On Going Off The Grid - MGTOW

I discuss going off the grid in a psychical sense; an escape from the various simulacrums we live in every day life.

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I have recently been thinking about the notion of the simulacrum. For those who are not familiar with the term it is a concept we encounter in Plato’s dialogue entitled “The Sophist”. Plato constructed an account of the sophist as someone who engages in image making but of image making intentionally distorted to make the image look correct.

Let me try to clarify. Imagine you are standing at the base of a pillar. On top of the pillar is a statue of a man. Now, in order for the statue of the man to look correct in its proportions to you who are looking up at it from the base of the pillar, the statue’s top half must be carved larger than its bottom half. However, if you were to climb the pillar and look at the statue of the man from there, you would see that indeed this is a very weird and disproportioned statue of a man.

Nietzsche also raises the issue of the simulacrum. In his commentary, Nietzsche talks about the tendency for philosophers to sometimes ignore the evidence of their sense experience and operate solely in the realm of language and abstraction, therefore creating a distorted image of reality.

Now, I have been thinking of the various simulacrums that are impacting me personally. I was trying to identify things in my life that are most likely contributing to me perceiving a distorted view of reality. There are of course the usual suspects such as the media. Most people believe that the media for the most part lies. Due to these lies, the media presents a distorted view of reality. However, the implicit premise there is that if the media told the truth, then the media would be presenting an accurate view of reality. This conclusion does not follow from the premises.

Let us break down what an objective news story looks like. Firstly, some event in reality takes place. Secondly, there are witnesses to this event. Thirdly, a news reporter shows up and interviews the witnesses by asking a series of question. If the event had some lasting impact on the environment, like a building burning down, then the reporter may take a look around the area and maybe take some pictures. Finally, the news reporter crafts a story that he publishes to the general public.

But what is this news story? It is a copy of a copy! The story is two stages of interpretation detached from the event itself. The witness of the event experiences first-hand what had occurred. Their testimony, namely, the answers to questions given to the reporter is the first copy. In turn the reporter interprets the witness’s interpretations and then publishes it to the general public. In fact, when we read a news story, we in fact hold an interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation! In a way, we are playing broken telephone. At each stage of interpretation the disposition of the interpreter is injected into the mix. Depending on what the witness considers relevant, he will answer the reporters’ questions to that extent only. Depending on what the reporter deems relevant, his questions for the witness will be asked towards that end. Depending on what the reporter deems relevant, the reporter will prune away from what he has gathered in order to compose an article.
Again, let us assume everyone in this chain is being 100% honest and has no specific agenda to peddle. Finally, we focus on the parts of the article that we deem relevant and construct our interpretation on that.

Again, the point of my illustration here is not to focus in on the honesty or integrity of the people involved but on the layers of interpretation distancing us from the event itself. Movie reviews, book reviews, news reports, sport commentaries, hell, even sport scores are interpretations. You would think that the result of a soccer match would be pretty easy to consider objective yet what we end up with is a score based on the interpretation of a referee! If the referee says a goal did not count than it did not count!

So the media is one form of simulacrum; the media is one form of distortion of reality that we all experience every day.