"[ours is the age of simulation] For just as shopping malls simulate the great outdoors, replacing sun and trees with fluorescent lights and green plastic "plants," we simulate danger with amusement park rides, friends or enemies with talk-radio hosts, rebellion with torn jeans and black boots, sex with lewd phone conversations, revolution with improved fabric softeners, and freedom with the newest panty liner. We simulate real life by eliminating risk and commitment, and end up mistaking what is real for what is only artificial. We exist, that is, encased in a giant cultural condom.”
- Joey Earl Horstman
Edit: I've received two or three emails from people saying that they don't get the quote. One said, "I think I'm not a deep enough thinker. It could be that I can't get past the panty liners and condoms!"
It could be. It could be that you have to understand the context of the quote. It's in a chapter about the way we as a culture relate to God and others.
The idea is that most people don't know how to relate to others or to God any more because we've grown accustomed to a life of simulation. Nothing's real - everything's virtual reality. We're so used to things being fake that we don't notice when they are. Amusement park rides aren't really dangerous. Neither are talk-show hosts our "buddies." But we call in to their shows and pretend they are. Panty liners don't give girls true freedom, but the commercials on TV advertise that they do.
As a result, we're mixed up, and living lives that are sheltered from reality. We'd rather simulate real relationships with God and others because "real" relations are dangerous. (Hence the condom metaphor).
1 comments:
Hi Chris,
I was here this morning and have come back to leave a comment because although unsure of just what it was I wanted to say, I knew there was something.
Psalm 115.
I see verses 4-8 as a picture of what you have written.
Idols.
Anything before God is an idol, and as such is not, and cannot be, anything other than a simulation compared to Him.
Eventually, these idols, these other things, other ways, become reality to those who indulge them.
They become real, even though they are false.
VERSE 5.
"Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them."
Surely the only means of exposing the simulation and the virtual reality is to get back to the truth.
And that truth, is in God's Word.
Just my thoughts.
God Bless.
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