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itself has become a show contemplated by an audience. That audience
is anyone who has no control over the conditions of his/her own
existence. Reality is now merely something we look at and think
about, not something we experience. In the real world, what is possible
is determined by our resources and the limits of our imaginations,
but upon this real world a totally fake world - the Spectacle -
has been constructed. It is maintained on a microscopic level by
our conversations and relationships; in our simplest everyday dealings
we engage in the construction of social illusions. The Spectacle
is a constructed reality. It does not satisfy, it cannot satisfy.
It offers only the dream of satisfaction.
The basic characteristic of the spectade today is the way it calls
attention to its own disintegration.The effect of this is the substitution
of images and commodities for "real" experience. People
enter into relationships with spectacular production rather than
each other. Isolated individuals, united only by a passive contemplation
of the spectacle. A manufactured alienation for manufactured personalities
that multiplies needs precisely because it can satisfy none of them.
Industry creates new needs to stimulate consumption and productivity.
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