We are no longer
alienated
and passive spectators
but interactive
extras;
we are the meek
lyophilized members
of this huge “reality show.”

It is no longer a
spectacular logic of alienation
but a spectral logic of
dis-incarnation,
no longer a fantastic logic
of diversion,
but a corpuscular logic
of transfusion and transubstantiation
of all of our cells;
a radical deterrence
of the world
from the inside
and no longer
from the outside…

Being an extra
in virtual reality
is no longer
being an actor
or a spectator.

It is to be
out-of-the-scene,
to be obscene.

Excerpt, “Disneyworld Company”, published March 4, 1996 in the Parisian newspaper, Liberation. By Jean Baudrillard, Translated by Francois Debrix

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A gloomy morning and rain is impending.  My plan is to do what I can today.  Today’s New York Times Morning Update was anything but encouraging.  The image of Lake Mead was more eloquent than the text.  The former grand lake at the base of the Hoover dam appears as a stream, its tan banks in a late stage of evaporation.  Water intake towers to the turbines rise as twin towers of the West — overlooking the Lake Mead surface that remains.  The image is stark and foreboding.  How much time is left before the flow of water is no longer sufficient to turn the turbines that generate power for thousands of homes, the air conditioning units, etc. etc..?

I read in another Times News bulletin of VP Kamala Harris‘ visit to El Paso, one of southern border crossing points where Central Americans are coming by the thousands, refugees fleeing the desertification of their farms in Central America.  The influx of refugees can no more be stopped than the drought in California and in the Pacific Northwest.  The Vice Presidents visit is a political gesture, another act in this Kabuki drama in which we are all enlisted as extras.

The Times, The Morning report of today attempted to cast a positive note.

“You might wake in the morning on a mattress made from recycled CO2,” Jon Gertner writes. “You might drive your car — with parts made from smokestack CO2 — over roads made from CO2-cured concrete. And at day’s end, you might sip carbontech vodka while making dinner with food grown in a greenhouse enriched by recycled CO2.”

You might wake up in the morning and imagine that pigs can fly…