Caligula

Since the beginning of human thought, the most important question of existence has concerned defining reality. Is it what we can touch or what we can conceive? Is it fundamentally illusory or simply the inert ensemble of things to serve our needs? The answers to this question, varying throughout history, have essentially underwritten all schools of philosophy, science, and culture, enabling a dizzying human progress. Yet while a small and select group of humans continue to adopt a questioning engagement with the real, for the world at large, the ultimate understanding of reality has been reached: the real has come to exist as the global imaginary combined with what is displayed on ubiquitous screens. Telereality is truth writ large and wide. The twenty-first-century psyche draws its content from the flat screens where the real has set up its laboratory. More than simple spectators, more than infinitely appreciating admirers, we partake of the real without knowing how to step outside its seduction to evaluate and judge what is being seen. In this very instance, the global mind is infatuated with present-day Caligula, his comings and goings, his absurdities, the panem et circenses that he doles out with self-serving generosity. Caligula does not only reside in slave-built lodging; he lives in us: we have become Caligula. The four-year emperor has proven bewitching beyond all reason: the rot, the madness, the disasters spawned by all he touches, as in a Midas of depravity. Caligula may go, but the reality he fostered stands still before us. Caligula has seeped into the core of being.