Superficial Church: The Loss of Real Church
6 Feb 2007
In trying to get a grasp of Jean Baudrillard’s writing I have been struck at his notion of the ‘superficial’ and how it might form a diagnosis of the plight of the many discussions of what is ‘authentic’ mission and church. Also his thoughts might give us cause for concern about how post-modern culture subsumes and neuters our best attempts at translating our hopes for emerging into reality. Also it has convinced me further of the need for ‘Deep Church’ as a response to the enculturation of emerging and modern church, but I’ll come to that later.
Hyper-reality
At it simplest level Baudrillard suggests that in our image saturated world images (of TV, cinema, internet, computer games, mobile phones, CCTV, Web Cams, digital cameras etc), representation has saturated reality so much that experience takes place a distance from the things we are viewing. For example, it’s hard to go to New York without bringing the experience of the New York of the movies and TV with you to that ‘real’ encounter. I know I felt like I was in a movie when I went to NY for the first time.
Or the person who spends hours making amazing iMovie recordings and shows of his life and family, whilst in the ‘real’ world his marriage isn’t great and his spiritual life needs attending to. The computer-edited version of the world is more ‘real’ than the real world.
Baudrillard calls this experience ‘hyper-reality’.
cont
Simulations of reality
Baudrillard also uses the notion of ‘simulation’. The link between the signs we create, the simulations of reality are often completely disconnected from each other. The representation of something, anything is not seen as a way to connect to the reality behind it, rather it becomes a reality in itself. Again in other words we become obsessed with the image itself, how cool it is, rather than the truth of what it is about. So we pay large sums of money not for trainers that are the best for running, but for the experience of the image attached to the trainers, which has little to do with running at all.
This causes us to be focused on the intensity of am image rather any need for real meaning, depth is replaced with surface, and the ‘phantasm of authenticity which always ends up just short of reality’ (The Revenge of the Crystal, 1990).
Simulations make reality
Yet whilst simulations are separated from reference to reality, they become my reality. For instance movies make me cry and connect to ‘real’ feelings, a beer advert makes me thirsty, watching the Asian Tsunami on the news shakes my faith. There is an implosion of surface simulation into reality. Images don’t just shape reality, they have become the thing that preceded reality! They absorb, shape, consume, and produce what we see as reality.
When we watch ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, are these people being ‘real’ at all as D list professional fakers, who are aware the cameras are watching them, in a fake home cut off from the real world for the time they are in the ‘reality show’. Big Brother is real in that it makes it’s own reality.
Style Attachments
Baudrillard asks if we ever buy something because of what it does and not because it is attached to a style, or lifestyle? Are we really more than the fulfillment of images of an aesthetic and image of reality.
If I buy tools for the car, are they the best or do I buy into the colours and shiny adverts they show them as a the tool for the cool tool guy. Does my computer work better or does it make me feel like part of the ‘cool’ that goes with using it (apple any one?). All our food seems attached to a style, ‘Aunt Bessie’s’ yorkshire puddings, Tesco’s ‘Finest’ etc.
And how do we try to escape the tyranny of this simulation? Baudrillard suggest we do so by producing events, activities, images and objects, which assure us that we have the new and better reality! In other words we manufacture our escape from the false reality we find ourselves in, we have created fetish of the authentic, to escape false authenticity.
This is the realm of the hyper-real, or more-real- than real. We binges on reality experiences of traveling every weekend we can to somewhere more ‘real’ for experiences, we use interactive TV, instant messaging, blogging to be more ‘real’, watch reality TV shows on plastic surgery, make CD’s that have the sounds of vinyl record scratches, have huge video screens at live sports events and music concerts.
We replace the loss of the real with nostalgia. Yet these attempts to provide an alternative to the loss of the ‘real’ as even more unreal! Maybe we need Big Brother to feel like our reality and our life really exists, to give us the impression that whilst these ‘reality’ TV people are false we are ‘real’.
What Does This Mean for Emerging Church?
If Baudrillard is correct in any measure, I’m sure you can see some of the connections begging to be attached to the condition of discussions about church. Here are a few that I can discern. Remember these are suggestions based on Baudrillard being correct, and I am not critique him here, just summarising his thoughts. (I am by inclination a critical realist, rather than a postmodernist like baudrillard and I’ll come to that in another post)
1. Hyper-real Church:
How much of the emerging church discussion, movement is caught up with hyper-real images of church. We’d rather blog, podcast, write about the image of a better and more authentic church than actually be involved in ‘real’ church. Emerging church can function as the pastiche, edited iMovie of church, that has not correlation to reality.
