Hyperreality

How Our Tools Came To Control Us

By: Frank Mulder

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eText | 10 August 2021

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What is the similarity between battery chicken, iris scans, Facebook friends, and porn videos? They are all features of a technical system built to satisfy our desires and to suppress our fears. It is a so-called hyperreality, an improved version of natural reality, promising wealth, security, and belonging. However, behind the shiny appearance we can detect a few dangerous mechanisms. Increasingly our tools are controlling us, instead of the other way around, and we are steadily rebuilding the world into a machine with laws we are unable to change. What are the risks of this machine? How can we discern the illusions of hyperreality? With insights derived from Rene Girard and Jacques Ellul, among others, this book calls for a joyful spiritual life, in the midst of stubborn reality.