“Politics is downstream from culture.”—Andrew Breitbart
I want to challenge your mind for a moment. Imagine if you were imprisoned in a cave for much of your adult life without the ability to view anything outside of that cave let alone many of the details of what exists within the cave itself.
In this cave you are chained and cannot venture outside the cave. Each morning you wake up to view several shadows moving and acting out different types of daily activities on the wall in front of you. Day after day when you awaken you look to this cave wall and wait until you see certain silhouettes of people and objects moving along and acting out, perhaps what you would interpret to be the meaning of your very existence.
Now understand that in this scenario you have no idea of what’s going on outside of the cave, as well as many characteristics that exist inside the cave. For instance, you’re unaware that behind you there’s a fire burning to provide the light for the shadows. Likewise there’s other people between the fire and you moving and carrying puppets in order to project the shadows onto the wall in front of you to shape your reality.
Now let’s assume that you aren’t the only prisoner inside the cave viewing the shadows, but that you are the only one who finally catches a glimpse of the fire that’s behind you. In your new discovery you realize that the shadows are fake and you even manage to break free from your chains.
After you break free you are able to venture to the outside of the cave to see that there’s a real world so much bigger and detailed than the one you’ve become accustomed to inside of that cave you’ve lived in most of your life. Out of total excitement of your new discovery you run back inside the cave to tell the other prisoners of your discovery, but in your attempt to do so you go blind because your eyes aren’t accustomed to the sunlight of the outside world.
Because the other prisoners see your blindness they now fear they will also be punished with blindness, or much worse for venturing outside which in turn reinforces them to stay right where they are inside the cave.
That very insightful and hypothetical scenario I just painted for you was not something I came up with on my own. No, that was a scenario from the great philosopher Plato’s Allegory of The Cave.
This is a very powerful illustration as it paints a picture of people living in a rigged system where their perceptions are shaped by others in order to keep them subdued and imprisoned inside a false reality.
Looking at Plato’s Allegory of The Cave it’s easy to see how such a false reality can be applied to the real world particularly in our current modern day environment. After all, in modern society the fire in the cave is directly substituted with the advent of cutting edge lighting for the cameras of news organizations and TV you watch daily.
Additionally the actors and so-called journalists take the place of the puppet masters inside the cave. Modern cameras are used to project images onto your cell phone and TV rather than shadows on a cave wall, and the cave itself can easily be replaced by the government that keeps all of its people confined to a rigged and controlled environment.
The brilliance of Plato’s Allegory of The Cave has been used many times in pop culture to expand on storylines regarding the illusions and authoritarianism that has haunted human existence since the dawn of mankind.
A great example of this in modern culture can be seen in the epic film The Matrix. As you’re probably already very familiar The Matrix involves a complex computer program that plugs into the minds of humans. Inside The Matrix all people experience for all intents and purposes what seems to be normal day to day life.
However the main character of The Matrix named Neo is offered a choice prior to him stepping into his role of the hero. As the ten cent version of the story goes Neo is approached by a friend and mentor named Morpheus inside The Matrix at a point when Neo is experiencing some terrifying events in his life, or as his life would be recognized inside the false reality known as the Matrix.
Morpheus offers Neo a choice between taking a blue pill or a red pill. Neo is told the blue pill will keep him moving along in the daily rat race of existence as he currently understands it, whereas the red pill will free his mind from the confines of life as he knows it.
Of course Neo takes the red pill and what we come to realize is that Neo wakes up inside an alien looking pod where all of these lines and cords suddenly unplug from his physical body. After he’s rescued from this horrible reality by Morpheus, Neo learns that his real physical body has been plugged into a giant computer system where a world of Artificially Intelligent (AI) beings use human bodies as a means of energy to power their technological grid.
To do this they keep humans plugged into the Matrix to occupy their minds which is essentially a dream-like state while these AI beings use the energy from human bodies like a flashlight uses a battery.
Neo taking the red pill to wake up from his false reality is the parallel to Plato’s prisoner breaking free from the cave to discover the outside world.
If I had to guess I’m pretty sure Plato’s Allegory of The Cave was a big influence on the writers coming up with the storyline for The Matrix. However, aside from understanding that what we may recognize as our social reality is really an illusion, what is the other important element that we can take away from these two stories?
The other takeaway I want to point out is the element of courage. Courage is what it took for the prisoner in Plato’s cave to venture outside once he caught a glimpse of the fire. The same can be said for Neo choosing to take the red pill which ultimately set him on a course to becoming the hero for humankind.
Even though the prisoner from Plato’s cave ended up blind after he went back inside to tell the other prisoners of his discovery he still personally experienced and delivered a truth to those prisoners that they had never encountered. One could surmise that had they casted their fears aside from the worry of going blind that they would’ve stood a great chance at discovering a true level of freedom and reality that we know was shockingly so close to them, yet so far away at the same time.
This is the current dilemma that has held back the gift of freedom with our current modern day society. This dilemma is what is known as the prisoner’s dilemma.
You see a prisoner’s dilemma is basically what it sounds like.
Looking at a good example of this, imagine a scenario where we have two partners who happen to be suspects accused of robbing a bank. For the sake of this discussion we’ll name the suspects Chuck and Barry.
This scenario and others in a typical prisoner’s dilemma is a situation described in Game Theory which is an examination of economics that studies how key decisions are made during conflict and uncertainty.
When looking at a typical prisoner’s dilemma two parties under threat have the ability to protect themselves at the expense of the other party, or individual involved in the dilemma.
For instance, let’s say Chuck and Barry have been hauled in by authorities to be questioned about their alleged crime of bank robbery.
In this situation let’s assume the cops have evidence on both men, but both must be questioned separately by the detectives in order to get a confirmed conviction since the evidence isn’t as strong. Because of this both Chuck and Barry are pressured by the police to spill the beans on each other.
Now in this dilemma the cop tells Chuck that if he confesses about Barry being responsible for the robbery that he is free to go, but when the cop questions Barry he tells Barry the same thing.
However, both men are unaware that if they both testify against each other they will both get 10 years in prison. Additionally if only one of the men testifies against the other the one that doesn’t testify will get 20 years in prison, but if BOTH men can be courageous and stick to their silence both will only get one year in prison.
In this case both the strategic and courageous choice results in the best outcome.
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”--Winston Churchill
The Wrap Up
You see in this last example the best outcome, even during a challenging moment of uncertainty and threat, is achieved by the human quality of courage. Understanding this both you and I can see that the lack of this with Plato’s prisoners in the cave kept them frozen in place.
The thing I want to communicate to you here is the power of you stepping into your courage and understanding that your perceived reality is being shaped by those in the media, Hollywood, and government.
As a result your compliance and relenting to the wishes of those actors to participate in certain behaviors that chip away at your rights as defined in the constitution only means you’re choosing to stay inside the cave, OR that you’re choosing to swallow the blue pill.
Now that you understand your dilemma you can choose smartly, but if you don’t at least now you understand the cost of that decision just as we understand the cost of it with Plato’s prisoners.
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