Great delamination: Difference between revisions

{{a|devil|{{image|delamination|png|The moment of [[BlackStar]]. {{vsr|2017}}}}}}The [[JC]] is cultivating a theory that, at a point in the last decade, the ''online'' universe — the one you’re in now, dear reader, as you peer through crusted specs through this frame into our fully tractable simulacrum — and the ''real'' universe, out there, with trees and flowers and basil fotherington-tomas<ref>‘I simply don’t care a row of buttons whether it was a goal or not nature alone is beattful’</ref> (note to file: we will need a snappy word for each) diverged — “[[Great delamination|delaminated]]” — set off along their own independent, meandering trajectories ever since, finally lost contact and now bear absolutely no relation to each other. The separate realms have become “[[non-overlapping magisteria]],” to use {{author|Stephen Jay Gould}}’s excellent term from {{br|Rocks of Ages}}. It is a [[category error]] to apply standards in one to situations arising in the other.  

Meaning that what ''was'' a simulacrum increasingly no longer ''is''. There is much danger in confusing the two.

Elemental manifestations: ''online'' discourse and discourse ''in real life'' are qualitatively different.  

Online — the “[[onworld]]” — is unilateral: one-to-many, deterministic, delineated, rigid, scaled, binary, digital, definitive, eliminative and final. It is like code: exact, precise, machined. “Tolerance” implies ''sloppiness'' and ''weakness''. It consists only of data, and data is of the past. Irony: the [[onworld]] is mechanistic, [[finite]] and historical: it is not futuristic, but ''backward looking''.

Real life — the “[[offworld]]”  — is bilateral: one-to-one, graduated, ambiguous, deprecated, provisional, malleable, nuanced and forgiving. It flexes. It acknowledges that for all you do know, there is infinitely more you do not. It is necessary tolerant and open-minded, as you have to be when you don’t know what is coming next. It asks us to apply imaginative open-mindedness to invent excellent outcomes, with whatever criteria for “excellent” then appeal to us.  It is human, ''[[Infinite game|infinite]]'' and forward-looking.   

No-one is perfect —neither the judge or the judged —so we must make allowances for error, misunderstanding, misapprehension. Online, ostensible fallibility has fallen away. Judgment is simply a special case of categorisation. We can, do, and to get by, ''must'' categorise.  

So when did this great delamination happen?  

===[[BlackStar]]===

The [[JC]] dates that loss of contact to 2016 — specifically, [[10 January 2016]], or “[[BlackStar]]”. The “[[great delamination]]” at which the digital/analogue separation became irreversible, is a key inflexion point in the social history of the 21st century. I cannot prove, or even adduce evidence, that Bowie was fundamental to things keeping together, but the dates check out. The great weirding commenced with the collective expiry of cultural touchstones across the spectrum: Bowie, Harper Lee, George Martin, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Ronnie Corbett, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Carrie Fisher and of course Rick Parfitt from Status Quo. From then things just got weirder, and have not really come right since. [[Trump]], [[Brexit]], [[COVID-19|Covid]], Ukraine, Crypto, the neo space race — these are all symptoms of a collective mind that has lost its way.