1. Illusion is a soft drug
2. I know, in the medieval sense
3. those clownish actors
4. a common understanding
5. Quote

Illusion is a soft drug

Illusion is a soft drug. “Being an authority”: this is such a vast question, almost to the point of futility: who can really determine who’s an authority, and on what. We all know of false scientists, crooked quacks, plagiarists, false prophets, pretend artists, clowns… This is a world of fakes, the world of the Spectacle, where trust is the ultimate illusion. We chose to trust, X or Y, but where is the evidence, the rationale, the justification for this trust? 

I know, in the medieval sense

I admit not to be an authority on anything, other than you. Now, I have said it. I am an authority on you, because I love you, and thus I know, in the medieval sense, who you are, even when you change your hair, what you wear, what you read, where you want to go. I am a refined sensor, in the technical meaning of sense, about everything yours. I (think) I know where you go, where you have been, who you have met. Ha! I know your tastes, in most things, if not everything. This is indeed a vast domain, to explore a vast question.

those clownish actors

How could I find the time to be an authority on anything bar you, my sweet love, my beautiful dream. To be an authority on anything takes a lifetime. This is why sensible people have no time for these upstarts, those clownish actors pretending to be “authorities”, politicians, scientists, experts, “leaders”. We are all aware of this: politicians who know nothing, have no understanding of history, scientists who have no science, philosophers who pontificate in a Vacuum. Vacuum is even better than “illusion”.

For we live in this vacuum, through the Spectacle, as Guy Debord famously described, and all its trivial, absurd, manifestations, media, speeches, elections, little wars, little, or big, outrages, to ad nauseam. So, this guy knows his subject, the only one he is genuinely interested in: his female partner, the real thing, not a pretence, not a little cloud, flesh and blood.

a common understanding

I am still studying, learning, exploring, for the subject is willing, the subject is loving. To be an authority, not only one has to know, in depth, the subject, but one must have a common understanding with it. It’s true in art, literature, and, of course, real science. Genuine astronomers, or cosmologists, or astronauts, have an understanding with the Creation, a dialogue, based on respect and humility. All the opposite to the false experts.

Quote

“The spectacle’s instruction and the spectators’ ignorance are wrongly seen as antagonistic factors when in fact they give birth to each other. In the same way, the computer’s binary language is an irresistible inducement to the continual and unreserved acceptance of what has been programmed according to the wishes of someone else and passes for the timeless source of a superior, impartial and total logic. Such progress, such speed, such breadth of vocabulary! Political? Social? Make your choice. You cannot have both.

My own choice is inescapable. They are jeering at us, and we know whom these programs are for. Thus it is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are still unable to read, for reading demands making judgements at every line; and is the only access to the wealth of pre-spectacular human experience. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.”
― Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle