pinkfloydpsw's Blog

I watch Love Island, before you judge that fact bear with me a while and I will explain….

Jean Baudrillard speculated that in modernity there was little reality since every experience can be replicated and shared. That we live in a simulated world where life, daily life, is a series of constructed events where the authenticity of the person is unnecessary since the created world gives us no need of a self-building project; it in essence both makes, and fulfils, our every need. Now I’m in mind of Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine (a though experiment where we are asked to argue against the merits of a designed reality where all things are possible, hedonistic and more fulfilling than real life) at this point, and how the question of whether it is right to get in and enjoy that world is asked?  I’m going to leave that alone for now, but we may come back to it later. Let’s say, for the sake of argument that Baudrillard was onto something, can you find a task that links you to a possible ancestor from say 2000 years ago, something very human or human like, that would reassure us that you are not in a world of pre-packed, designed, replicable, mediated and modified experiences already? Rick Roderick, in talking about a small facet of Freud’s perspective on the self, describes the conscious that we are aware of as a small garrison holding out against the forces in a mostly overrun city, these forces we might call the unconscious. Freud’s insight was that there is so much more to our self that we are aware of, parts of the self that remain un-reflected and unexamined that might give us, our aware selves, if discovered, an understanding of the reasons why we act, react, and feel as we do, in essence what we are driven by. Now we all like to think that we know ourselves well, and it is useful not to doubt no doubt, but how many times have you asked yourself where your ideas actually come from, who benefits from your belief and subsequent actions, and how you actually came to know what you think you know? Could they be from conditioning, experience, family, the church, the media, societal? This is what the Frankfurt School called Psychoanalysis in Reverse, where the self would come to react to situ with a preconditioned response, i.e. whatever was desired by the influential disseminator or sophist, indicating that the city (the self) has already been completely lost to the invading hoard (external influences). It is also exactly what Immanuel Kant was set against when he coined the phrase “Dare To Use Your Own Reason”, meaning to think things out in a critical way and to examine all aspects, even your own motivations and prejudices, as if doing science with reasoning rather than being merely heteronomous (following taught reasoning), or acting dogmatically.

However, what the Fudge does this have to do with Love Island? Well I am glad you asked….

I think, and as always I am willing to be wrong, that the love island contestant is the result of the overrun of the city, a non-human entity with no authenticity and no affect, merely the expression of effect, self-built entirely in the mirror of other selves, each of which also within a play of simulated life. Each person involved is an ego creation, constructed to be the reflection of the modern celebrity magazine falsehood, the photoshopped selfie with the green screen background and the false tan, teeth, eyelashes, waxed chest, gym body, practiced smile, honed facial resting position and overtly positive body language. I find them embroiled in a falsehood so deeply that they are that falsehood, the very fabric of it and the food it feeds from in their falsehood reinforcing actions and interactions, each repeating a mantra that has the words of being personal but carrying no weight of the truly felt. I am being hard on them and I suppose their parents too, but let us be nasty while we have the chance, I am not here to make friends.

The contestant enters the competition and makes instant friends with the others, effecting the sort of deep friendship and emotional reaching more normally reserved for being stupidly drunk and telling tacit friends that you love them because the time seemed right, or the confused mind thought there may be purpose in it, or maybe you just took a load of ecstasy and the love comes easy? We know that friendship is not an instant thing, but I’m going to call this recognition and safety rather than something that is akin to a deeper sense of connectedness. The recognition that the persons you find yourself sharing the Island with are like-minded and like mannered, they are the same as you, unconscious drones, and you’ll be safe there among them. Each displays the sort of simple childlike psychological reasoning as you do, each is “Styling it out” to borrow an American phrase, each respects stylish clothes and has an overt need to please the shallow other for the validation of self.

 In here I can be the me I wish to be each is thinking and recognising. These people will take me seriously if I take them seriously, and millions of viewers will speculate as to my chances of coupling up and staying in the popularity contest till the end where my reward will be to be allowed to continue being taken seriously, and even though I have neither earned my listenership/viewership I may act the journalist to the following series at worst, become a panto name in modest notoriety, or get to become a regular on the interview carousel of tv.

So I watch people engaged in a falsehood for the pleasure of knowing that I am more real than them, but am I? Is my life not a result of the mirror also, am I not influenced? Of course I am, but I think I’m free in the sense that I know it is a falsehood. In knowing the falsehood one can dip in and out of it, allowing some of the unconscious to be conscious, and therefore knowing yourself better. This can only be a positive thing, like finding out why you do what you do or have the strange thought that you have. That’s therapy in a nutshell, and shouldn’t we all do a bit of therapy on ourselves every now and then? Anyways, I watch love island, just to know how bad it can get, and is getting.

Paul S Wilson