Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 20:45:40 +0100
From: Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms-AT-kabelfoon.nl>
Subject: Re: Virilio and Baudrillard


John this is a nasty attack of realism, please recover!
Of course there's a lot of suffering and there's nothing virtual about
it. But those who discuss and decide about these wars don't give a shit
about it either. It would be a very good thing if we would forget about
all wars and just do something about all that suffering. But as long as
we think these wars are real and justified, as long as we think that
there are good people who have to wage war at bad people, war will take
place. I think B did his share in trying to wake some people and warn
them not to follow the media which are instrumental in our belief in
wars and our forgetfullness of the suffering. Don't think that the
pictures of bodies which we see a few seconds make us aware of the
reality of suffering, they just make us dumb. 

> John Armitage wrote:
> 
> Hi Soren, Kevin, Steve, Doug
> 
> I have been out of radio contact for a day or so and have returned to
> find that, unintentionally, I seem to have started up a debate of
> sorts...
> 
> So here goes:
> 
> I am sorry to disappoint Soren - what with being an 'intellectual '
> and all. However, I am afraid that I have very little patience for
> those who imagine that life or death takes place on the screen.
> 
> My response to Soren's comments are that life does indeed take place
> outside of the screen.
> 
> As for quoting Baudrillard ad nauseum on the Gulf war and whether it
> did or did not take place, my response to that it is: tell it to the
> mothers and fathers in Kosovo who are, _right now_, actually digging
> up their sons and daughters riddled with bullets. Tell them that all
> this is a simulation and they really should read a fascinating book on
> it by one of the world's foremost intellectuals on postmodernity. I am
> sure that they would wish all that is happening to them was a
> simulation. But it isn't- it is actually happening to them and to
> millions of others around the planet from East Timor and Angola to
> Chechnya.
> 
> Oh, and by the way, next time you see an appeal for help from Oxfam or
> whoever for people such as those suffering above, send them a bunch of
> images - I am sure they would much rather have images than warm
> blankets, hot food, and an end to the nightmare they now find
> themselves in.
> 
> And, following on from Doug's quip about Marx; I am content to let
> Baudrillard interpret the world as he sees fit. However, some of us -
> Virilio included and who works with the poor and down and outs in
> Paris - want to do more than that. We want to change it.
>

Well nice to read of your new hobby, charity right? A very cherished
middle class passtime and very helpfull for the esthablishment,
especially if it keeps philosophers from thinking and criticism!

virtual xmas

erik