Guy Debord: The Society of the Spectacle

The origin of the spectacle lies in the world’s loss of unity, and its massive expansion in the modern period demonstrates how total this loss has been: the abstract nature of all individual work, as of production in general, finds prefect expression in the spectacle, whose very manner of being concrete is, precisely, abstraction.

The spectacle divides the world into two parts, one of which is held up as a self-representation to the world, and is superior to the world. The spectacle is simply the common language that bridges this division. Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very center that maintains their isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but unites it only in its separateness.

In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.