Philosophy of Digital Man and Digital Society - 2024

Baudrillard on the Model of the Hyperreal World of Media Capitalism and the Great Process of the Loss of Meaning of History and Humanity

The Evolution of Philosophical Ideas from “Digital Humanities” to Digital Philosophy, Digital Economy, and Digital Management

In the context of digital philosophy, the conceptualization of postmodern ideas emerges, presenting a project of a hyperreal world of media capitalism characterized by a "great process of loss of meaning," rooted in the creation of unreal "flows," "machine processes," and simulacra. The simulacrum is understood as a stereotype, a primitive matrix that aids humanity in navigating this fabricated (imagined) world and serves as an image of a virtually irrational reality, reflecting a semblance of truth distinct from the original. The simulacrum is analyzed as an empty, null matrix or artifact, a quasi-thing, a transcendental object-model of an imagined world, behind which lies the real world with its problems and contradictions. Baudrillard describes the postmodern era as a "great process of loss of meaning," resulting in the disintegration of history, reference, and finality, where the original holds no significance, and the model of the copy prevails.

Jean Baudrillard was born in 1929 in Reims and served as a professor of sociology at Paris-Nanterre University. He is regarded as the foremost theorist of postmodernism, having developed the concept (project, model) of the hyperreal world of media capitalism. This project (theory, model) of a world saturated with signs, symbols, and abstractions conveys through its texts the absence of genuine induction of reality's phenomena, the objectification of a world devoid of an original and reality, which is presented by simulacra as illusions, appearances, and fictions.

As a result of this substitution of images of humanity, nature, and society, an unreal world is formed, wherein signs and symbols unfold, indicating the collisions of truth that are not truth, according to postmodernists. The world is increasingly inundated with information, wherein the genuinely credible content diminishes. The situation is such that individuals inhabit an information-saturated hyperreal world, interpreting the paradoxes of media capitalism.

Our task is to conceptualize the modalities of postmodernism, within which the project of the hyperreal world of media capitalism, as proposed by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, is presented, as well as the connection of his ideas with the contemporary post-coronavirus society.

The Essence of Ideas and Characteristics of the Postmodern Project of the Hyperreal World of Media Capitalism

The postmodern project of the hyperreal world of media capitalism is presented as a cultural movement in constellation with such differential sciences as aesthetics, ethics, art studies, philosophy, metaphysics, and others. This project possesses the following characteristics:

1. Autonomy-Eclecticism: The stylistic autonomy in the presentation of text, subjectivity in the exposition of structures, matrices, and textual devices.
2. Convergence of Ideas and Movements: Artistic, aesthetic, philosophical, and metaphysical ideas and the utilization of various modalities and characteristics thereof.
3. Dispositions: Orientation toward the crowd and the masses, as well as towards elite cliques and societal clans.
4. Influence of Postmodern Artistic Modalities on Economic Processes: Within society, the social-state dynamic, oriented towards religion and informatics in conjunction with stylistic-poetic polyphony of voices.
5. Partial Elimination of Masterpieces: The classic culture benchmarks in the process of testing game techniques and in the reproduction of works of culture and art.
6. Accentuation of Creative Attitudes: Fundamental relationships of "inventing art - viewer-recipient," perceived without the viewer-perceiver, signifying the imitation of the text, replacing its genuine content with fiction, illusion, and the removal of the subject.
7. Application of Principles-Postulates of Deconstruction: Ideas of post-Freudianism, psycholinguistic unconscious models of semantic-semiotic constructs.
8. Transition from Modernist Narratives of the Post-Industrial Society: To postmodernist narratives outlining the machine (informational) world.
9. Orientation in Hyperreal World Projects: Toward the paradoxical, marvelously ironic, amphibolous, phenomena of the world with artistic-aesthetic transformation of dichotomous factors.
10. Analysis of the Hyperreal World of Media Capitalism: As a surrogate, retrogressive, indeterminate, illusory, eclectic entity aimed at discourse comprehension of society, the social fabric, and humanity through the lens of artistic, aesthetic, and postmodern principles.
11. Denial of the Catharsis of Art: The uniqueness of creativity and its replacement with ersatz standards, sub-paradigms through various modalities of collage, application, and convergence.

