Perception is reality or, so the adage would have us believe; I for one am inclined to agree.  “Reality,” or “conscious experience,” is an often fluid position from which our conscious mind reassembles experiences into contextually relevant narratives that are not of the real world itself but of an internal representation of what we believe the world to be.  This is what French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard called the simulacura.  Simply put, Baudrillard argues that contemporary Western societies have replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality.  Put another way, our reality is constructed by the symbols of our culture and media—symbols or the simulacra, have become the means by which our lives and collective existence is made not only cohesive but concrete and authentic.  Baudrillard also explains that as the life of the individual has become saturated with the constructs or simulacra of society their conscious experience is rendered meaningless or, perhaps more accurately, “inauthentic.”

 
Languages or symbols, the means by which we learn, and ideology, that which is learned, are inextricably linked; this means—if Baudrillard’s treatise holds any water—that we are only able to know what we as individuals are able to decipher from the dizzying cacophony of simulacra presented by the hegemonic faction(s) of economically and/or politically powerful groups.  For example, if you live in a region or state of the United States where abstinence only sexual health is taught you “know” that pre-marital sex is “wrong;” whereas, if you live in a region or state where safer sex is taught in sexual health, you “know” that most sexual acts between two consenting people is “normal.”  I use this as an extreme example but the premise holds true when one examines textbooks and curriculum—as a teacher I often find myself asking, “whose knowledge am I ‘really’ imparting on my students.”  I’m fairly certain if it were what I consider to be “my knowledge” I’d be out of a job.

    Research, like law, is man’s attempt at bringing a little organization to an otherwise messy topic.  Law is to morality what research is to knowledge.  By applying or attempting to apply parameters to public discourse (i.e., law, academia) society gives legitimacy to what would otherwise be an unruly brawl—think what passions arise when abortion is discussed in public in the United States; the American judicial system and its simulacra provide a venue in which an authentic and therefore meaningful discourse can be had and the results, contested or not, are generally binding on the whole of society.  Research lends itself to being the system through which the elite add validity to their opinions—I mean that, absolutely, without any cynicism.  Research and review is the venue through which data is interpreted and “truths” are agreed upon.