The only freedom supposed to be left to the masses is that of grazing on the ration of simulacra the system distributes to each individual.
Interpretation
The masses are often limited to the illusion of freedom, consuming what the system provides rather than experiencing true autonomy.
Michel De Certeau's quote critiques the notion of freedom in modern society, suggesting that individuals are deceived into believing they are free while they remain confined by the choices and values imposed by the prevailing systems. The 'ration of simulacra' refers to the artificial representations and choices presented to society, which serve to distract from the true nature of their autonomy and agency.
In practice
During a lecture on modern consumerism, this quote could be used to illustrate the illusion of choice in a capitalist society.
First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities (e.g., by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., by a wall that prevents one from going further), than the walked actualizes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform, or abandon spatial elements.
The sick man must follow his illness to the place where it is treated... He is set aside in one of the technical and secret zones (hospitals, prisons, refuse dumps) which relieve the living of everything that might hinder the chain of production and consumption, and which repair and select what can be sent back up to the surface of progress.
The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.
More than its utilitarian and technocratic transparency, it is the opaque ambivalence of its oddities that makes the city livable.
A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two thing being in the same location (place). The law of the 'proper' rules in the place: the elements taken into consideration are beside one another, each situated in its own 'proper' and distinct location, a location it defines. A place is thus an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability.
To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.
Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence
In an organic environment, every place is unique, and the different places also cooperate, with no parts left over, to create a global whole - a whole which can be identified by everyone who is part of it.
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and adressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. [...] The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.
Virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue.
Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.
Absence, the highest form of presence.
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