"Unreal!" It's the expression of today, used mainly by adolescents to express excitement and approval. Such expressions serve a social purpose of group identification and to outsiders, in this case, adults, they are a source of constant annoyance. To a generation steeped in a world of virtual reality, our temptation is to say "Get real!". There is a tendency to assume that, since it springs so easily to the lips of its users, it is a reflex response, bypassing any deeper levels of the brain. This may be so, but that does not mean that it teaches us nothing of significance about the culture (or subculture perhaps?) in which it finds expression. If, as Wittgenstein suggests, words gain a "life" by "performing their office", we may well ask what "office" does the term "unreal!" perform, in the context that it is used? What does the popularity of this expression signify? You don't have to be a devotee of Freud to accept notion that the human psyche functions at a number of levels, some of them below the level of consciousness. Over many centuries of philosophic debate, there constantly emerges a tendency to seek a higher level of reality within the realm of the intangible. Perhaps this is an urge somehow buried in the human psyche which has found expression in various levels of idealistic thinking over many generations of thought. The popularity of the expression "unreal!" suggests to me that idealism is alive and well even today amongst our younger generation. Meanwhile, most of us stay within the safe realms of the modern equivalent of Plato's Cave, the lounge room, watching the flickering shadows on our television sets and taking them for reality. BACK