Socrates sought to convince his debaters to turn from the superficiality of a worldview based on the acceptance of convention to the examined life of philosophy,[3] founded (as Plato at least considered) upon the underlying Ideas.
[9] Jameson contrast these models sharply with the lack of depth, the ahistoricity, the surface-focus and flatness of the postmodern consciousness, with its new cult of the image and the simulacrum.
[10] In the last third of the 20th century, Lyotard began challenging the Platonic view of a true meaning hidden behind surface as a theatrical world-view, insisting instead that sense manifestations had their own reality which necessarily impacted upon the purely verbal order of intelligibility.
They see postmodern superficiality as a by-product of the false consciousness of global capitalism, where surface distractions, news, and entertainment supersaturate the zapping mind in such a way as to foreclose the possibility of envisioning any critical alternative.
Thus for example Jungians would highlight at the start of therapy what they call the persona-restoring phase as an effort to preserve superficiality, but would later optimally see the client moving from the surface to deeper emotion and creativity.
[29] In the ordinary course of life, we necessarily take others at face-value,[30] and use ideal types/stereotypes to guide our daily activities; while institutions too can rely on the superficial consensus of groupthink[31] to preclude deeper investigation.