All of [the] activities here have a surreptitious end-of-the-world feel to them:... these joggers sleepwalking in the mist like shadow's who have escaped from Plato's cave
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the unsettling nature of modern existence and the obscured reality that people face.
Jean Baudrillard uses the metaphor of joggers 'sleepwalking in the mist' to illustrate how individuals navigate their lives without true awareness or understanding, similar to the prisoners in Plato's cave who perceive only shadows of reality. This suggests that contemporary activities can feel futile or aimless, as they mask a deeper existential dread connected to the end of the world.
In practice
In a discussion about modern life and its challenges, this quote could highlight the need for deeper awareness.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
All men would be tyrants if they could.
When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.
But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.
We are aware that globalization doesn't mean global friendship but global competition and, therefore, conflict. That doesn't mean we will all destroy each other, but it is no happy global village, either.
I am a Black woman raised by parents who were active in the civil-rights movement.
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