This list is far from exhaustive regarding the ideas and characteristics of postmodernism, within which the project of the hyperreal world of media capitalism proposed by Jean Baudrillard is situated.

The Way of Thinking of Jean Baudrillard as a Representative of Postmodern Philosophy

The mode of thought espoused by Jean Baudrillard illustrates a profound rupture from the traditions of Western philosophy, which typically emphasizes individuality, free will, and knowledge, alongside existential notions of “authenticity of life.” He defends the complete irreality of a society that generates illusions, constructing a worldview composed of simulacra, games, illusions, and fantasies of a fabricated realm that deprives individuals of a blueprint for self-actualization.

Baudrillard describes postmodernity as an attempt to undermine traditional discursive theories with a universal code that must be “decoded.” In opposition to the argumentatively dialectical development of contemporary philosophical theories, he presents the creation of unreal “streams” and “mechanical processes” with their own connections, which engender an “activity” of fictive existence devoid of author or subject. But can the world truly exist without a subject, transforming instead into a mechanical flow of industry, leading to the dissolution of history, its imitation, parody, reference, and finality, and the agony of a real, metaphysical tension of history that no longer belongs to humanity but lies “beyond it”?

Baudrillard perceives a world in which individuality is a myth, and individuals are mere units reflecting everything occurring within the media landscape, their sole purpose being the consumption of images and signs. Thus, he refers to this world as “hyperreal,” one characterized by the absence of distinction between the real and the imaginary (the represented, the nonexistent). Consequently, humanity finds itself within a world that is a “gigantic simulacrum,” which will never transform into the real but merely reflects “itself in an enclosed space without borders and relationships,” trapped in a state of permanent crisis as a result of the crisis of contemporary civilization.

The Fetishization of the Past Instead of Reality, and Simulacra as the Matrix of the Real

For Baudrillard, the primary focus is the perception of a world of signs and symbols that illustrate a “hyperreal world” devoid of God or judgment to distinguish truth from falsehood. When everything becomes abstract, the value of the “real” escalates, and once a person enters the world of simulacra and simulation, escaping this realm becomes exceedingly challenging; they find themselves in a jungle that possesses its own traditions. He depicts Disneyland as a quintessential example of simulacra, for this world exists solely to enable the distinction between the real and the imagined.

In the context of the hyperreal project of media capitalism, Disneyland embodies the illusion between truth and fabrication (illusion, fetishization) so that individuals may persist in a fabricated (imaginary) world of illusions. The simulacrum acts as a stereotype, a primitive matrix that assists individuals in navigating this fictitious realm, serving as an image of a virtually irrational reality that reflects a semblance of authenticity distinct from the original.

A simulacrum is not the original but a quasi-thing, an empty, null matrix or artifact, merely a transcendent object-model of the imagined world, behind which lies the real world with its problems and contradictions, making it arduous for the unprepared individual to exist in the reality of veracity after having dwelled in Disneyland, which presents an invented reality. It is no coincidence that the language of postmodern philosophy has begun to incorporate terms like post-truth and post-veracity, as it becomes increasingly difficult in the media sphere to discern truth from falsehood, reality from simulation.

Simulacra demonstrate the absence of truth as a result of the erasure of knowledge between the credible and the irrational (anticipated) knowledge; thus, a simulacrum, as secondary and surrogate, represents correlations with the multiholograms of the imagined world. Simulacra are polysemic structures of thought that create surrogate continuums for forming paradigms of reality comprehension, founded upon primitive stereotypes and banal judgments. Television, in particular, is predicated upon these simulacra and simulations, the basis of which comprises clichés and labels intended for mass culture. They prioritize the phantom over the metaphysical, being, regrettably, carriers of artistic, aesthetic, and cultural degradation and primitivism, rather than high culture.

Simultaneously, Baudrillard anticipated the rise of the Internet and social media phenomena, believing that people would now be evaluated by their engagement with the flow of media messages. Anyone who appears infrequently in the media is deemed unsocialized or virtually asocial, while the flow of messages is undoubtedly a boon that amplifies meaning, just as the flow of capital multiplies an individual's wealth. Baudrillard's mantra is: “We live in a world that becomes increasingly informative but has less and less meaning.” It is crucial to identify with the narratives, signs, and symbols that glorify commodities.

