We no longer live in a world of things – we live in a world of signs.
Baudrillard, with his concept of Simulacra, describes how the relationship between original and representation has collapsed. Once there was a thing, and beside it an image of that thing. Today there are only images, signs, and symbols that mirror and amplify each other. The supposed “original” disappears – it is no longer within reach.
So when we say: We live in the copy of the copy, it means that we no longer encounter reality directly, but only through the representations presented to us. Advertising, social media, politics, even medicine: they sell us images that we mistake for reality.
And this is what often makes life feel unreal. When the original can no longer be grasped, existence itself begins to feel dreamlike – smooth, perfect, but not truly tangible. But then what happens to us?