I recall elderly relatives speaking of the Second World War: "You'll never know what it was like from the movies." That was modernism. For the modernist, the Second World War was the original experience, and the movies about it were imperfect simulations. During the Gulf War, newspapers carried a selection of quotations from US pilots who flew bombing runs over Baghdad. One said, "It was exactly like the movies!" This is postmodernism.

Postmodernists use the term hyperreality for "the world as a copy without an original"-- a web of symbolic associations (the war like a movie like war) that has no reference to any ultimate meaning.

The question arises, at the core of reality, is there an original experience, or is everything hyperreal, as, in the words of Sartre (The Devil and the Good Lord)

The world itself is iniquity; if you accept the world, you are really iniquitous. If you try and change it, then you become an executioner. The stench of the world rises to the stars.

Thus Sartre condemned the norms, the values and the pleasures of the world as wicked lies. He saw beyond this wickedness nothing. The world is without meaning; it just stinks to the stars of contradiction. Choose to accept the world, you stink; choose to change it, you likewise stink. Sartre admitted he too stank of contradiction. "I still write," he lamented , "What else can I do?"

Is it as, in the words of Sartre, that there is no essential experience to reality.
Or is it as, in the actions of Sartre, that there is an essential experience since to refrain from seeking it is an impossibility?

Explaining ones own experiences, ones own reality, to someone else is virtually impossible. First, not only is it impossible to put into words, but it's impossible for someone else to comprehend it.

One can't make a two-hour movie and expect to encompass a war experience that lasted a year or more ...it's impossible.

Baron Max

some pilots flying air raids over iraq tend to disagree

Sartre was a moron. The world may seem like it is without meaning but that is because for every individual it is a blank slate.

I understand where Satre is coming from but in the end he's too much of a pessimist for me. Instead why not celebrate in the fact that you have no absolute knowledge of what is there and that all you have are your own (probably distorted) perceptions. I'll take the joyful wisdom of Nietzsche over the gnostic-pessimism of Satre.

As for the question of postmodernism as a social experience, I think it's more complicated than just accepting the image of reality as more real than reality. That may work for some but people in the past found plenty of things to be deluded about as well. The essence of postmodernism is not accepting any single explanation for reality--thinking in terms of multiplicities instead of a dialetic and not accepting any single "meta-narrative" to explain the complexities of the world as one senses it.

I recall elderly relatives speaking of the Second World War: "You'll never know what it was like from the movies." That was modernism. For the modernist, the Second World War was the original experience, and the movies about it were imperfect simulations. During the Gulf War, newspapers carried a selection of quotations from US pilots who flew bombing runs over Baghdad. One said, "It was exactly like the movies!" This is postmodernism.

The movie is made to represent reality. It is an imperfect recreation, of course. It can not help but be so.

If you were in a war before you saw a movie about one, you see all the flaws in the movie and say, "It's not the same."

On the other hand, if you saw innumerable movies about war before experiencing it, you see the similarities first.

I don't see how this represents a huge philosophical change. It's simply that the generation born after WW2 experienced war as a movie before experiencing war as a reality. Not only that, for the majority of us, our experience of war is the same as our experience of movies. Images on our TV screen.

I'll bet if you ask US soldiers who've fought on the ground in Iraq if it was like the movies, you'd get a different answer.

[QUOTE] During the Gulf War, newspapers carried a selection of quotations from US pilots who flew bombing runs over Baghdad. One said, "It was exactly like the movies!" This is postmodernism.
1) pilots would have very different experiences from ground troop patrolling. Especially now, when computers have taken over so much of what the pilots see and do and how they see it. History is a factor in this change and also which combatants you talked to. 2) Some movies about things that have happened to me are realistic. In no way do they seem as real as the actual experiences I've had. I have no trouble telling them apart.

Postmodernists use the term hyperreality for "the world as a copy without an original"-- a web of symbolic associations (the war like a movie like war) that has no reference to any ultimate meaning.

I think a little time in a room with a couple of thugs or a torterer would quickly get them to recant their theories, and honestly.

The question arises, at the core of reality, is there an original experience, or is everything hyperreal, as, in the words of Sartre (The Devil and the Good Lord)

The world itself is iniquity; if you accept the world, you are really iniquitous. If you try and change it, then you become an executioner. The stench of the world rises to the stars.

How strange a set of comments from an existentialist - one who believes we project morals on the blank slate of reality. He is assuming that all interactions with the world are immoral.


Is it as, in the words of Sartre, that there is no essential experience to reality.
Or is it as, in the actions of Sartre, that there is an essential experience since to refrain from seeking it is an impossibility?

He sure got pissed off at Camus for political choices the latter made. And he put this pissed offness in writing and justified it logically. It seems to me at least some of the time even the philosopher Sartre thought there essential experiences, meanings and morals. I tend to believe his actions (including qutie a bit of his writing) or some of his quotes. He believed and so do I.
And if you are going to disagree, why would you bother if there is no meaning and no essential experience?

[QUOTE=lightgigantic;1550132]

And if you are going to disagree, why would you bother if there is no meaning and no essential experience?
Because what else are you going to do? i think that's pretty much the whole thrust of the argument isnt it. Youre damned if you do damned if you dont, so you might as well be damned and occupied at the same time.

[QUOTE=Grantywanty;1550651]
Because what else are you going to do? i think that's pretty much the whole thrust of the argument isnt it. Youre damned if you do damned if you dont, so you might as well be damned and occupied at the same time.

Well Buddhists would tend to suggest withdrawing from things. Or finding a portion of oneself that is transcendant while letting the body go through the motions. (not that I am suggesting this, just saying that even if it is correct there are other options)

I also think that urge to be occupied, as you put it, is revealing a belief by you and Sartre have but perhaps are not so willing to identify with. The official belief may be damned either way, but there are factions who believe other things. I think the governments in you should be careful how they treat these factions. Often we find later that what seemed like small factions are actually the will of the populace, sometimes even this will turns out to be right.

I am glad that slavery was made illegal in the US. Choice between having been an abolitionist or not...it is a real choice, affecting core experience.