Baudrillard asserts that we acquire objects not merely to possess them but to remain within the confines of hyperreality, and the refusal to consume these signs and symbols is deemed detrimental. Consequently, the attitude toward a rational individual with free will is an absolute myth, a phantom, an illusion. It is more appropriate to regard individuals as entities engulfed by technologies and a culture of consumption than as components of a society of consumption. Instead of a genuine history, the past is fetishized, as in the era of simulacra and simulation, there is no longer either God or a final judgment capable of separating falsehood from truth; thus, it is no surprise that terms like post-truth and post-veracity have emerged. In his view, there were not even terrorist attacks in the United States; rather, there was a shift into hyperreality and the absorption of one value system by another.

Poststructuralism Methodology as the Basis for Studying Postmodernism

The methodology of poststructuralism serves as the foundation for exploring the hyperreal world of media capitalism, rooted in structured approaches, techniques, and validations that facilitated the comprehension of postmodern culture based on linguistic-textual modeling, inductive-deductive approaches, and hermeneutics for discourse-based understanding of hyperreality and simulacra. Central to the methodology of investigating hyperreality and simulacra is the discourse of understanding structurally cultural texts, the relative correlation of texts, languages, linguistic models, linguistic structures, and the semiotic activities of subjects.

The scientific conceptual interpretation of the hyperreal world culminates in understanding styles, signs, symbols, and language analysis, the object of which lies beyond structural explanations, resulting in the examination of the contexts of linguistic models to substantiate one’s arguments. According to structuralist methodology, texts tend to gravitate toward dynamic rhythm-linguistics, which cannot anticipate all methods and techniques related to profound structural analysis and generalizations. Poststructuralist representatives, much like those of postmodernism, traverse the currents of Schopenhauerian-Nietzschean voluntarism, within which the interpretation of the subject occurs amid a negative social environment, while the individual-collectivist consciousness of subjects represents hyperreality, a stream of consciousness.

The processing of the postmodern project of a hyperreal world within the context of media capitalism unfolds through the deconstructive methodologies of Jacques Derrida, for whom deconstruction represents a fundamental vivisection of text—merely a composition of text, an interpretation of plot-stylistic constructs, the assembly of text akin to the montage of constructs, and the revelation of its compositional-stylistic, aesthetic, and creative dispositions of the author as the creator of the text.

The discourse surrounding the understanding of the macrostructure of text is merely an interpretation and exegesis of the project of hyperreality within media capitalism:

1. Hermeneutic interpretation and analysis of resultant definitions that form the foundation of the text's multiconstruction;
2. The construction of technologies that can analyze hyperreality, which is devoid of meaning because it does not point to objects, senses, or values that exist merely as phantoms or simulacra, camouflaging latent reality and sporadically may be connected to actuality, humanity, society, or nature;
3. The interpretation of meanings within hyperreality, which determine only the psychobehavioral motives and patterns of human behavior, transcending the concepts of metaphysical logocentrism and thereby distorting the consciousness and subconsciousness of the subject;
4. The fetishization of discourse-practices of the past instead of examining reality, leading to the absolutization of simulacra as the matrix of hyperreality within media capitalism;
5. The generation of a new crisis consciousness and subconsciousness, based on the project of the hyperreal world of media capitalism, which unfolds around the discourse-understanding of cultural texts and sociocultural models devoid of discursivity.

The analysis of the post-coronavirus situation of COVID-19 as a reflection of the postmodernist challenge to civilization can be distilled into the following points. The model of the postmodern society is intertwined with the post-coronavirus situation of COVID-19. Today, in the face of the challenges of civilization and the further unfolding of its postmodern project, one must consider the dialectical interrelationship of objective and subjective factors in the development of civilization and its processes. COVID-19, which is manifesting before our eyes in various modified forms, affirms the necessity for the formulation of a new strategy for the development of human existence. The coronavirus pandemic has intensified human adaptability and adjustment to the conditions of existence within a globalized society, amidst an unstable and unpredictable environment that generates numerous challenges and problems, notably overcoming the crisis of global urbanization in the context of a postmodern society.

