Date: Thu, 28 Nov 96 03:16:28 +0200
From: Nikos Gousgounis <ngousg-AT-itel.gr>
Subject: re: help!!


Dear Omar

I got your SOS message but there is no need to overdramatise upon a living
modern philosopher who is not difficult at all and disposes (in the contrary
of others) a lot of good will.
I am glad for your message that gives me the chance to develop some of my
ideas as an old student of Baudrillard in the mid-seventies in Paris.
Well, to start from his most basic idea of simulation I think that in 
general terms he has right to underline the artificial character of 
our urban lives because we are really distanciated from the Nature and
our children are born in a World with no more seasonal circles and 
natural periodical phenomena. With the modern media we are constantly
wandering if all this stuff of info is real or faulse and constructed by
some commercants for profit. We consume more spectacle than real objects
and the spectacular representation of the reality substitutes this very
reality by many other minor sub-realities. We cannot really profit from 
the astonishing sum of info bombarding us even via internet ( if we are
cambled ) and we cannot produce USEFUL KNOWLEDGE and specifically social
knowledge that means applicable to our actual various social needs).
We are living rather as somnibules in a changing global World and we feel
that the early film of Ridley Scott ''Blade Runners''( 1979) with all its
famous replicas of humans , is closer to us now than in 1979. That means 
that our life-style is continuasly moving to that direction.

There are some resistance sites of course but the general mentality -since
we cannot anymore speak about serious ideologies- is to live in a easy way
without targets , aims values or motivation. It is really very difficult
to inspire motivation to the Youth and interests for an Art or Science.
It seems that profits sibstituted interests. My own proposal is to return
back to the classics and re read them under new prisma. Today's philosophers
have not other hope than that.

Real social knowledge of the OTHERNESS of all the important others that 
surround us, is difficult to be established. Sentiments are declining in
a artificial world of spots and video-clip technics and our rhythms take the
dimensions of MTV channel. 

There is much more truth in the sayings of the Ancients than to the spots
of our actualities. Your co-named Omar Kayam circulates much more important
thoughts in his rubayats even when drunk, than all the spots of T.V. during
a month ! I am not trying to reconstitute traditional forms and meanings
but I mean by that , that Baudrillard has tried to prove -and he suceeded 
in the best way- how human race can make artificial the real natural World.
In these terms, he is a kind of ecologist even if not proposing naive re-
turns to the Nature a la Rousseau. Is Baudrilard pessimist ? I think he is
but not melancholic as Deleuze who commited suicide recently.When he exag-
gerates by the declaration that the wear of Gulf was never done, he is par-
tially right in the same way that Bourdieu has also declared some years ago
that the so called ''public opinion'' simply is not existing at all while
it is manipulated and pro-fabricated by special groups of interests.
It was a virtual war transmitted by CNN and we cannot believe casualties 
>from any side the same as we will never believe again the damage of the 
nature presented by National Geographic and the spot with the cormoran cove-
red with oil of the Gulf ( it was a fake film from another tanker accident
as we were informed afterwords -when the war spectacle was over).
Now, in this moment T.V. is showning the commercial film ''top-gun''
with Tom Cruz and I cannot see the difference of such a film with CNN style
of transmitting the Gulf-war. I think really like Baudry that this war never
happened in the reality, it was a virtual war like the virtual communities 
made up by the recent internet networks.

Another phenomenon of our era is the weak collective memory. Facts that are
buleversing the Universe today are easily and totally forgotten till tomor-
row and this is due to the televisual style and technics of transmiting news

So, the crisis of our World is the crisis of liability and also credibility.
If we cannot trust and believe our neighbor ( some years ago the villagers
of MY COUNTRY USED TO SLEEP AT NIGHT WITH DOORS OPEN ! )we cannot trust the
stranger and we become hysterical while in eternal panic as the medium Ame-
rican who consider everyone as a potential killer or abuser of children etc.
In this insecurity we are called to re examine the old value of friendship,
intimacy and love. IT IS DIFFICULT BUT IT WORTHS OUR ATTENTION BECAUSE OF 
THIS VERY DIFFICULTY. I have the impression or intuition that if something
is difficult today in a world of ''easy-ness'' then it is worthy of a 
sur-value.

Excuse me if I am a little afar from Baudrillard's writings , but you ...
have to .. believe me ( and trust me ) that his real intention are to de-
monstrate all these reflections grosso-modo.

I don't know if my message happened to help you in something , but this was
a general outline addressed to a philosopher and since I am a sociologist
maybe I will be able now to respond to more specified questions if you 
want to formulate them.

Best regards from sunny Athens


   -AT-======-AT-                 -AT-======-AT-   
     ||||      N I C O S      ||||      
     |||| G O U S G O U N I S ||||     
     ||||       _\|||/_       ||||
     ||||       | ~ ~ |       ||||
     ||||      (  -AT- -AT-  )      |||| 
     |||| ---o00o-(_)-o00o--- ||||
     ||||                     ||||     
     ||||     PEDAGOGICAL     ||||     
    ======     INSTITUTE     ======    
   ========        OF       ========   
============= A T H E N S ========