Consumer culture now mass produces simulations that are used as substitutes for desired goods we can’t have or can’t have without paying some price.
src: http://www.transparencynow.com/complex.htm
This culture is obviously an expression of deep yearnings and a fulfillment of deep fantasies inside us. Each of us has, as part of our mental make-up, what might be termed a simulation complex and a reality complex, expressing our desire to control fictional worlds and the actual world, to create a realm of constant satisfaction and humane values, organized around ourselves.
Our conscious and unconscious thoughts about controlling real and virtual worlds are only a part of what is inside us that is relevant to these changes. Our minds also include an acute awareness of the various possibilities for good and bad as they relate to ourselves, society and nature. They include an awareness that we are fallen selves, trapped in our own psychodynamics and narcissism; that we live in fallen societies, permeated by the misuse of power and by deception, which is a product of our fallen nature as it is caught up in the world of scarcity and necessity we find in nature. And our minds include the awareness that we live amid a fallen world of nature that limits us at every turn, and that we have turned into a product of our own fallen selves. Of course, we are also aware of the good we have achieved — our fallen selves and societies have still managed to build civilization; we live lives with considerable fulfillment; we bring up new generations; and have turned nature into a source of material riches, for many.
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