Step 39: After the Orgy, Baudrillard

Mapping out how we got here, and why Baudrillard’s ideas of the simulation and simulacrum can explain much about how our institutions and ideals have lost touch with their original motivating force, falling into simulating previous goals.

“After the Orgy” is an essay Ryder discusses in Part 3 about the post-modern plight: what happens after we achieve liberation?

music courtesy of Feslyian Studios [link]

Jean Baudrillard
Transparency of Evil, After the Orgy

What do we do now the orgy is over?… Now all we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation.

Jean Baudrillard

Part 1

What we have covered on this podcast, so far

 1:32 Where we are at, and why Baudrillard can help 
A walk through the 4 or 5 books, from education to capitalism, and why the world doesn’t make sense. More distressing is that when crisis hits, we have no new ideas but keep following the same playbook. This is (arguably) because our institutions and ideals are simulacra. 

Part 2

A story about the art world

14:25 Simulating, Dissimulating, and Simulacrum in the Art World
a short story about an art talk where Ryder simulates having knowledge, while smarter people dissimulate, and seemingly no one knows what is really happening. 

Part 3

After the orgy essay, out of “Transparency of Evil,” 1990

18:58 After the Orgy, essay by Baudrillard
A bad dramatic reading of parts of Baudrillard’s essay, After the Orgy, where he discusses achieving the goals of modernity, the liberation of all things, and the plight of not knowing what to do after. What happens when sex or money or politics are just an act, and the results precede the event?