Red or Blue Pill

This information is from imdb.com: The book Neo hides his computer discs in is called "Simulacra and Simulation". The chapter where they're hidden called Nihilism. Nihilism often involves a sense of despair coupled with the belief that life is devoid of meaning.


This is the definition from dictionary.com for Simulacra: 

an image or representation of someone or something: a small-scale simulacrum of a skyscraper.

                                OR

an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute: a bland simulacrum of American soul music.

ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin, from simulare

I found this subject interesting when we briefly talked about it in class.  I looked at some of the summaries of the ideology of the book 'Simulacra and Simulation' and I will post the main points below:

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:

1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality" (pg 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
2. The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3. The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery".
4. The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.

Myth is ever-present in our lives.  The theories of reality which are deeply analyzed in Baudrillard's theories can help us understand the symbols which create our reality are all mythological.