America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version. America ducks the question of origins; it cultivates no origin or mythical authenticity; it has no past and no founding truth. Having known no primitive accumulation of time, it lives in a perpetual present.

Jean Baudrillard

Categorized in : Past America Ducks

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.

Jean Baudrillard

information-overload too-much-information world

Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.

Jean Baudrillard

quality depth culture

Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible.

Jean Baudrillard

simulacrum illusion real

What I am, I don't know. I am the simulacrum of myself.

Jean Baudrillard

simulacrum knows

Imagine the amazing good fortune of the generation that gets to see the end of the world. This is as marvelous as being there in the beginning.

Jean Baudrillard

generations being-there world

Postmodernity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination.

Jean Baudrillard

renovation reconstruction destruction

Art does not die because there is no more art. It dies because there is too much.

Jean Baudrillard

too-much doe art

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.

Jean Baudrillard

real order believe

The image is not a medium for which we have to find the proper use. It is what it is and it is beyond all our moral considerations. It is by its essence immoral, and the world's becoming-image is an immoral process.

Jean Baudrillard

becoming essence use

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.

Jean Baudrillard

farce repeats turns

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

Jean Baudrillard

simulacrum

Smile and others will smile back. Smile to show how transparent, how candid you are. Smile if you have nothing to say. Most of all, do not hide the fact you have nothing to say nor your total indifference to others. Let this emptiness, this profound indifference shine out spontaneously in your smile.

Jean Baudrillard

smile shining profound

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.

Jean Baudrillard

assuming nostalgia real

[I]nside every computer, there is a hidden man being bored.

Jean Baudrillard

computer bored men

Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization.

Jean Baudrillard

terrorism nihilism today

Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food.

Jean Baudrillard

animal food inspirational

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.

Jean Baudrillard

computer humor funny

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

Jean Baudrillard

foundation greatness negative

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

Jean Baudrillard

asks force identity

It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes.

Jean Baudrillard

events theory enough