
Reality Overload
The Modern World's Assault on the Imaginal Realm
Annie Le Brun(Author)
Inner Traditions Bear and Company (Publisher)
Published on 27. November 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-59477-244-3 (ISBN)
Description
A powerful critique of the increasing mechanization and homogenization of modern life
• Shows how the constant force-feeding of too much information dispossesses us of our deepest connections
• Describes a link between the destruction of the environment with the assault on our individuality, creativity, and ability to think for ourselves
What underlies the many problems of the modern world--from accelerating rates of extinction and desertification to the increased alienation of the individual--is a reality overload, an increasingly invasive mechanization and homogenization of modern life that glorifies consumption and conformity. This overload has been created from the constant force-feeding of too much information, a phenomenon that dispossesses us of our deepest connections to time, our physical world, and each other.
Annie Le Brun explains that the degradation of the environment mirrors the devastation going on in our minds revealing a link between genetically modified foods and the transformation and decay of our language and communication. There is a direct relationship between the rupture of the great biological balances that govern the planet and the equally devastating rupture in our imaginal realm. The imaginal realm is the home of our dreams and the perceptions that feed our thoughts, individuality, and creativity. Without its influence we are forced to live a drab, alienated lifestyle based on consumption alone. If, as Shakespeare claims, “we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” this theft of our imagination by the reality overload threatens the very foundations of our existence.
• Shows how the constant force-feeding of too much information dispossesses us of our deepest connections
• Describes a link between the destruction of the environment with the assault on our individuality, creativity, and ability to think for ourselves
What underlies the many problems of the modern world--from accelerating rates of extinction and desertification to the increased alienation of the individual--is a reality overload, an increasingly invasive mechanization and homogenization of modern life that glorifies consumption and conformity. This overload has been created from the constant force-feeding of too much information, a phenomenon that dispossesses us of our deepest connections to time, our physical world, and each other.
Annie Le Brun explains that the degradation of the environment mirrors the devastation going on in our minds revealing a link between genetically modified foods and the transformation and decay of our language and communication. There is a direct relationship between the rupture of the great biological balances that govern the planet and the equally devastating rupture in our imaginal realm. The imaginal realm is the home of our dreams and the perceptions that feed our thoughts, individuality, and creativity. Without its influence we are forced to live a drab, alienated lifestyle based on consumption alone. If, as Shakespeare claims, “we are such stuff as dreams are made on,” this theft of our imagination by the reality overload threatens the very foundations of our existence.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Rochester, VT
United States
Dimensions
Height: 221 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-59477-244-3 (9781594772443)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Annie Le Brun (1942–2024), a member of the French surrealist group during its later years, was a poet and essayist who wrote books on subjects as varied as the work of Raymond Roussell and the war in the former Yugoslavia. Her groundbreaking work on the Marquis de Sade has been translated into English as Sade: A Sudden Abyss. She lived in Paris.
Content
Translator’s Foreword
Annie Le Brun, Ecologist of the Imaginal Realm
Preface
Part One
1 The Network Prison
2 The Devaluation of Dream
3 Light Pollution
4 The Sterile Horizon
5 Reconditioning Culture
6 A Widespread Twisting Around
7 The Word as False Witness
8 A Language of Synthesis
9 Where Is the Metaphor?
Part Two
10 Poetic Outrageousness
11 A New Order of Promiscuity
12 The Rejection of the Negative
13 Virtual Positivities and Negativities
14 The Rationality of Inconsistency
15 Relative Absolutes
16 Subtractive Aesthetic
17 Sensorial Climate Control
18 Religiosity Running Wild
Part Three
19 Unisex Eroticism
20 S/M, or Sexual Role-Playing
21 Corporeal Illiteracy and Genetically Modified Learning
22 Educated Vandalism and Bodybuilding
23 Concrete Dematerialization
24 The Virtual or Duplicated World
25 Cultural and Biological Sterilization
Appendix
The Theory Overload
Notes
Index