We are trapped in trying to incarnate church to our culture, by the pursuit of the superficial and hyper-real. What if real church doesn’t look like the idealized images we are endlessly portraying about church.
2. Simulation Church:
Our conceptions of church, the practices of the new forms of church we make, or maybe our existing forms are mere phantasms, surface images with no depth or substance. We are ‘faking it’ to ‘make it’. We will give our money and time to re-editing the image, finding conjecture and suggestions of what church might, could and should be, but never engage in doing ‘real’ church. The fantasy church is much more real than the real thing. And our false images become so real we think they are ‘real’ church. We measure everything by surface realities, and our discussions of what is ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ form more superficial, and yet more ‘real’ forms of church.
We become endlessly self referential with our false reality more ‘real because it isn’t the reality we escape from (usually the false image of the evil modern church).
3. Fetish Church:
And how do we try to escape this problem? By more re-branding, more image management. We call ourselves missionaries in a post Christian context, we buy the missional church books, we postulate the new and even more ‘real’ church, and avoid the reality of doing and being church even more.
Emerging church becomes a fetish, and fashion lifestyle we buy into, or we trade in for a different version. The aesthetic of church becomes the message. The space of engagement with the aesthetics of our culture, become pastiche fetishes, that end up being consumed, and we eventually leave them for something more real. We become the very thing that we despise and pathologically move on to a new fake hopeful and yet even more artificial constriction of church.
We pride ourselves on exposing the shallow com-modification of the modern church with is worship band heroes, of people obsessed with style over substance, and end up just as shallow and superficial by that measure with our endless ‘re-imagining’s’.
4. Pastiche & Nostlagia Church:
Pastiche church is the temptation to take the aesthetics of other church traditions, of those of our culture, and to patch them together in a superficial manner. We might get nostalgic for the ancient church and grab some liturgies and use them but never know the depths of what they really signify. Or we engage in kitsch and pastiche of images from culture, without really knowing why we use them other than they seem real in their own right. In other words we use images at random, project them over some music and see it as an experience, or we make aesthetical art spaces, that degenerate into consumer therapy, self justified with the user experience, as ‘authentic’. Our worship experiences becomig self authenticating.
Conclusion
I haven’t offered a critique of Baudrillard, just a summary of some of his main thoughts and how they might relate to emerging church, or any form of church. I think I’m left with the main question of how do we avoid this, which is the million-dollar question, and the backbone of my PhD research, so watch this space. But some quick thoughts for now.
1. Tendencies: Abstract into Real: recognise that every-time we re-imagine church we are in the west a people who will struggle to translate that into any reality, and are bent, distorted towards finding the re-imagining to be real itself. Maybe this is the ‘sin’ (inherent missing the mark) of our current culture.
2. Trapped in Consumption: And at the heart of our bent towards the hyper-real, and fetish of church, is our entrenchment in capitalism and the market place. We need to really understand how capitalism has captured our understanding of what it means to be real, and find some ways out of it into non-commodified forms of church, to find the spaces between the doing of church and the consumption of church that will enable a liberating and ‘real’ change.
3. Evaluate our Ecclesiologies:
Then use that understanding of our tendencies and the snares of consumerism to assess our current and suggested future forms of church.
Do you see any of these interplay’s in church, and any ways out?
37 comments
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Comment by fernando
12.42 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Lucid thoughts. I would suggest the problem for the emerging church thinker is maybe a little deeper. It is not just the (un)reality of our imaginings that is problematic, it is the (un)reality of of view of society and experience of church that is such. To use Baudrillardian language, we have been “seduced” by our reading of the world.
When I think of S&S I always end going back to the picture of the Borgean map. We live in the overlay, which is reality to us. If we want to buy into that, then missionality must start at the frayed edges where the map does not map.
BTW, as much as I love both S&S and the Consumer society, I do find Baudrillard’s ideas of the transperancy of evil and the impossible exchange more fruitful these days.
Comment by Jason
1.41 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Fernando (1): So we make surface readings of church and society, not just create surface simulations of new forms of church? Very helpful.
