Examples of Simulations
Published in
2 min readJul 31, 2024
- An apartment complex’s community garden — managed and maintained by the leasing office because of a “lack of community engagement.”
- The Catholic Church. With all power lost now, the Church is the simulation of power par excellence. It doesn’t even seem to believe anymore in its own customs (which change now with each new pope). Nor do its adherents seem to have genuine faith (this goes without saying). And yet the whole procession continues, the show goes on! (“God is not dead, he is hyperreal!”). Catholicism renovates its cathedrals in order to convince itself that it still exists, in order to pretend that it hasn’t already disappeared.
- The government. It gets “shut down,” and no one really notices. The government being shut down by its own gridlock is considered a crisis, not because it causes any considerable damage, but because it shows that government power had been a simulation all along: like the failure of special effects, a glitch in hyperreality. Again, the show must go on! …The politicians themselves, for that matter, are all simulations of themselves.
- The entire institution of marriage. Marriage has disappeared into a mimicry of itself: today, it is the ring, the wedding reception — and nothing else. There is no transformation of the couple or union of the families, symbolic or otherwise, just an institution that people tend towards repetitively, like a nervous tic, like the ritualistic habits of a veteran that become gratuitous after his service is complete. Marriage no longer means anything even on the level of royalty: the British Crown, for example, is itself one of the most grandiose simulations.
- Yourself. You might think there’s a true self behind the mask you wear, behind the show you put on for others. But you are that show. There’s nothing behind the mask. We all know that we’re all pretending. But there’s a deeper level of dissimulation here: sometimes, outside of the public eye, when you are completely alone, you pretend that you’re not pretending.
