From: "Sadeq Rahimi" <sadeq_rahimi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: few readers?
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 10:40:46 PST


Dear Christopher;

     Thank you very much for trying to clear up my confusion.  
I have to admit your explanations do make sense, in a way.
I say "in a way", because even though I can follow the logic, 
again at the end I find myself the same ignorant guy, asking 
"But he did do a commercial, didn't he?" As if all the 
sophisticated explanations have been a little game or something,
and now I'm back to real life...

     Now I am not writing this in order to make any arguments
to be sure, just to report the way my mind reacts to your 
highly intellectual recreation of what I have become used to considering 
"real".

     Once again, thanks for your response.

--Sadeq.

>Baudrillard approaches our day to day as one great simulation
 of the
>real, which in my opinion is also synonymous with Heidegger's 
Sein (and
>Al-Haqq for that matter in Arabic). Simulation is to pretend 
that you
>have something which you don't really have. In this case to 
pretend that
>we exist in the way our forefathers existed, and that is with 
values.
>(This statement has greater implications...) This would then 
say that we
>have values with which we are able to evaluate. Baudrillard 
is trying to
>point out that something has gone wrong and because we see the
>simulation of what we once had (valuation), we still believe, 
through
>the simulation, that we have, that which we've lost. Wow! :-) 
This all
>presuppose a reading of the history of European Nihilism via Nietzsche.
>In which Nietzsche describes Nihilism as that "unheimlichster 
Gast"
>which has been translated as uncanniest Guest, but does not quite 
hit
>the mark, due to the nature of unheimlich which has more to with "being
>at home" or at ease in a place. Which Nietz. quite clearly points 
out by
>using this word unheimlich, that nihilism is not in its place. And
>finally that it is a phase that needs to be overcome. Baudrillard, 
among
>other continental thinkers, has taken up this task.
>
>Now with this for  a background Baudrillard could do a commercial
>without fearing a "sell out" due to the fact that anyone who calls 
it a
>"sell out" has not really understood the disapearance of the real. This
>more simply put means that a valuation of B.'s commercial is not at all
>possible because we all take part in the simmulation. The only 
people
>who might be considered free of the simulation would be those who have
>absolutely no part of the simulation at all, for example the 
savages
>which Baudrillard talks about in the Philipines. We are 
continuously
>selling out as long as we don't understand the difference 
between the
>real and its counterpart.
>
>The Break would be with the idea of valuation, namely that we evaluate
>his making the commercial as a "sell out", For him this would 
not hold
>true because everything has been "sold out" in realation to the 
real. 
>
>I hope I'm clearing this up and not confounding the matter more. 
>
>Best regards
>Chritopher


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