The Map That Ate the Territory

Once upon a time — long, long ago — symbols pointed to things that actually existed. We knew what reality was. Or at least, we thought we did.

We were confident that money represented value, a photograph represented a moment, a map represented a place.

The symbol came after the thing.

But this antiquated idea of reality has been changing… and changing rapidly.

The map is starting to no longer just describe a territory; it’s beginning to replace it. To become a “place” of its own. A place that exists only in our minds and in our culture. And eventually, the territory — the real, physical location — stops mattering at all.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called these replacements simulacra. Copies without originals. Symbols that don’t refer back to anything real, only to other symbols. A closed loop.

And that’s where we live now.

Our lives take place in some ether. Some imagined version of what used to be reality. In this new world, representation outperforms experience, conjured narratives outperform truth, and virtual engagement outperforms actual participation. Even the appearance of care becomes more important than caring itself. It’s all about optics. Performative emotion, curated for some social media agenda.

Take “community,” for example. We talk about it constantly. Post about it. Brand it. Optimize it. Measure it. Monetize it.

Followers. Engagement. Reach. Impressions. The mantra of modern life.

But real community is never so well packaged. It’s slow. It smells like coffee and sweat and awkward conversations. It requires presence. Time. And forgiveness — for crying out loud.

So instead, we simulate it. It’s easier. We don’t even do it because we want to. We do it because we’ve been programmed to.

We replace real honest-to-goodness relationships with superficial interactions. Real belonging with platform subscriptions. Human care with internet “friends”.

And because this simulated reality feels smoother, easier, less committed, we kid ourselves into thinking it’s somehow better. I mean, we don’t even have to wear pants anymore. Yay. If we want to break up… just close the browser window.

This is what Baudrillard called hyperreality. A world more polished than life itself. More emotionally curated. More efficient. More controllable. But controllable by whom? Can you say Truman Show… but virtual?

Reality, by comparison, feels clumsy. Unoptimized. Almost rudimentary. Like when Neo exits the Matrix and discovers how primitive real life actually is.

So we retreat into representations that feel “real enough.” Not because we’re fooled. But because we’ve been programmed not to want anything more.

And here’s the part that should bother us most. Meaning didn’t disappear because it was taken from us by force. It disappeared because we relinquished it — willingly, through carefully orchestrated enticements. When everything competes for our attention, nothing holds it for long. So those constructing this new reality have to keep raising the stakes. The dopamine hits must become stronger. Tragedy becomes content. Outrage becomes theater.

And then actual life starts to feel uncomfortable.

But, Baudrillard offered us no cure. No easy return to authenticity. Even rebellion, he argued, gets absorbed. Turned into style. Hashtags. Merchandise. The system doesn’t crush dissent. It sells it back to us.

And yet… this is where I respectfully part ways with him.

Because while systems can simulate symbols of community, they struggle to simulate something that feels as real as bodies in a room. Shared labor. Mutual reliance. Someone showing up, even when it’s inconvenient. You can brand charity. You can metricize kindness. You can gamify generosity. But you can’t fully abstract away human presence. Real presence.

Not yet, anyway.

Which is why I still believe small, local, embodied exchanges matter. Because they resist being flattened into symbols. They’re inefficient. They don’t scale well. And that’s precisely the point.

Baudrillard helps us see the trap. He shows us what happens when the map eats the territory and then asks us to live inside it. But maybe the way forward isn’t to burn the map. Maybe it’s to step out of it. To choose things that don’t optimize well. That don’t translate cleanly into monetizable metrics. That only make sense when lived. Real conversations. Shared meals. Time given without instagramable performance. Things that don’t need to be “liked” to be real.

Because if reality is going to survive at all, it won’t be platformed at scale. It’ll be local. Relational. Stubbornly unremarkable.

And that, oddly enough, gives me hope.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.