Comment by brett jordan
2.07 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Surely reality is a wholistic mix of the ontologically real and perceived reality?
Even before television, humans received information that had already been filtered and manipulated… by the people relaying the information to them, and by their own worldview… we perceive reality via a huge range of filters, and even in a single personality these can change quite massively within short time frames, based on mood, focus and context.
Re-imagining church is always going to be a (frustrating) mixture of studying the scriptures, referencing them to the world and the church, trying stuff out, seeing what works/is blessed/fails miserably, studying some more, thinking some more, trying some more… both as individuals, as a local church, and as a world-wide church…
or, you could just do what i say… it would save a LOT of time
Comment by steven hamilton
2.17 pm on 6 Feb 2007
ok, let me get my bearings…this is good stuff, but it provokes me to a bunch of questions:
how does one trapped in a false reality – assuming indeed that they can see it for the false reality it is – have confidence that the next reality they might be stepping into is not in fact another false reality? (maybe the beginning of the answer to this question is in your conclusions, but…)[the big answer to this is that Someone from outside that false reality beckons them out and helps them into the real reality…but how exactly does that play out on a communal level and not just an individual experience?)
how does one finally penetrate the images and symbols (both good and bad…well-used and mis-used…since Jesus used symbols, and mustn’t we all use symbols to point to our God, who although He clothed Himself in flesh in not around in a fleshy sense for us to point to) in order to grasp the reality behind them?
lol…thanks jason, not sure i’ll get much done today as i am now consumed with pondering what a non-commodified form of church actually might look like…which begins – for myself – to answer your last challenge: i think freeing our imagination is a step towards a way out…vision, perspective; but that is so hard to attain when i am constantly bombarded with new images that take up space in my mind living in hyper-reality. i need a sabbath…
but before i go, some wordcraft…i won’t give the title to this one, because it gives it away, but this wordcarft points to another reality as well:
smoke rises with wisps of spice and sacrifice
prayer ascends like fragrant mists of fantasy
how have I come to this place?
a dream?…a vision?…a nightmare…?
unknowing is its own prison of fear
buffeted by my companions,
led by a colorless priest with matching attire
mocha on his breath…the stench of a drink offering entices
oblique is our path through this sacred maze…my vision cluttered
glancing into the colonnade of the vitiates
sirens call forth: ‘come embrace mystery’
intertwined with a taste of the divine from the breast of temple courtesans
voices calling out ahead
rods now at my backside
pummeling me forward
i hear the voice but it is not one i recognize
all is strange,
and fear resounds
not like the known fear of wolf or bear or lion
yet with a knife at your throat…
what is there to learn amongst the bleating of sheep?
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Comment by jerry
4.24 pm on 6 Feb 2007
amen
Comment by Jason
4.55 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Brett (3): You sound like a critical realist in that you have on the one hand logical positivism that wants to say we can know with absolute certainty and post modern deconstructionists who want to say there is no meaning in anything we do other than what we make ourselves, whilst somewhere else (in the middle) you and I want to say (like the critical realist) that there is a world independent of me and my knowing of it, but I am part of that world and know somethings some might be true some might be my constructions of them.
You mention ontology, and for the critical realist you can say (ontologically) that the world really does exists and so do I.
But we might be more cautious with epistemology and say truth claims about that reality are much more relative, and subject to us having humility about what we think we know.
We see through a glass darkly, and need all the processes you outline and more.
Comment by Paul
5.05 pm on 6 Feb 2007
My thought is where is the dark room with the wet towel…
My other thought is are we making a danger of reading in too deeply on consumerism, in picking it out as a dominant motiff are we actually addressing what is part of the problem? Maybe the issue is not consumption which is a response [and indeed in and of itself is not harmful - take christmas that is good consumerism where people pause in their choices and try to think of others]. Maybe it is in our reading of society that we go astray, we seek God as experience junkies and we get bummned out? We manufacture an artificial holiness because that is what we expect – church tells us how we should be but little about the reality of who we are and how to bridge the gap…
Is the answer then more to do with a reality about God and us – rather than encouraging a manufactured or a shrink wrapped shiny God experience?
Is the realisation that being a follow of Jesus is about our ordinary lives and practices that encourage acts of goodness rather than selfishness?
Do we need a moritorium on ranting about them [whether people, churches, rest of the world] and instead reflection on our own individual short comings – why do I if I began as christians by admitting I wa wrong and need help, repenting, rethinking think that it is a one off event rather than a life long interactive shared practice?
