'the truth'.

So, a good strategy to convince people of a particular view (of simulated reality) is to have the mainstream broadcasters bombard the audience with smaller clusters of conflicting views and a significantly big cluster of views that reference well with each other within that cluster. The big cluster views are often salted with emotion-inducing imageries and are repeated for better registration into memory. Powerful corporations (or, even governments) controlling news outlets have done this all along. Jean Baudrillard famously observed that the real Gulf war, the Gulf war that people imagine to be real, did not take place in the battlefield; it took place on CNN, BBC, and other media outlets. The concerted mass media action to discredit smaller clusters of authentic information is evident only to an enlightened micro minority.

What more, over a period of time, our responses to simulated reality become dogmas; these also create real institutions whose existence will then depend upon fostering the simulations as real. If benefiting humans used to be the reason for our institutions once, now it is the other way around: For example, the economy was once thought to mirror society but it has come to a stage where we all agree that the purpose of society should be to keep its economy and the economic institutions strong. Agencies that maneuver public opinion to this end have also been building institutions that ensure continued economic take over of social relations (The latest one: leaked drafts of the Trans-Pacific-Partnership negotiations).

The self awareness of the contemporary man is not at all rooted in the real-reality. Or, we make perfect sense of our lives without ever referring to any such reality. The sense of the simulated world that is being injected into our consciousness provides a comprehensive and self-sufficient quasi-reality within which we find all our meanings for existence and action. We just do not know that this simulated reality is not real and that it is easily and frequently manipulated. Even in those rare situations when we suspect, we don't run away: the offerings of the simulated world have largely made us addicts to its pleasures. Added to this are the confirmatory pressures from our own peers and the threats against defection from the protectors of the simulated design.

While this is not an advocacy paper to exit this complex matrix (there is some 'more beautiful than real' fun in it!), occasionally reminding ourselves of the fact that we are living in a deeply simulated social world is tremendously helpful. It will help us see the patterns the simulation takes, critically reflect upon the vicious grand designs those patterns imply, and prepare ourselves proactively to meet with 'surprises'. Not just in personal lives, but also in our professions.

In my practice as a small business consultant, during strategy briefs, I encourage managers to preserve an 'unadulterated portion of mind' with which to analyse the shapings of the hyper-reality around them. Business research can help us see the big picture behind the scenes only if we frame our analyses with the astute awareness that the data that we gather are drawn from the simulacra. Seeing the reality that lies beneath the simulated existence using the data that we gather from the simulations is indeed a great challenge but not impossible.