In the beginning, a tear in denim had a direct cause. It came from physical labor, long use, or lack of resources. The rip pointed to a real condition. It was a sign connected to its origin.

Later, subcultures adopted torn jeans intentionally as a form of protest. The tear still carried meaning, but now it symbolized rebellion rather than poverty. It was no longer accidental, yet it still referred to something social and real.

Eventually, fashion brands began producing jeans with factory-made rips. At this stage, the tears no longer came from hardship or protest. They were manufactured from the start. The visual sign remained, but the original conditions were gone.

That’s the basic idea behind simulacra and simulation, introduced by Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation.

Reality → Representation → Representation replaces reality.

We begin reacting to symbols, stories, and images more than to direct experience.

Modern life is layered with media, branding, advertising, curated identities, and narratives. Over time, these representations stop merely reflecting reality. They begin shaping it. Eventually, they can replace it. When this happens, we are no longer engaging with the real directly we are engaging with simulations.

We don’t just live in the world, we begin living in interpretations of it.

This does not mean everything is fake. It means copies, stories, and images can shape our experience so strongly that we forget there was something underneath them.

A simulacrum is a copy without a clear original.
Simulation is the process by which these copies structure our experience.

This brings me back to the mind.

The mind operates through simulations (not in a technological sense), but through thoughts, interpretations, and emotional projections. An event occurs, and almost instantly the mind constructs a version of it. That version carries associations, memories, predictions, and imagined outcomes. Before long, we are no longer responding to what is present, but to the simulation built around it.

What entangles us is not the thought itself, but identification with it. Instead of resting in the space between awareness and thought, we begin obeying the narrative completely. The simulation becomes immersive. It feels real, urgent, definitive.

Over time, I’ve become more aware of the patterns my mind constructs, the associations it repeats, the meanings it assigns, the identities it reinforces. Recognition creates distance. But recognition does not make one immune. There are still moments when I slip back into interpretation and react as if it were unquestionable reality.

I don’t see simulation as purely negative. The mind must simulate. It predicts, imagines, rehearses, and constructs meaning. Without that, we could not function.

The problem begins when we lose awareness of the gap between experience and interpretation.

There is something stabilizing in noticing:
“This is my version of events, not the event itself.”

That small recognition restores flexibility. It softens the rigidity of identity and assumption. And experience feels less turbulent.