Simulacra and Simulation

[brianv]

"For some reason that I am quite frankly unable to fathom, I did not act upon that first reaction of mine -"

Well for about a year or more, I couldn't find anywhere to discuss it, and by the time there were sites up and running, Letsroll f'rinstance, it was all geared towards airplanes and hijackers, any mention of fake photographs was not tolerated. So I have to admit my initial suspicions became watered down, until it became painfully obvious that there was serious fakery going on!

[whatsgoingon]

How long did it take you?

Dear Whatsgoingon,

As it happens, on Dec14 2011 Craig McKee (of the Truth and Shadows blog) e-mailed me with this question - that he has submitted to a number of (quoting Craig) 'notable members of the truth movement'. Craig just wrote me yesterday thanking me for my response - and saying that he should very soon have all the responses he has received up on his blog.

Here's Craig's question:
“When did you come to believe that the 9/11 official story was false and that 9/11 was an inside job – and what piece or pieces of information convinced you?”

Here's a short extract of the brief article I sent him in response:

Like everyone else, I was of course shocked on 9/11 2001 by the TV news reports of four commercial airliners being simultaneously hijacked by 19 suicide hijackers armed with box-cutters crashing into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania marshland. Like everyone else, I was shocked to read in the newspapers the next day, that “20.000” people had died (yes, I’ve saved copies of such dramatic newspaper headlines). And like most people - I dare say and hope - I immediately had serious doubts about the veracity of this most outlandish, Hollywood-smelling tale.

Within 48 hours of the event, a purported “amateur video” was aired on TV (credited to one “Michael Hezarkhani”). It showed the alleged “Flight175” effortlessly penetrating World Trade Center 2 - without as much as an aileron breaking off. I instantly jumped up from my couch and shouted: “Whaaaat? That plane melded into the building without as much as an aileron breaking off!!??? That’s just ridiculous! Physically impossible !!!”

For some reason that I am quite frankly unable to fathom, I did not act upon that first reaction of mine - and as many as 5 more years went by before I even started analyzing the available imagery of that day. I guess that, like everyone else, my mind was incapable to process the extent of human wickedness necessary to enact such a massive hoax upon mankind. As I put together my September Clues documentary, I felt almost ashamed that it took me so long to act upon (and expose) the utter absurdity of these planes seen on TV - integrally disappearing into steel frame buildings as if they were made of Jell'O.

And yes, by some twist of synchronicity, I wrote the piece about 'jumping up from my couch and shouting' only a few days before Brianv wrote his above post here!

Well thanks for that.

I admit to swallowing the images because I was not so accustomed to fake news media images -- excepting the moon landing ones.

I was hung up on the notion that "they" used boxcutters ( ), that they could fly the planes with precision, that the buildings fell after some period of time.

Images never crossed my mind as being fake and I only remember mainly being fed the images of the collapse here in the US. They are not reasonable to deep logical thought, and yet they were replayed over and over -- ceaselessly -- and repetition seems to make almost anything "become true" -- even structural impossibilities. We all watched the collapses ad infinitum until honestly I had to tell my wife to turn the TV off. I am not one to watch TV and they whole period was intensely disturbing.

Meanwhile the anthrax attack was launched to distract me yet again to the plausibility of bioterror (as I am a biochemist), and then I was thinking about that -- still do to this day. I had to move to Boston at the time, and 9-11 became an event that left a nagging sensation of its unreality, but I did not know what to do about it. Bush was then drumming the Iraq Gulf War II drum, and we forgot the unrealities of 9-11 until another day.

Thank God for this forum , because it connects these burning questions into a coherent version of reality that the media fake these terror events -- and the victims are not real -- they are simulations -- always have faked these vicsims. The images are the keys to their manipulation. What an amazing realization!

[pdgalles]

Baudrillard has another essay on 9/11 called “Requiem for the Twin Towers”.

I found a version here: http://bit.ly/wr2im2 (via Google Books) and have taken some simple observations from it.

Early in the essay he describes the Towers as:

Perfect parallelepipeds, standing over 1,300 feet tall, on a square base. Perfectly balanced, blind communicating vessels [...] The fact that there were two of them signifies the end of artificial reference. If there had only been one, monopoly would not have been perfectly embodied. Only the doubling of the sign truly puts an end to what it designates.