The pandemic has not merely introduced social chaos into the rhythm of life; it has evolved into a social fear that disrupts the triadic scheme of the geo-, bio-, and social spheres, thus disturbing the co-evolutionary processes of human development and its interdependent and balanced progress. The principal blow of the coronavirus pandemic has fallen upon the economies of all nations, particularly developed ones, which have demonstrated an incapacity to cope with a multitude of issues: the necessary workforce has vacated practically all countries, necessitating a reevaluation of workforce training for various agricultural, industrial, and other tasks, as well as services, employing innovations as markers of survival for organizations and enterprises in conditions of chaos, crisis, and instability.

The post-coronavirus situation of COVID-19, as a reflection of the postmodernist challenge to civilization, has attested to the imperative for scholars to produce new theories of human survival and to develop new constructs for the future of a globalized world that enhance their ontological significance. Today, there arises a need to establish new value orientations for human existence within a globalized context, fostering a new attitude towards nature, the rational use of resources for the preservation of the environment and sustainable development, and the mitigation of risks associated with the emergence of various epidemics, as we currently witness the evolution of various phenomena related to the digitalization of society.

Methods for implementing a civilization of digital society have yet to be developed; explorations for new paradigms and methods for the instillation of digital civilization are underway, aimed at restoring ecological quality, the quality of society, life, and culture. The new digital technologies emerging today—robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, 3D printing—are impacting the development of a globalized world and presenting numerous threats. These technological digital innovations signify a historical evolution towards a new reality, a new being and existence that bear new threats and challenges for humanity and demand the formulation of new paradigms, theories, and models to grapple with the issues of human and collective survival.

In summary, the principal goal of postmodernism, represented by Jean Baudrillard, is to dismantle rational discourse and proclaim the end of a singular, universal meta-discourse of rationalism, and of the postmodern era itself. Postmodernism should be regarded as the evolution of aesthetic matrices into the realm of surrogate, illusory, and eclectic forms. Baudrillard compellingly argues that the world in which we live is entirely distinct from the modernist world of "clashes of civilizations." Philosophers have debated for centuries the relative significance of the subject (the self) and the object (the world); however, Baudrillard considers these debates inconsequential, as the object has long triumphed over the subject in a consumer society. Nevertheless, one must facilitate the development of society, humanity, and production by employing an innovative and viable strategy for their survival.

Today, humanity is not a project imbued with individuality, as asserted by the majority of philosophers; rather, it is akin to a machine that consumes and reproduces the ideas and images existing in the media, advertising, and politics. At the same time, Baudrillard concludes with what he terms the "ideal crime"—that which has transpired with humanity today, namely, that we find ourselves in a world of hyperreality, thereby creating the postmodern world.

Thus, contemporary society and culture are characterized by "alienation-denaturalization," the loss of humanity's intrinsic nature, i.e., the capacity to render competent judgment. The alienation of humanity from reality manifests in the "hyperreality of culture" (a term coined by Baudrillard), wherein simulacra systematically supplant the real. An example of such hyperreality is the situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. In a consumer society, as propagated by Baudrillard, individuals are merely consumers. Every distinction between truth and falsehood is obliterated to establish a radical law of equilibrium and exchange.

This world is what Baudrillard refers to as "hyperreal," where the sole aim is the consumption of images and signs presented as simulacra. A simulacrum is a stereotype, a primitive matrix that assists individuals in navigating this primitive (fabricated) world and serves as an image of a virtually irrational reality that reflects a semblance of the object's plausibility and its divergence from the original.

The simulacrum is regarded as an empty, null matrix or artifact, a quasi-thing, a transcendental object-model of an imagined world, behind which lies the real world with its issues and contradictions, unfolding without the active role of the subject, including the existence of humanity in the context of COVID-19. Baudrillard depicted postmodernism as "the grand process of losing the meaning of history and the meaning of humanity," which led to the destruction of history, reference, and finality, where the original no longer holds significance, and the model of the copy triumphs. To prevent the model of the copy from prevailing, the subject must be positioned as the central figure in societal life and in the crafting of their own way of life, thus establishing stable conditions for existence. The postmodernist theory faces criticism for its failure to meet the scientific standards of modernity. As a result of the denial of the significance and role of the individual subject and subjectivity, postmodernists have not formulated a theory of activity and the active role of the subject, prioritizing the object instead.