ballard’s ‘crash’ are fascinated by what jean baudrillard calls the accident. in defense of baudrillard, i read him, like ballard, in the nietzschean tradition of a purposefully amoral, negative aestheticism, which i argue is of value to ethics and radical politics in a world governed by instrumental simulacra. as a fiction writer, ballard is given a wide moral berth, but when baudrillard’s theory turns sci-fi, the question of ethical boundaries is broached, and leniency is less likely. calling crash ‘the first great novel of the universe of simulation,’ jean baudrillard has drawn heavy criticism for missing the alleged moral point, both in crash and in the still-real world. ballard’s characters, however, reenact their accidents as sexual rituals of a marriage between technology and death that are beyond the realm of moral judgment, making crash sci-fi, hypothetical, unrealistic. ballard’s crash are fascinated by what jean baudrillard calls the accident, especially when it involves the death of a celebrity. “Like today’s masses, the characters in j. sexual pharmaceutical advertisements refer to an unmedicated imaginary that assumes a unity where there is diversity, and conflates the means and ends of sexual technique.” i argue that viagra and other sexual pharmaceuticals are best understood as hyperreal or hypernatural (reflecting baudrillard’s 1994 work, simulacra and simulation), as simulacra that bear no relation to reality’. the body itself, perhaps aging or flawed, is represented as incapable of achieving these ends reliably without pharmaceutical means. sexuality is represented in these media as heterosexual, penetrative, and never to be imperfect in any way. considering television advertisements and framed around metaphors of landscape, internet spam’ advertisements for sexual performance enhancing products (both mechanical and chemical), and bodybuilding magazine representations of the body and sexuality, it is apparent that sexual expression in these genres is both constrained and yet exceeds its boundaries. “This essay, based on the work of baudrillard and other critical theorists of culture and technology, describes how viagra and related products are creating not just new standards for men and women’s sexual performance, but new forms of hypersexual’ reality/hyperreal sexuality. table of contents the precession of simulacra history: a retro scenario holocaust the china syndrome apocalypse now the beaubourg effect: implosion and deterrence hypermarket and hypercommodity the implosion of meaning in the media absolute advertising, ground-zero advertising clone story holograms crash simulacra and science fiction the animals: territory and metamorphoses the remainder the spiraling cadaver value’s last tango on nihilism” each chapter gives you a new, fascinating perspective, that culminates and reaches full circle with his final discussion of ‘nihilism’. chapters on ‘the china syndrome’, ‘holograms’, and ‘the animals’, among others, begin to define our roles in postmodern society and our relationships with our environment and ourselves. from this postmodern landmark, he gives us specific examples of his theory that are a pleasure to read. “ 02/16/97, rating=10: essential postmodern text baudrillard provides us with a clear explanation of the concept of simulations and simulacra–the copy without the original. The 'conspiracy meme' as a linguistic tool for memetic hegemony.Pictorial sedation for the public mind: Merkel & Obama at G7.Bertrand Russel on education and freedom of thought.The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power.

David Hume – “Essays Moral, Political, Literary” (1777).

State Terrorism as a tool for social control.

The next million years by Charles Galton Darwin.

Tavistock institute for human relations.

Orwell’s unpublished preface to Animal Farm.

Metacognition – Thinking about thinking.

Hieronymus Bosch – Sleights of hand, sleights of mind.

Genetic factors involved in psychopathy.Fractional Reserve Banking as Economic Parasitism.Eisenhower Farewell Address – ‘Military Industrial Complex’ Darwin-Huxley-Garlton-Wedgewood ‘s genealogy.Aldous Huxley – The Ultimate Revolution (Berkeley Speech 1962).The origins of eugenics & transhumanism.Effect of electromagnetic radiation from cell phone usage on various human systems.The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

Simulacra and simulation full pdf