Full excerpts:

images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous movement of non-life

philosophy is at once the power of alienated thought and the thought of alienated power, and as such it has never been able to emancipate itself from theology. The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. Not that its techniques have dispelled those religious mists in which human beings once located their own powers, the very powers that have been wrenched from them - but those cloud-enshrouded entities have now been brought down to earth. It is thus the most earthbound aspects of life that have become the most impenetrable and rarefied. The absolute denial of life, in the shape of a fallacious paradise, is no longer projected onto the heavens, but finds its place instead within material life itself. The spectacle is hence a technological version of the exiling of human powers in a 'world beyond' - and the perfection of separation within human beings

What does he mean when he talks about things like "the autonomous movement of non-life" and the "absolute denial of life in paragraphs 2 and 20 respectively?

I could really use an explanation of the second passage entirely, i feel like im not fully grasping it

  • Vampire [any]M
    hexbear
    2
    2 months ago

    "the autonomous movement of non-life" means that ideas have a life of their own, they are not under control of people

    "The absolute denial of life, in the shape of a fallacious paradise, is no longer projected onto the heavens, but finds its place instead within material life itself" – living in a fantasy world rather than the real world. Advertising is a perfect example: the fantasy-world you see in ads. Computer games also are a good example.