Reality In The Digital Age

What I am about to say may sound obvious, yet it is worth pausing over: we do not live inside "the world" as it is, but rather inside the image we construct of it. What we call reality is nothing more than an ongoing composition of information, impressions, images, and experiences that we select—consciously or unconsciously—and weave into a relatively coherent narrative to which we give the name "truth or reality"

When we wake up in the morning and open our phones or turn on the television, we do not encounter the world in its entirety, but fragments of it: news of a war, an economic collapse, a success story, a scandal, an advertisement, a political speech, a short clip on social media. These small fragments do not pass through us neutrally; they leave traces and reshape our feeling about life itself. A single news story can make the world appear dark and hostile, while another image may produce the exact opposite impression. In this way, our relationship to reality is formed through selective accumulation rather than comprehensive perception.

“The reliving through language of that which is known but not yet thought (what I term the unthought known), is the subject of this book.”— Christopher Bollas (1)

Perhaps this principle has not fundamentally changed throughout history, but what has changed radically is the volume and speed of the flow. In the past, human communities built their vision of the world through direct experience, collective memory, oral stories, and a few symbolic authorities within the tribe or society. Today, however, we live within a continuous stream of messages, images, and directives that reach us without interruption, to the point that it has become difficult to distinguish between what we truly want and what has gradually been implanted in us as desire, anxiety, or need.

In psychoanalysis, especially in the work of Jacques Lacan, reality is not understood as something immediately given, but as a construction shaped. Human beings do not simply live among facts; they live within language, images, and narratives that organize their relationship to themselves and to others. For this reason, "truth/reality" is not always what appears objective and fixed; very often it takes the form of a story, a representation, or a fiction that grants experience its meaning.

This is precisely what political and advertising discourses understood very early on. Influence does not occur merely by presenting a product or an idea, but by shaping the world in which that product or idea appears necessary. Before a solution is sold, the problem itself is redrawn. Before a political discourse convinces us of a certain position, it reorganizes our fears, desires, and perceptions in such a way that this position begins to appear "natural," "moral," or "necessary."

Propaganda today no longer functions in the crude and direct manner it once did. We no longer easily believe explicit slogans, and therefore messages have become subtler and more deeply embedded in the details of everyday life. Algorithms, targeted advertising, and the content we consume constantly do not simply impose ready-made ideas upon us; rather, they reshape the psychological atmosphere from which our ideas themselves emerge.

Perhaps what is most troubling is that we no longer even notice this process. Human beings usually pay attention to what feels foreign or intrusive, but whatever surrounds us continuously eventually becomes part of the natural scenery. Just as a person stops noticing the smell of their own home until they leave it for a long period, we have become barely aware of the countless messages that infiltrate our consciousness every day, reshaping our sensitivities and our perceptions of ourselves and the world.

"There is no such thing as an individual, no such thing as a subject, apart from the intersubjectivity in which he or she participates." — Thomas H. Ogden (2)

For this reason, it seems to me that the issue today is not simply one of possessing an "opinion" or a "position," since almost everyone already possesses ready-made opinions. The real difficulty of the reality in the digital age, lies in the ability to think outside prearranged pathways and to preserve a critical distance that allows one to ask: Where did this idea come from? Why does this fear seem self-evident? Why do certain desires feel entirely my own when, in part, they are echoes of discourses constantly surrounding me?

Perhaps it is impossible to escape entirely from this world saturated with images and discourses. Yet one can at least resist becoming a passive recipient. And perhaps the first step is to doubt what appears too obvious, and to remain capable of listening to divergent and conflicting voices rather than surrendering oneself to a single complete and reassuring narrative.

Reference:

(1) Bollas, C. (1987). The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. Columbia University Press, pp. 3–4.

(2) Ogden, T. H. (1994). Subjects of Analysis. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, p. 13.