The Reality Overload: The Modern World's Assault on the Imaginal Realm

By Annie Le Brun

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594772444
• ISBN13: 9781594772443
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Inner Traditions International
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A pick for both new age and philosophy collections

The basic problems of the modern world result from reality overload, an invasive homogenization of modern life that elevates consumption goals and conformity and creates a situation of too much information. The author links many modern ills to this information overload fact, discussing relationships between ecology, human actions, and the abandonment of the magical realm and dreams in her THE REALITY OVERLOAD: THE MODERN WORLD'S ASSAULT ON THE IMAGINAL REALM, a pick for both new age and philosophy collections.

'Signaling thru the Flames'...Somewhere on a Stake just Right of Center

[If there is one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames. Antonin Artaud, 1938] This is an astonishing book, one of the best crafted books I've read. It's construction reminds me of Night Wood (1936) by Djuna Barnes--totally different themes, of course, but not a word extraneous, not a phrase wasted. The theme of REALITY OVERLOAD: the modern world's assault on the imaginative realm, and the usurpation of the meaning inherent in language. A parallel source of this contagion are the destructive, consensual forces embodied by a relentlessly positivist "Information Age." In other words, Society brainwashing itself. [The word "imagination" can be seen to mean "magic image." Certainly the Archons of the present age are doing everything possible to strip the world of magic--imagination--along with Grace, Beauty & Truth.] The complexity of REALITY OVERLOAD makes Jon E. Graham's (BOOKS ON FIRE) translation that much more impressive. His translation is so seamless that the reader would swear that the book had originally been penned in English--by an extraordinary gifted poet & author. It's tempting to envision an almost metaphysical, Hermetic element in Brun's philosophy. The Hermetic formula goes like this: From the inner doth the outward flow, As above, So below. Applied to REALITY OVERLOAD, one could say that the social forces that are destroying the imaginative realm are coming from within us, and simultaneously the value of our inner selves is being destroyed by an increasingly poisonous social structure--in a self-perpetuating cycle of spiritual (or at least mental) impoverishment. Regarding the technological concept of "virtual reality": "...If everything...is supposedly going to become real, then semblance already is reality in gestation. Or, at least, this is what we hear from experts who avoid the mistake of explaining that as a result, we are being told to evolve less in 'virtual reality' and more in 'real virtuality.'" Page 8 Crime & violent sexuality are the rage on American TV--that along with Psychics, UFO's & Ghosts. This is considered acceptable because violent programs are tagged with "reality" & "forensics." etc. The TV audience is fed a feast of violence overwhelming aimed against women, and on a tediously shallow & homicidal menu. The excuse to support goes like this: It SELLS. Little room for philosophy, and none for anything at all socially challenging or meaningful. Negative social critique is a tremendous NO-NO: It DOESN'T sell. It is the Age of the Mediocrity & let no disturb its well-fed slumber. As the title of this review indicates, Le Brun's philosophy is decidedly right of center because her remarks concerning socialism in general are ferociously negative. However, on Page 17 we find: "...fascism does not mean preventing someone from speaking. It means coercing someone to speak." T

critique of postmodernism with ideas about the recovery of nature

Le Brun puts forth an elaborate and elucidating perspective of what literary critics, social commentators, cultural historians, and such commonly call postmodernism without ostensibly dealing with this condition directly. Many students of postmodernism use the writings of Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio as references for a pertinent, insightful understanding of postmodernism, i. e., contemporary society. But Le Brun makes reference to these two writers credited with original, ingenious, and revealing analyses and conceptions of postmodernism just once, both on one page barely more than incidentally. And in the index, there is only one page reference for "postmodernism." Yet despite using different terminology and moving out of center stage writers and thinkers looked to for essentials of contemporary culture and putting forth a seemingly independent perspective, Le Brun is essentially seeing the same phenomena and making a similar reading of it. The rationality of inconsistency (having something to do with the knotty presence of the irrational), corporeal illiteracy (having something to do with a blocking out of the natural world), concrete dematerialization, reciprocal neutralization, and lateral critique (having something to do with deferment of the subject) are terms/concepts Le Brun uses for phenomena noted and critiqued by others. Le Brun's work is not an alternate, but a supplement to the postmodern literature. Where she is different from the run of it is calling for a revived connection to the natural and to some extent marking the way back to this. She goes beyond a brilliant, masterful critique and the sense of stasis from being overwhelmed--overloaded--found with so many writers who take up postmodernism. A French Surrealist and author of a biography of de Sade, Le Brun has ideas about ridding oneself of the cognitive dissonance resulting from information overload and desiccating the imagination. A central means for this is reclaiming one's body, including genuine eroticism, as opposed, say, to infatuation with celebrity. Le Brun goes into this and more in this challenging, yet resonant and rewarding work for ones familiar with the prevailing understandings of postmodernism.