the faux-new:

fish w.w. burton
Aug 27, 2017 · 4 min read

this is in response to the claims of fake news. as much as i detest the champion of this phrase, i admit that i wanted to subvert the phrase.

the faux-new is something that we are experiencing. the countless reboots, the washed and recycled, basically the whole concept of the faux-new being a body of reprocessed culture.

i take that fake means that the thing is false, as if truth was a paragon of possibility and not an impossible spirit to chase, as if full truth were graspable and not just desirable. plainly, truth is impossible, but nonetheless desirable. inversely, the wholly and complete falsehood is also impossible.

the false is something that is not and or cannot be, something that doesn’t exist. but to say that something does not or cannot exist in the face of the imagination is to ignore the reality of imagination. the fact that a dog can feel fear means that the dog can imagine. the real feelings of fear and grief are not to be ignored. granted, imaginative choices are limited to the imagination, but that is not to say that the consequences of imagination are not infused and impacted on the physical world. we may be coming to an age in society where we are becoming aware enough to confront the impacts of the imagined world on the physical world, or to put it differently, the real connection between the physical and metaphysical.

that was a longer way of saying the imagination is real (because it has real impact on our real lives (for who hasn’t imagined grown up life as a child, or been frightened by the imagination, or fallen in love because of fancy), and that in light of the reality of the imagination it becomes difficult to say that anything is completely and utterly false. it may be false to say that there is a god, but we cannot discount the real implications of belief in him. we may not accept the “fakeness” or falseness of an instagram post, but we have to accept the image as from and to imaginations.

here is another example:

it may be snarky or witty, but this person understands the “reality” of the imagination, that the internet is an extension of the imagination, and this is real. it may come off as a funny phrase to us so new to the internet to say “the internet is real,” only because we have needed to develop skepticism.

so i do not take faux to mean false in the traditional sense, rather i mean it to mean something that is pretended, something that is guised, something that has an outerwear over its essence.

for i believe that postmodernism recognized there was disparity between layers, but it hadn’t the time to recognize the endless amount of these layers and the complex relationship between each of them, that the topsoil of culture is remotely impacted by substratum and supra-stratum, and all he layers near and far. that life and thought proceeds through a series of layers, that the exit of one womb is just the reveal of another one to exit. we have known since plato the disparity between the inner cave and outside the cave, but what caverns the sky but the mind, and what caverns the mind but the body, but the sky, but the mind, but the body, but the sky inside yet another sky is not the same sky inside yet another sky.

the faux-new, then, is anything that pretends to be new, anything that poses as final. but as final as death may become to each of us, there is no finality to it except our own.

the faux-new is the click bait title that tries to get you to become interested in old meat, so to speak, or as my father has called the process “polishing terds,” a frustrating and torturous process for both the creator and the inspector.

new religions are faux-new. repackaged ideas are faux-new. any neo-blank is faux-new.

but the faux-new is not to be confused with the repurposed or recycled. the repurposed is meant to occupy a new space, a new context, a new purpose, perhaps the better interpretation of the injunction to “make it new.” and the recycled is meant to reinvigorate the utility of an object, but the faux-new is a process of taking the old and re-aestheticizing it, re-popularizing it. the faux-new is a trick if anything, a way of cheating the surface.

arguably, the faux-new argument begins to implode. what then is authentically new, and what is just pretending to be new.

i suppose the faux-new attempts to hide its age, obscure its history and obfuscate its context the faux-new is the adult baby, the man or woman who pretends to need diaper changes. really the faux-new is a regression that claims to be a progression, it is a sleight of hand (or sleight of the mind).

such is the nature of the neo-nazi movement in america, it pretends progress toward regression, a moving forward to back, a sort of making something great again: again, the old posing as the new, thus the faux-new.

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    fish w.w. burton

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