Is form not so important as function? So that a deep church is one that connects with its culture but espouses the marks of suffering, servanthood/service, giving, humility, generousity and confession – as a life style? One where we are concerned with not just believing in Jesus but showing our belief by acting on his words – living them, not just reading them, studying them, imagining what it would be like if we did, or getting nostalgic for the good ol days [whether sometime in the past or future].
I wonder if one of the key marks of deep church is a realisation that God cares about our character more than our own superficial level of happiness and that involves testing, hardship, struggles – and maybe learning commitment through them, sticking it out rather than giving up, getting fed up, or watering the grass of some other place so that it is always greener?
How do we encourage commitment, how do we celebrate it, support it, be honest about how hard it is at times – whether its to communities, friends, spouses, families and God?
Comment by Jason
5.06 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Stephen (4): great questions Steve. How do we know? In the modern world feelings, and emotions and relationships took second place to data and facts. We knew hard facts that could be measured, but everything else was unmeasurable and invalid for making knowing truth. Now we have the opposite in the post-modern world, where truth is purely what we construct ourselves, meaning is what I make of things.
We are all part of the world we seek to understand. To learn about a reality is to learn about our place in and relation to it and with others.
There is not just the choice of the rational self or the deconstructed self, but of knowing in relationships.
In practice it means we belief Jesus is a relationship and not a proposition, and not an existential wishful construction!
I love the C S Lewis poem that talks of the insufficiency of language to contain anything about God, but how God uses the limits of language to convey meaning. Like the incarnation, how could God possibly become come a man?
C. S. Lewis, Footnote to All Prayers:
The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all – are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
Comment by Jason
5.09 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Paul (7): I think you outlined the concerns Baudrillard has :-) And I think your suggestions for Christianity as a different way of living ordered around something other than happiness (surely the Goddess of all that is superficial) is at the heart of this.
Comment by Paul
5.19 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Jase (9) so something like…
I consume tand that makes me happy…
I collect/consume/experience experiences therfore I know i am…
I put my needs first and choose not to ask many Qs/think too deeply on why I need too or consider the morality/impact on others other than me…
Comment by steven hamilton
5.21 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Paul (7) – isn’t that the cost of discipleship? i believe that you are right in that faith takes place in the details of a life lived, not merely in the construct of thinking in our minds. deep church has in its essence life lived as a (set apart)community of Jesus followers…doesn’t it?
and the essence of discipleship (at least the Jesus-brand kind) is found in what it costs us…
thanks Paul, although between you and jason – my head hurts…
peace
Comment by Paul
5.24 pm on 6 Feb 2007
steve (11) i wonder though if the Q we need to askbourselves is not just how much it costs but what price we are willing/prepared to pay?
Comment by Makeesha
5.30 pm on 6 Feb 2007
I have to say that I chuckled when I read the post and it’s comments. It sort of made me think of the person who is philosophizing critically about those who philosophize. The person who criticizes the critical person.
This truly is very much about philosophy and if people like this author aren’t careful, they end up doing the self same thing they are being critical of.
I personally don’t see the whole issue that deep…but I’m fascinated and in awe of all of you thinking that deep. Esp. with all the big words…even more impressive ;)
One of the best things I have ever done in ministry is talk to people who approach their faith in a very “uneducated” fashion. They tend to find all this stuff baffling and ridiculous and pointless and it helps keep me grounded to listen to how they perceive it all.
Comment by steven hamilton
5.30 pm on 6 Feb 2007
paul (12) – hmmm…it didn’t occur to me that those are separate questions, but i suppose they are…
Comment by steven hamilton
5.32 pm on 6 Feb 2007
makeesha (13) – reminds me of my well-grounded mother, who always used to say ’steven, what are you gonna do when the rubber hits the road…’
lol
Comment by brett jordan
5.34 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Jason (6) I’d accept the critical realist tag (i prefer optimistic realist, but heh!) but not the logical postivism
by faith, i do believe that there is an objective reality… i’m not so sure that we have access to it in this life however, as you say, we see things through lenses that have been clouded by sin and finitenessnessness
and i still think things would be MUCH easier if we did them my way :-)
Comment by Paul
5.35 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Mak (13) you are welcomw to use my wet towel/dark room, lol
steve (14) – maybe they aren’t, my head still buzzing from thinking about the two sides of consumerism transactions
Comment by ZooMuse
5.51 pm on 6 Feb 2007
I was feeling completely overwhelmed and incapable of thinking or doing anything for fear it would be the wrong thing, for the wrong reason, in the wrong way, at the wrong time. Then, I read Makeesha’s comment and felt immediately better. Even if there are helpful issues raised in the book (and this posting), it is definitely over the top for me. I take refuge in “search me, O Lord, and know my heart.”
