Map, Not the Territory

A road map is just a representation of a real territory.  A restaurant menu is the same.  These are simulations of something real: The roads and the food.  Recently the social theorist, Jean Baudrillard proposed what he calls a level III simulation.  It’s a map of a   territory that doesn’t exist. It is like Disneyland: An illusion that is so well-maintained that it seems real in every detail.  Disney’s marvelous simulation is only surpassed by one other:  American politics!  The level III simulation called politics does not represent a real territory.  The “tit for tat gottcha” is a simulation of a territory that politicians would like us to believe in.  Like Disneyland, it’s a theme park: It’s theme is “it’s the other party’s fault.”  But when we deconstruct their claims to see what’s really going on, their simulations don’t represent a real territory.

Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist who said,  “Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”  In my words, it’s the substance that remains when our beliefs are proved wrong.  For instance, it’s what’s left after the well-designed political illusions are no longer believed by us.  So exactly how many components are there to this political illusion that depends on our belief for its existence?  Pretty much everything that comes out of their mouths while they are in a campaign mode – which is all the time.

Here’s a good example of a simulation that didn’t represent anything real:  WMD’s in Iraq.  There were none.  Yet Colon Powell made that now infamous speech at the United Nations, diagrams and all.  Of what?  Nothing!  It was simply a simulation of a reality that didn’t exist.  Unfortunately, our actions resulted in something very real; the loss of tens of thousands of human lives and trillions of dollars.

Beginning to sound familiar?  Another good one is the illusion that the health care law will cost us more.  The reality that remains when we stop believing the simulation is,  hospitals annually spend hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency room care for the uninsured that gets spread into the rates charged to the insured.  Which are then loaded with insurance company overhead and profits and passed on as insurance premiums to the rest of us.

 

But of all the simulations, the one that is the most pernicious is the culture war.  This is the simulation that causes the most distraction and the polarity in our political discourse.  Deeply hidden in this simulation is the egregious manipulation of our ethics and morals for political gain.  Nothing is more important to us than our values.  And this simulation is designed to perturb them.  It’s designed to make us mad at each other.  Most importantly – it’s designed! 

It frightens us into believing that someone else’s values are about to destroy ours.  It convinces us that we need to abandon our social conscience because we can’t afford it.   It is simply the lowest form of politics imaginable.  The real territory is the true America  where we value the ideal of “live and let live.”  Where we are willing to take care of the least among us.  The real territory is a much better America than is being simulated by our politicians.  We are a better people than our politics.

Deeply hidden under the ground of the Disney simulations you will find vast physical operations centers where the magic of the Magic Kingdom reveals itself.  It takes thousands of people, complex computers, programs that run the animatronics, complex communications systems, etc.  But up above we enjoy a simulation designed to entertain.

Deeply hidden in our political simulation is something similar but not designed to entertain.  There are thousands of professionals whose jobs it is too convince us that their simulation represents something real.  And if you think Disney tickets are an expensive form of entertainment…

Robert DeFilippis