These words made me realise something else – The Twin Towers could also represent a giant sans serif ‘11’ in the New York skyline. Something I’d never considered before.

The other thing I’d like to point out is Baudrillard’s final paragraph in his ‘Requiem...’ essay.

... although the two towers have disappeared, they have not been annihilated. Even in their pulverized state they have left behind an intense awareness of their presence. No one who knew them can cease imagining them and the imprint they made on the skyline from all points of the city. Their end in the definitive material space has borne them off into a definitive imaginary space. By the grace of terrorism, the World Trade Center has become the world’s most beautiful building – the eight wonder of the world!

Anybody else feel he's trying just a little too hard here?

I've just spent an hour reading the English translation of Pourquoi tout n'a-t-il pas déjà disparu? (Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?), authored January 2007 by Baudrillard. I would recommend a reading to anyone who (in my opinion) incorrectly believes that Baudrillard "switched" from his "hardline" early-80s view on simulations to his Gulf War-era / post-9/11 position.

http://filepost.com/files/c17mm1fc/Why_Hasn't_Everything_Already_Disappeared.pdf/

Baudrillard sometimes is to be read literally and other times I believe he is being ironic but he won't give you a signal as to when this occurs. It's challenging to understand why he does this but he gives us a big clue in the final pages of Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? (pp. 69-70):

We are simplifIed by technical manipulation.

And this simplifIcation goes off on a crazy course when we reach digital manipulation.

What becomes at this point of the ventriloquacity of Evil? It is the same with the radicalism of yore: when it deserts the individual, reconciled with himself and homogenized by the good offices of the digital, and when all critical thinking has disappeared, radicalism passes into things. The ventriloquacity of Evil passes into technology itself.

For duality can be neither eliminated nor liquidated - it is the rule of the game, the rule of a kind of inviolable pact that seals the reversibility of things.

If their own duplicity deserts human beings, then the roles are reversed: it is the machine that goes gaga, that falters and becomes perverse, diabolic, ventriloquous. The duplicity merrily goes over to the other side.

If subjective irony disappears - and it disappears in the play of the digital - then irony becomes
objective. Or it becomes silence.

So... my interpretation is that in his own writing Baudrillard is keeping irony alive! He is the strongest critic/exposer of digital simulation that I have found in the academic community, yet embeded in his writing are contradictory passages that seem to support the mainstream media accounts. This can only be understood if he is being ironic.

In the same vein I also disagree that Don DeLillo sold-out with Falling Man but that's for another time.

Edit: Also, forgot to add that in the above passage Baudrillard has (possibly) solved for us the question of why the errors exist in the simulated news events - video errors, photo errors, duplicated Vicsim lists, etc. It's because humans en masse have stopped being critical of the images they are being fed and therefore the creators of the images (what Baudrillard refers to as "the machine") are supplying the requisite irony.

[nonhocapito]

That's very interesting, pdgalles, food for thought about Baudrillard. But to tell you the truth, I make no excuses for these intellectuals who, supposedly, have grasped the truth about (to simplify) simulation and fakery, and yet find these very convoluted, ironic ways to tell us about it.
For the same reason I am curious about your opinion on Delillo's "falling man". If I had to believe Delillo to be somehow genuine and legit in his desire to transpire the artificiality of the "falling man" theme in the popular consumption of 9/11, then I'd also have to conclude that he is doing a very poor job at it.
Because his book is clearly read as a description of dramatic, real events, and I am sure that not one of his readers has seen in his words an ironic description of faked reality.
But these times, these issues, call for clear messages and adamant speeches. Otherwise, in my opinion, even silence is better than this alleged and impenetrable irony that becomes like a pat on the back for very intelligent, very cowardly men --with too much to lose.

[pdgalles]

That's very interesting, pdgalles, food for thought about Baudrillard. But to tell you the truth, I make no excuses for these intellectuals who, supposedly, have grasped the truth about (to simplify) simulation and fakery, and yet find these very convoluted, ironic ways to tell us about it.

