Messages Sages and Ages最新文献

Living in the Matrix: How a Scientific Conjecture was Turned into a Conspiracy Theory 《黑客帝国:科学猜想如何变成阴谋论

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-11-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0006

Roberto Paura

{"title":"Living in the Matrix: How a Scientific Conjecture was Turned into a Conspiracy Theory","authors":"Roberto Paura","doi":"10.1515/msas-2017-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/msas-2017-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In recent years the simulation argument, namely, the idea that our reality is a kind of computer-generated simulation developed for hidden purposes, has acquired some credit and has been appropriated by the conspiracy culture, especially in the works of David Icke, author of paranoid bestsellers and known for his pseudo-theory about Reptilian aliens who secretly rule our world. To understand the reasons for the success of such an implausible pseudo-theory, it is necessary to analyze its genealogy inside popular culture. The methodological proposal underlying this paper is that the analysis of conspiracy theories and pseudo-scientific beliefs can benefit from the contribution of the history of ideas, which traditionally focuses on the reconstruction of the genealogy and the metamorphosis of unit-ideas over time and through different cultural levels. In this way, it is possible to shed light on the background and the peculiar rationality behind these pseudo-theories. The paper highlights New Age appropriation mechanisms of the theories of physicist David Bohm and neuropsychiatrist Karl Pribram (holographic principle), in particular through the pseudoscientific works of the McKenna Brothers (The Invisibile Landscape, 1975) and Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe, 1991) as well as the impact of some sci-fi works based on the simulation argument, especially Philip K. Dick’s novels and The Matrix movie (1999), in exposing the paranoid and conspiracy implications of this argument. The paper also highlights the role of pseudo-scientific concepts as a characteristic aspect of contemporary superconspiracies, which in the age of rationalization and disenchantment seek to embrace a patina of science in order to be better accepted by the public. Wider application of this perspective to other cases of pseudo-scientific beliefs and contemporary conspiracy theories (e.g. flat Earth or chemtrails) could provide useful suggestions on the most effective way of counteracting them.","PeriodicalId":53347,"journal":{"name":"Messages Sages and Ages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84412424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Capitalists, Spies and Aliens: Conspiracy Theories in Bulgaria 资本家、间谍和外星人:保加利亚的阴谋论

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-11-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0005

T. Hristov

引用次数: 1

Conspiring Against the Gullible: Notes on Gulliver’s Travels as Universal Satire in the Guise of Paranoid Discourse 阴谋对付易受骗的人:《格列佛游记》在偏执话语的伪装下作为普遍讽刺的注解

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-11-01 DOI: 10.1515/MSAS-2017-0008

D. Popescu

引用次数: 0

From Literary Culture to Post-Communist Media: Romanian Conspiracism 从文学文化到后共产主义媒体:罗马尼亚阴谋论

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-11-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0007

Onoriu Colăcel, Corneliu Pintilescu

引用次数: 0

Transylvanian Saxon Charms as Part of Old Germanic Folklore 古老日耳曼民间传说中的特兰西瓦尼亚撒克逊魅力

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-08-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0003

Andrea Bargan

引用次数: 0

A Study of the Third Space, Hybridity, and Colonial Mimicry in Athol Fugard’s My Children! My Africa! 阿索尔·富加德《我的孩子们!》中的第三空间、杂交性与殖民模仿研究我的非洲!

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-08-01 DOI: 10.1515/MSAS-2017-0002

Ghasemi Parvin, Sasani Samira, Nemati Fatereh

引用次数: 3

Speech Acts in Post-Apocalyptic Games: The Last of Us (2014) 《末日游戏:最后生存者》(2014)中的语言行为

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-08-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0004

Onoriu Colăcel

{"title":"Speech Acts in Post-Apocalyptic Games: The Last of Us (2014)","authors":"Onoriu Colăcel","doi":"10.1515/msas-2017-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/msas-2017-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Among everything else post-apocalyptic video games have come to stand for, notions of in-group versus out-group communication are paramount. The Last of Us (2014, Naughty Dog/Sony Computer Entertainment) is a case in point. I look into the game’s use of subtitles and didactic texts in order to find out to the extent speech acts shape the player’s understanding of what the video game is. As an understudied aspect of video games, HUD or menu elements, as well as characters’ exchanges and voice-over narration, disclose what it is like to be alive, dead or in-between. Essentially, they show the tensions between the avatar and the gamer: the hero makes all of the decisions by himself and the player has to abide or stop playing all together. The avatar’s identity comes alive through speech acts, while the player is left outside decision-making processes. Survival horror gaming, with a religious twist, gives insight into the in-game discussion on the representation of the zombie rather than on the zombie experience as such. On screen, the interplay between speech acts and written language amounts to a procedural language, which suggests that variability in language creates an environment conducive to learning. Particularly, language use is all about group values and communication styles that should help gamers tell apart friends from enemies, good from evil and, finally, people from zombies.","PeriodicalId":53347,"journal":{"name":"Messages Sages and Ages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78376547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

(Peri)Textuality and a Skyscraper of Footnotes: Alphonse Daudet’s La Doulou as Translated by Julian Barnes 脚注:阿方斯·多代的《杜卢》朱利安·巴恩斯译

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-01-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0009

Daniela Hăisan

引用次数: 0

Gerhard Richter’s Critical Artistic Strategies: Politics, Terrorism and War 格哈德·里希特的批判艺术策略:政治、恐怖主义与战争

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2017-01-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2017-0001

Randall K. Van Schepen

{"title":"Gerhard Richter’s Critical Artistic Strategies: Politics, Terrorism and War","authors":"Randall K. Van Schepen","doi":"10.1515/msas-2017-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/msas-2017-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The present paper analyzes two artistic strategies employed by Gerhard Richter to deal with painful recent cultural memory. Two works in particular reveal the relative success of Richter’s varied artistic strategies addressing contemporary political events: 18. Oktober 1977 (1988) and War Cut (2004). In his series of paintings on the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, Richter effectively employs his “photopainting” style to address the profoundly disturbing deaths of the Baader-Meinhof group in the 1970s. Richter chose mundane photographic sources for his imagery, denying a hierarchy of “correct” memories of the events and turning photographic indexicality against itself by employing a painterly medium, tinged with nostalgia, to represent it. Richter’s photopaintings of Baader-Meinhof thus use the “factual” nature of the photograph while also utilizing an elegiac painterly mist through which an indistinct emotional memory of the past seems to emerge. Richter’s blurring of images can thus be understood as a fulcrum on which the undecidability of history itself must be represented. Richter constructs War Cut (2004), on the other hand, as a work and aesthetic experience decidedly at odds with the iconicity of his Baader-Meinhof images by employing arbitrariness and conceptual abstraction.","PeriodicalId":53347,"journal":{"name":"Messages Sages and Ages","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67046190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Language of Romanian Politics: Reifying the Other 罗马尼亚政治语言:具象化他者

Messages Sages and Ages Pub Date : 2016-11-01 DOI: 10.1515/msas-2016-0016

Petru Ioan Marian

引用次数: 0