We are beyond the postmodern moment.

This was posted on zerohedge.com, i am reposting it here... I thought it kind of explained where we're at...

by MsCreant
on Wed, 12/22/2010 - 14:10
#824429

We are beyond the postmodern moment.

The first order of the symbol, the symbol corresponds to reality. If a dude has a crown, he is king.

The second order of the symbol, the symbol bifurcates from reality, you have pretenders. The upper classes can afford to dress like kings. Some one with a crown may not be king.

The third order of the symbol, the symbol does not correspond with reality because it can be mass produced. All of society may wear crowns if they wish, crowns no longer distinguish kings.

The fourth order of the symbol is the order of the simulacra, it is the truth that hides the truth that there is no truth. This is where the symbol is finally, totally divorced from reality. What is a king? Do kings have kingdoms? King of Pop? Elvis, Michael? Magic Kingdom? Is that a real kingdom? How about the housing project in the magic kingdom? Is that in a real kingdom? Is it a "real" housing project? What is real? This is the Post-Modern moment. Truth is mass produced, recombined, and homoginized. The original association of the symbol to reality has dispersed into a hyper reality.

This is where Baudrillard left us.

I'm proposing that there is so much fraud, so much deliberate dishonesty, so much manipulation and misrepresentation, that we have moved beyond the postmodern moment into the fifth order of the symbol. I think I will call it the Postmortem moment.

It is the moment that marks the death of everything. When there is no truth because it has all been dissipated into matrixes of meaning relativity. In a postmodern sensibility about things, you consult history, but you constuct local truths that serve for the moment, knowing that they cannot be the truth for all time. This is a nice idea, but it assumes that all the players are trying to work together for the best of the collective. It falls apart when the players higher up have one goal, and that is deceit.

The postmortem moment represents the death of the meaning system itself. Nothing and no one in authority can be trusted. Beyond the simulacra, the decoupling of symbol from reality is now being harnessed in a cynical manner to manipulate short term outcomes.

Just thinking out loud, having a WTF moment, a postmortem moment, brought to me by the CIA.