A way of seeing
What you're reading is an attempt to delve deeper into the fifth aphorism featured in Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle'. If you missed the fourth one, you can read it here.
Here's the actual passage:
The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is rather a weltanshauung which has become actual, materially translated.
It's easy to write off the dominance of images, videos, and other forms of representations as a crass case of human excess, one that takes things to the hilt simply for the sake of doing so. The democratization of any technology is often celebrated as a triumph of the human will to conquer nature and create better and more efficient forms of living.
Such arguments aren't entirely wrong as it does 'bridge the gap' between societies in a purely technological sense, thereby endowing all of them with the means to participate in the creation and maintenance of a parallel world of representations (i.e. the internet).
The Spectacle as philosophy
There is no greater affirmation of our collective belief of the reality embedded within an image than in the oft-uttered Gen Z phrase "pics or it didn't happen". This precedence of the image over the lived experience is one that I find deeply disturbing, to the point where I feel alienated from any place or society that willingly chooses to revel in the image.
It manifests itself as a very powerful and uneasy feeling precisely because of its general acceptance as a worldview in and of itself. Since reality is primarily mediated by images, which in turn are responsible for setting a warped social hierarchy, the lines between reality and representation become increasingly blurred.
The spectacle is not merely a non-living entity, nor is it an imperfect clone of the lived experience. It is a way of seeing that has become integral to modern society, and I'm afraid its domineering stance over all other methods has wrecked our collective capacities to stay rooted to our immediate milieus.
Living in Delhi and worrying about what's happening in Kyiv may be an affirmation of one's empathy and humanity, but it shouldn't ever come at the cost of directing one's attention to one's own environment. Fixing that alone could create wonders in any place that is deemed to be 'backward'.
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If any of this sounds relatable, please write to me. Part of the reason I write this is to seek out more people who feel the same way I do about the modern Internet.
If you enjoyed reading this, you might like my cleverly disguised rants on LinkedIn too.