For the same reason I am curious about your opinion on Delillo's "falling man". If I had to believe Delillo to be somehow genuine and legit in his desire to transpire the artificiality of the "falling man" theme in the popular consumption of 9/11, then I'd also have to conclude that he is doing a very poor job at it.
Because his book is clearly read as a description of dramatic, real events, and I am sure that not one of his readers has seen in his words an ironic description of faked reality.

But these times, these issues, call for clear messages and adamant speeches. Otherwise, in my opinion, even silence is better than this alleged and impenetrable irony that becomes like a pat on the back for very intelligent, very cowardly men --with too much to lose.

It's okay to disagree with me - you may be one of the few who can critique my views, as acceptance of media simulations and knowledge of Baudrillard/DeLillo is required!

Reading your views, alongside those of, e.g. fbenario, I realise that I am in some way at odds with the general interpretation of this forum - I do not use terms such as perps, neither would I call DeLillo a coward.

To make a clear point here - I grew up around Muslims and I believe the Muslim community has suffered severely increased prejudice and scrutiny post-9/11 and 7/7. This was unacceptable to me even before I found September Clues and realised that these events were simulations. I recall a discussion with a History lecturer about the rise in anti-Muslim feeling locally in late-2001 and the dangers of the British National Party gaining support, so I have had strong views on this issue for some time now.

In summary, I can certainly see the justification of your views but I have this nagging feeling that I am missing a subtle point and so I will continue in my quest to gain more understanding.

If you will grant me some time I will put together a DeLillo post for you.

Edit: If you dislike Baudrillard/DeLillo's convoluted irony, how about some in your face De Niro irony?

The man who stars in the cult pre-9/11 film about media fakery also hosts the Naudet brothers 9/11 documentary.



I have read a comment on this forum that New York actors (I'm paraphrasing) have brought shame on themselves for allowing such a sham as 9/11 to take place in their backyard but if you file all of the above under Baudrillard's theory of the necessity of irony, well... it's an interesting idea anyway.

An ironic twist was the release of the film just prior to President Clinton's sex scandal and the subsequent bombing of terrorists strongholds in Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog

[pdgalles]

So I'm working my way through the DeLillo novel's I haven't yet read.

In DeLillo's second novel End Zone (1972) there is a peripheral character briefly introduced in chapter three named Norgene Azamanian, which immediately reminded me of the Belgian bomber Nordine Amrani.

Then we walked slowly back to the dorm and listened to Norgene Azamanian tell the story of his name.

"A lot of people take it for a girl's name. But it's no such thing. It comes from Norge refrigerators and from my uncle, Captain Gene Kinney. How it all came about, my being called Norgene, makes for a real interesting story. You see, everybody in my mother's family going back for generations, man or woman, always had a Christian name of just one syllable. Nobody knows how it started but at some point along the line they decided they'd keep it going. So I go and get born and it comes time to name me. Now it just so happens there was an old Norge refrigerator out on the back porch waiting to get thrown away. It also happens that my daddy wasn't too happy about the syllable thing, it being his belief that the bible carries a warning against onesyllable names, Cain being his brother's slayer. And finally there was the amazing coincidence that my uncle Gene Kinney was on leave and coming over to visit so he could see the new baby, which was me, and so he could get in on the naming of it to be sure the family tradition would be carried out. How all these different factors resulted in the name Norgene is the whole crux of the story."

"Very good," Bing said. "But first tell us how you got Azamanian."

This question is never answered and Norgene doesn't feature again until chapter 14.

As the Amrani incident occurred in the same year as the Breivik incident, it could be argued that the two are somehow intended to be linked together and of course the Schettino incident followed shortly after.

Therefore it is interesting to note the following:

i) Norge is the name for Norway in Norwegian (Bokmål).

ii) SS Norge was a Danish passenger liner sailing from Copenhagen, Oslo and Kristiansand to New York, mainly with emigrants, which sank off Rockall in 1904 in the biggest civilian maritime disaster in the Atlantic Ocean up to that time.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Norge

So we have a character in a DeLillo novel with a name similar to the Belgian bomber and the origin of his name is from the word Norge (admittedly not the country but the fridge) which was i) the location of another domestic terrorism incident and ii) the name of a passenger liner which sank, à la the Costa Concordia.