Comment by Jason
5.57 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Paul (10: cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) and now we have Tesco ergo sum (I shop therefore I am) :-)
Comment by Jason
6.00 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Makeesha: Sorry for the big words, but I don’t think that makes it superficial :-) I tried to outline in the philosophy some examples of the real world where it has major implications…such as th desire to change church being about buying emerging church books, going to conferences listening to MP3, i.e consuming and thinking we are being more real about church when maybe we haven’t done anything at all :-)
Comment by Makeesha
6.01 pm on 6 Feb 2007
zoo — I’m glad I’m not alone hehe.
Comment by Paul
6.07 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Jase (19) ah that would be tesco finest again ;)
Comment by Tom
6.14 pm on 6 Feb 2007
“Fetish Church” is as useful a term as I’ve heard in a very long time, Jason. The rest of your post has my head spinning. I once heard a cranky Stanley Hauerwas say that “the seminary is the place where the church does its thinking.” Clearly, he must have never read your blog.
Comment by Jim_Rapp
6.21 pm on 6 Feb 2007
The Loss of the Real Baudrillard
Great summary of what may be yet another irritating non-saying Socratic muse.
Or, a true prophet.
Or, both.
The way out is further in. Follow Balaam’s consumer-inspired-missiology of prophecy-for-hire riding along with Baudrillard’s rent-a-curse against every modern malady until you find your ass on an increasingly narrow way, finally hemmed in with hip-chic criticisms (beating the ass you’re riding) until the Divine Someone (a nod to Stephen @ #4) stands in the way, alas, with yet another choice.
I can’t find my way out. I can’t find my way home.
I’m so lost, and never more so when I’ve got all the criticisms right, the Answer must be given.
Comment by Jason
6.22 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Tom (23): Thanks for the encouragement. Again for anyone reading this is a slightly academic piece, about very real issues, even if it seems impenetrable due to some of the technical terms and short hands. From time to time I will be posting these as the the easier to read versions!
Comment by Paul
7.10 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Jase (26) you know us consumer junkies we like it all to be simple, easy and strain free – and if we’re not happy we’ll complain…
altho it is a hard thing to think about i think it is worth spending the time distilling – not least for people like me who blog about church and wrestle with the temptation to both disallusioned and wildly optimistic at the same time ;)
Comment by Makeesha
8.06 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Jason – I don’t think it’s superficial, I don’t think I said that. and I love big words, I was being a little tongue in cheek because sometimes I get a chance to see the church conversation from the pov of the “other” and it makes me feel a little sheepish about my own pontificating.
I also just found it a bit odd that someone is critical of something that in actuality, he’s doing himself.
I also don’t think it’s irrelevant NECESSARILY. Although I think this type of discourse can quickly become irrelevant. I do think that this type of assessment runs the risk of falling into the same trap it’s criticizing…over thinking, not enough doing, creating a utopia that cannot and will not ever exist…etc.
I also grow weary – esp. lately – of hyper criticism, over analyzing and standing on a high hill overlooking everyone and everything “down there” (I’ve done it and still do on occasion and find it the most repulsive part of me). Which is, as I gather, part of what this issue is speaking to…ironic I think.
I’m not afraid of a little academic analysis and I fully understand Jason that that’s what this is. But just because it’s academic doesn’t mean it can’t be critiqued by the non academic – don’t you think?
Comment by Jason
10.14 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Makeesha (27): People certainly do find this baffling as do I, and it is irrelveant if all it remains is talk. I hoped that the summary might help with the overanalysiing, I found Baudrillard helpful in that sense. So you comment was ironic :-)
It certainly can be critiqued, I hope you didn’t think it couldn’t. I think it was the suggestion of big words that might have given me a sense that you thought academic reflection was superficial ;-)
I’m sure I could have worked harder to translate the thoughts into the ’so what’ arena, help me with that Makeesha.
