Baudrillard, part 1

When reading this book, I feel like wandering between the real and the virtual. I think people usually do not think too much of the differences between dissimulation and simulation, and of course, one of the reasons is they think they could use them properly in their daily life. But actually, they have obvious difference which according to Baudrillard “leaves the principle of reality intact (p.3), ” and which “threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘fause’ (p.3).” I like his definition of simulation, “to feign to have what one doesn’t have (p.3)”. In light of this definition, the object that is simulated is something that one doesn’t have, and the simulated image of the object is also something unreal, then what one does have? In a society that is constructed by more and more simulated symbols, the objects in real sense are left fewer and fewer for the society. The whole world, as Baudrillard pointed out, has been simulated, including history (historical events he mentioned, like strikes, crisis, demonstration), politics (Watergate), culture (mass media) and economy (Disneyland). “Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible (p.19)”.
One of the direct results of this ambiguity is the confusion of morality. An organized fake holdup or hijacking, how to punish such simulation of virtue? They “renders submission and transgression equivalen, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based (p.20)”. In the end, “it was capital that first fed on the destructration of every referential, of every human objective, that shattered every ideal distinction between true and false, good and evil, in order to establish a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of its power (p.22)”. The ambiguity also leads to the confusion of the “real” process of work and the “objective” process of exploitation. The whole world is still producing, but the spark of production and the violence of its stakes no longer exist (p.26). Simulation of virutality covers the previous naked production relationship, and replaced it with images of “social needs and demands”, and occupation in the work place.
Then what kind of a world it is? If there is no “real” as reference object, how to tell “virtual”? Why we use symbols created by ourselves to confuse our own world? Is simulation a praise or a disappointment to modern technology? Baudrillard reviewed the history of simulation from renaissance to industry revolution, from industry production to market production, from market-oriented modernity to symbol-oriented deconstruction. Reality during these phases has been gradually broken up, until the end, leaving the whole simulated images to uphold the mind and body of the society. Then what is the future of it? Where the society would head for? Utopia in fictions?