Am I seeing connections which aren't there? At this stage, who knows?

[nonhocapito]

It's okay to disagree with me - you may be one of the few who can critique my views, as acceptance of media simulations and knowledge of Baudrillard/DeLillo is required!

it's okay to disagree with anyone, dear pdgalles. But to be honest I don't claim any particular knoweldge of Baudrillard, whom in fact I think I barely understand. As to Delillo, I read a ton of his books for the pleasure of his prose, and only after "falling man" I have started to think of him as a shill. Aside of that book, I never investigated his writings under that light. So I certainly am looking forward to more of your interpretations of his books.

If you dislike Baudrillard/DeLillo's convoluted irony, how about some in your face De Niro irony?

In general, I dislike them all. "Wag the Dog" has been discussed a number of times on this board, as an obvious celebration of the powerful nature of propaganda and the entertainment machine. Of the many Hollywood movies pre-9/11 filled with foreknowledge, "Wag the Dog" is certainly one of the shameless ones. But is it really irony that animates it? Or is it rather arrogance? Malice?

If they are being ironic, I don't think they have a proper understanding of what irony is. Irony requires shared knowledge. As such, irony should be aimed at revealing something, not cover it.

There are three men. Andrew, Bill and Carl. Andrew has a strong opinion about something, and Bill fiercely disagrees. In this situation, Carl uses irony to let Andrew know he also agrees, but avoiding to confront directly Bill about it, for whatever reasons. Maybe confrontation is useless (Bill is stupid or stubborn), Carl might be uneasy at confrontation, but wishes his opinion to be known, Andrew might need the relief of irony, or maybe Carl has fun using it. Etcetera.

This use of irony I appreciate and find it proper. Not only it is immediately intelligible between Andrew and Carl: but even Bill, if he's not completely stupid, might understand it and somehow accept it and respond with equal irony. After all, they all are aware of the topic of the discussion and its implications.

Now, let's get back to our situation. If Delillo, or DeNiro (funny how these italian surnames are similar), are our Carl, who is Andrew? The public? Is Delillo's readership even remotely aware that he is being ironic about "falling men"? Is the public watching "Wag the Dog" aware of the likeness and proximity of that scenario to their lives?
In fact, what is the intent? To reveal, through irony, the real nature of the world? Or rather, to hide the true nature of the world behind propaganda, reserving irony for the few?

*

Talking about fiction, this is the synopsis of "The penultimate truth", by Philip Dick (1964!):

World War III is raging - or so the millions of people crammed in their underground tanks believe. For fifteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on daily broadcasts of a never-ending nuclear destruction, sustained by a belief in the all powerful Protector. But up on Earth's surface, a different kind of reality reigns. East and West are at peace. Across the planet, an elite corps of expert hoaxers live in vast private demesnes -- repayment for their services in preserving the great lie. Until, one day, a tanker emerges and discovers the path to the most sinister truth of all...

...are we all being herded, so to speak, underground...?

[orkneylad]

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
Ecclesiastes

[pdgalles]

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
Ecclesiastes

Baudrillard invented that quote - oh the irony.

*

Nonho, it's difficult to express a gut feeling and, as I'm sure you are well aware, I am after all just guessing here, trying to find some logic amongst the (simulated) madness.

My view on DeLillo is basically this: at the time of Falling Man (2007) he had been in print as a novelist for 36 years and had no doubt built up a loyal following who were very familiar with his style of writing, which I consider he intends not to be taken seriously due to his lead characters often narcissistic views on life. So, as far as I have read DeLillo (still in progress), his work has always been associated with irony. Americana (1971) set the tone with its rather bizarre road trip across America ending in some quite surreal scenes. Therefore I do disagree with you that his readers would not have understood his use of irony in Falling Man - unless they had taken all previous DeLillo novels at face value, therefore completely missing his frequent use of irony. Is this a likely scenario? I don't know.

A quote from End Zone (1972):

Chapter 13, Myna to Gary (our narrator):

"The way you say some things. I actually believe you. I think you're serious. Then it hits me that something's not right.