Comment by Jason
10.15 pm on 6 Feb 2007
Makeesha (27): And maybe a seperate post on the nature philosophy and is it helpful to anyone, rather than justifying it here :-)
Comment by Makeesha
11.03 pm on 6 Feb 2007
I think you did just fine explaining everything :) I still think it’s ironic ;)
Comment by bryan riley
3.47 pm on 7 Feb 2007
Perhaps this explains why we miss all the simple, obvious Truths about God like “God gives” and “Jesus loves me” and drive instead for the deeper, more inane “truths,” and separate ourselves from others who have yet to see them. We are trading in Reality for a lesser version, self-created, and, in the end simply worshiping ourselves, the created, rather than the Creator.
Comment by dan brown
6.01 am on 8 Feb 2007
There is really a lot a stake in this presentation and the intrepretation of what Baudrillardian language is trying to acomplish. The idea that the media has influence on our behavior is evident in the consummer oriented society here in the West. On a more personal level (ontologically) this short response simply wants to warn that captalism and consumerism are not the problem that B seems to assert in some of the links I have looked at from this site. The problem is in learning to respond to others in a qualitatively beautiful manner. We need to learn to embrace an ethic that demonstrates and develops excellence. That is practices that develope skills that take time, effort and mentoring to accomplish. Technology has made evident the need to learn better communication techniques in a society that tends toward instant gratification and holds celebrity in high esteem. Ethical excellence is needed in the midst of pressing social and spiritual malaise. Here is a personal example; many e-mails that I receive especially from young people (those in their 20’s) use the medium of e-mail to hide or project an image that does not reflect the person they were created to be in the image of God. Through the lack of skill in writing we show anger, frustation and other negative atributes through our poor writing. In general many in the e-mail world have false bravery and boldness. E-mail which is an extension of visual, written (hand dexterity), and the extension of auditory/verbal sensation gets confused and related in ways that continue to promote poor communication instead of having a I/thou or even I/it encounters with love. The e-mailers’ would rather communicate via e-mail (a medium that is cooler than face to face dialogue)than learn the skills neccesary to meet via the telephone or face to face. It is difficult for some young people to pick up the phone or meet face to face. Forty years ago Marshall McCullan asserted that we needed to see technolgy as an extension of our creaturely existence. And the technology (the medium being the message) was having a direct effect on our social and spiritual behavior. MM postualated that each individual medium was hot or cool in relation to the prior medium. thus making it easier to see artistic achievment in the previous medium than the present one. Telegraph more warm than telephone, TV cooler than radio. With the advent of cooler mediums we have the sensation or illusion of being involved, although we have a loss of meaning as a result of the medium, we are more involved with the lives of others vicariously but, we have not kept up with the skills necessary to use the medium in an artistic way. My definition of an artistic way is that the message is clear and helps us to experience one another as a family of God. Artistic communication reveals in holistic meaningful way that encourages communion between one another. In other words we are more involved with a cooler medium. A hotter medium requires more involvement to gain a correspondingly equal amount of meaning. For MM this is why TV was creating a global village. It also made it easier for the masses to mix the use of symbols and language and be able to form more segregated groups or tribes. This has led to the effect of making most people very poor at communicating in writing (the skill necesary for e-mail, the skill of letter writing has been pretty much been lost. I am not suggesting that if we regained that skill the problems of technology would be solved. For the church to counter act this effect we need to teach more on how to resolve conflict and teach others to recognize the masks they are hiding behind. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me, it is a privilege to participate. Dan Brown
Comment by steven hamilton
1.14 pm on 8 Feb 2007
thanks dan (32) – so have we come to the end of our own image…or have we come to the point where we take up His anew? i think that is how we ‘respond to others in a qualitatively beautiful manner’…
love is indeed credible
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10.37 am on 19 Feb 2007
[...] and series edited by James K.A. Smith. I was asked to post today, so you can find my piece on Baudrillard, re-posted there [...]
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4.40 pm on 7 Mar 2007
[...] wrote a post titled superficial church back in February, based on some reading of Jean Baudrillard. He passed away yesterday, aged 77, [...]
Comment by mavxp
10.51 pm on 7 Mar 2007
In light of his recent passing. I thought I’d post my favourite Baudrillard quote:
“Theory can be no more than this: A trap set in the hope that reality will be naïve enough to fall into it”
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