Chapter 4, Gary:

I had accomplished nothing all those months and so I decided to enroll at the University of Miami. It wasn't a bad place. Repetition gave way to the beginnings of simplicity. (A preparation thus for Texas) I wanted badly to stay. I liked playing football and I knew that by this time I'd have trouble finding another school that would take me. But I had to leave. It started with a book, an immense volume about the possibilities of nuclear war - assigned reading for a course I was taking in modes of disaster technology. The problem was simple and terrible: I enjoyed the book. I liked reading about the deaths of tens of millions of people. I liked dwelling on the destruction of great cities. Five to twenty million dead. Fifty to a hundred million dead. Ninety percent population loss. Seattle wiped out by mistake. Moscow demolished. Airbursts over every SAC base in Europe. I liked to think of huge buildings toppling, of firestorms, of bridges collapsing, survivors roaming the charred countryside. Carbon 14 and strontium 90. Escalation ladder and subcrisis situation. Titan, Spartan, Poseidon. People burned and unable to breathe. People being evacuated from doomed cities. People diseased and starving. Two hundred thousand bodies decomposing on the roads outside Chicago. I read several chapters twice. Pleasure in the contemplation of millions dying and dead. I became fascinated by words and phrases like thermal hurricane, overkill, circular error probability, postattack environment, stark deterrence, doserate contours, killratio, spasm war. Pleasure in these words. They were extremely effective, I thought, whispering shyly of cycles of destruction so great that the language of past world wars became laughable, the wars themselves somewhat naive. A thrill almost sensual accompanied the reading of this book. What was wrong with me? Had I gone mad? Did others feel as I did? I became seriously depressed. Yet I went to the library and got more books on the subject. Some of these had been published well after the original volume and things were much more uptodate. Old weapons vanished. Megatonnage soared. New concepts appeared-the rationality of irrationality, hostage cities, orbital attacks. I became more fascinated, more depressed, and finally I left Coral Gables and went back home to my room and to the official team photo of the Detroit Lions. It seemed the only thing to do. My mother brought lunch upstairs. I took the dog for walks.

Is this irony or the promotion of nuclear warfare? Is Falling Man irony or the promotion of the 9/11 myth?

[orkneylad]

"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true."
Ecclesiastes

Baudrillard invented that quote - oh the irony.

Well spotted, no flies on you sir.

“The condition for the amalgamation of fake and authentic is that there must have been a historic catastrophe, of the sort that has made the divine Acropolis of Athens as venerable as Pompeii, city of brothels and bakeries. And this brings us to the theme of the apocalyptic philosophy that more or less explicitly rules these reconstructions: Europe is declining into barbarism and something has to be saved."

Umberto Eco

[whatsgoingon]

A further quote of interest:

“Representation starts from the principle that the sign and the real
are equivalent (even if this equivalence is Utopian, it is a
fundamental axiom). Conversely, simulation starts from the Utopia of
this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign
as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every
reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by
interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole
edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.”

As we see on these forums, the simulation tries to replaster the cracking facade and conceal the truth -- that these events we observe are not there at all.

[fbenario]

DeLillo ... had no doubt built up a loyal following who were very familiar with his style of writing, which I consider he intends not to be taken seriously due to his lead characters often narcissistic views on life. So, as far as I have read DeLillo (still in progress), his work has always been associated with irony.

I think you give his readership far too much intellectual credit. Most people, including so-called literate, high-brow folks, automatically believe what their beloved mainstream media news and government press release tell them. Unless you can post evidence that it was commonly known by his readership that irony was a standard, ongoing component of his work, your conclusory views on his obvious irony will likely not convince. Americans as a whole are for too gullible and bloodthirsty to consider themselves as manipulated morons/sheeple.

[nonhocapito]

Not to repeat myself, but I have to agree with fbenario (up until the "morons") that this alleged irony is really not meant and cannot be meant for Delillo's readers. Not just, or rather not at all, in my opinion, because irony is lost on some people -- but because I believe that that irony is really not there, at least as a general purpose.

In the examples you bring forward, pdgalles, I simply see that some characters or situations in a work of fiction can be ironic; they can deal with irony issues that others take seriously, and make that irony very visible and enjoyable for the reader too, since a lively, ironic, original character or situation is often enjoyable.
Irony embedded in characters or situations is undoubtedly a chief ingredient in fiction since it helps the writer from becoming too passionate or too involved in the issues the characters are involved in and passionate about.

But this doesn't mean the intentions of the whole book are ironic.

Nobody could deny that Franz Kafka used irony a lot in his books, and created a number of situations that are fantastically ironic -- but to define Kafka's works as "ironic" would be incredibly limiting, unjust and ultimately deceiving. Is "The Trial" describing something serious really meaning that it isn't serious? Or is it rather a deadly serious book that sustain itself thanks to the injection of some useful irony here and there?

And also, once again i don't think we are agreeing on what irony is. If DeLillo or Baudrillard or Godard really want to tell us that the news are simulated and that many tragic events including 9/11 are fictional, don't you think they, with all their artful techniques and brilliant minds, would make this message a little more transparent? A little more readable? Why "irony" should mean "not making things clear"?

One last example. An italian writer like Leonardo Sciascia has used in his books plenty of irony. For example he loved to describe the hypocrisy, the rule of denial in the secluded worlds of rural, sicilian towns with euphemisms that were meant as a mockery of the euphemisms used by his characters, usually to hide and at the same time reveal things from one another. This is a form of irony, but it would go rarely missed by the reader. When Sciascia, first among the italian writers after WWII, dared to write a novel about the crude, real face of mafia hidden from the general public ("Il giorno della civetta"), nobody had a doubt in Italy what that novel was about.

As I said, I firmly believe that there is not one reader of "Falling Man" out there who, by reading that book, had the revelation that the whole thing was fake. Not one.

[AngellDust]

A few years ago, I read an article in the NY Times about the "simulation argument". This theory, proposed by Oxford University professor, Nick Bostrom, goes something like this:

We are approximately 50 years away from being able to simulate all life on earth inside of a computer, complete with sims who possess some level of free will (with programming limited to man's understanding of biology, chemistry, psychology, anthropology, etc.). The purpose for such simulations is vast, spanning entertainment to evaluating human response to changing ecological and political structures. As such, simulations might be run in universities, corporations, government, and even homes (think Sim City, the Sims, Second Life, etc.). If you can agree with this premise, the argument posits one of three possibilities as being inherently true. They are:

(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
(2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.

A simple (and probably incorrect) mathematical equation of the stated probability is something like nx/1, n being the number of simulations that get run, and x being the number of layers of simulated civilizations. The masters of a simulation might live in a simulation of their own. If we do live in a simulation, it's likely that we live at the lowest level, given the unsophisticated nature of our simulations, which lack, among other things, biological features.

Anyway, I've long pondered the sensibility of this theory as an explanation for the seemingly incoherent and sometimes extreme nature of many world events. In theory, profit could be made by running such simulation models. Some thoughts that come to mind include: war strategy, weapons testing, pharmaceutical testing, and economic policy against simulated "real" world data. The more accurately a simulation reflects the "real" world, the more useful the data.

Anyone living inside of a computer simulation who realizes their reality (whether anyone a layer above each simulation realizes the simulated nature of their reality is an interesting thought), can seriously change their game. Ethical and moral standards as well as religious belief become questions which are up for debate.

I'm bringing this long-winded mind-dump to a close, while hoping someone will add some interesting thoughts.

I also want to be clear: I'm by no means insinuating that TPTB aren't to be held accountable for their psyops because some programmer might have written some portion of the code that precipitated their half-assed efforts. In fact, I would imagine such programmers, if they exist, would be surprised that we haven't even lit the stake yet.

[nonhocapito]

For once, I feel quite certain as I write this: we don't live in a computer simulation. We live in our sad, old, beautiful rotten world. I can still catch glimpses of what it was before the technological stimuli started covering it before our eyes. The simulated reality of "The Matrix" was really a metaphor for the simulated, artificial perception description of the world given to us by Hollywood and the media. I think we get to the point of doubting our own existence in the real world only because we live so ever immersed in what the media give us.