“Behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all across the den; they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and neck chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them; for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning round their heads. At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, and between the fire in the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have before them, over which they show the puppets.
I see, he said.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying vessels, which appear over the wall; also figures of men and animals, made of wood and stone and various materials; as of the prisoners, as you would expect, are talking, and some of them are silent?
This is a strange image, he said, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the buyer throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said: how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would see only the shadows?
Yes he said.
And if they were able to talk with one another, with enough suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?”
The Republic of Plato, Book Seven
The above is known as the Allegory of the Cave, from Plato’s Republic. Like many, I have struggled with it, but it seems to indicate that even in Plato’s time (428-347 BCE) people were subject to thought control. The key to me is that their heads cannot move so that they can only see what is directly in front of them. Were they able to look sideways, they would see a cave opening and a source of light they are unaware of, since all light is provided by the fire behind them.
This is bold and I offer apologies to all teachers everywhere at all levels. It seems to me that if Plato were alive in the postwar era of the 20th century, the heads would be chained in place by modern propaganda aided by radio, TV and movies. In our current time, isn’t it odd that as we walk about we see people with their heads locked on their phones, unaware of what is going on around them.
I invite your thoughts on this matter, as mine are just offered in passing. I opened up Walter Lippman’s Public Opinion to transcribe a few passages, and it opens with the above.
Piece of Mindful 
Read Exit The Cave by Howdie Micoskie
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Micoskie is an interesting character, but I wandered away from him after brief exposure. Should I be reading a guy who calls himself “Howdie”? Not fair, I know. I put his book in my cart at Amazon, and will decide when next I purchase anything else.
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He is not just about some propaganda on the mundane level, this is about the human condition, reincarnation, the big questions. There are hundreds of hours of content with Howdie, and the books are only a lazy search away, for free. Everyone who is asking the questions will encounter him, we even got German translations. His lectures fit into the narrative of the “soul trap”, a perception of the human condition pushed on the masses for decades, including the concept of a matrix. Most famous is probably the movie from 1999. There are two approaches, leaving some matrix, soul trap, cave, getting to heaven, and the kingdom within, not leaving, but creating. The state of the world as an infection.On topic, I’d recommend the movie “A clockwork orange”, the scene in the cinema maybe is the best depiction of the cave/human condition to be found. Ofc all is symbolic. Being shackled, unable to look away, refers to the hypnotic state man is in.
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I did send for one of his books. I’ll give him a go.
I wonder if it’s better to be in a hypnotic state. I draw no pleasure in seeing a different view of the world from others, since I cannot communicate it with any but a very few here. I have a need to belong that’s never been met. In the early days I would draw close to various people, but never connect, not on the level they do, in religion or hunting and fishing or drinking. I’ve always been surrounded by books that no one else would touch. Down here in Colorado we spent a long time looking for a house to live in, and I always snooped around looking to see what people read. Usually not much, often enough nothing.
I ran for office, state legislature in Montana in 1996, and my only joy in it was going door-to-door evenings and weekends, meeting people, but it was discouraging too. There wasn’t much going on with them, usually a TV in the background that controlled their thoughts. I got my ass kicked but learned a lot about the human condition, and the cave stuff, which I did not understand at the time, applied. TV was a state of hypnosis. Still is, or just look at the photo I place above of the girl walking down the street oblivious to all but her phone. It’s no wonder that when Covid came around, we were ready for it, already in a trance and ready to buy in.
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Yeah, what would have been the equivalent in Plato’s time (or whenever the books were written).. hardly anyone had access to media to speak of. So family, plus mostly local leaders in the community. Festivals, theater, architecture, daily artifacts, language itself, gossip.. pretty innocent stuff by comparison to today’s centralized, unified, lockstep media messaging. What would Plato have preferred? No culture whatsoever? Every child raised from the cradle as a philosopher, no illusions, no myth, no comforting beliefs or cultural shibboleths.. It seems almost more relevant to our time, than to his.
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“A person today is exposed to as much information in a single day than someone in the 15th century would be in their entire lifetime”
As a teacher (of automotive technology) I used to use the above quote, of which I do not know the source, to demonstrate the huge task we as humans of the 21st century have in coping with information overload.
Much of the information we absorb is completely useless to us but interesting in a way we accept entertainment today.
However, with the dumbing down of the education system combined with this ever increasing fascination for social media, it seems to me to be perhaps an intentional programme introduced for the purpose of ensuring that people’s brains are so clogged up with this information overload that they are unable to actually disseminate data to make decisions. Therefore, they must rely totally on other authorities to guide their lives.
Just another means of total control!
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I engage with it to a large degree as entertainment.. distraction and diversion, novelty. Secondly, in hopes of managing some media deconstruction and analysis. For while the information itself may be unreliable, irrelevant, false, “chicken feed,” etc, it has some real intent in terms of the desired effect on public opinion. And I do think “they” care about public opinion. Sure they can have puppet politicians enact laws against public opinion in many cases, but social reality and what people believe, is often as powerful or more powerful than whatever laws are enacted. For those unpopular laws to take full effect, they have to inform the public of them, and at least get compliance, if not (as they’d prefer) full support. Hence the long game of guiding and shaping public opinion.
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They do monitor public opinion closely, but not in the sense that they care what people think. That’s something to be managed,but never heeded. Most often what I see is divide and conquer, NPR vs Fox, each group feeling it is morally and intellectually superior to the other, when they are just living in front of a mirror.
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Maybe we have some semantic confusion on this point.. I’m not saying they’re desperately fearful of not heeding public opinion or anything, but if you manage it with such elaborate machinations and extremely long term planning, and it involves profoundly different worldviews being implanted or shifted (religion vs faith in scientism etc), you obviously care about it.
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Ancient priests in Babylon built their temples oriented in such a way that the sunlight, upon rising in the east, would filter through a large aperture in the eastern wall of those temples; the beam of light would shine like a spotlight on the golden sequins of their priestly garments, and the glittering and glistering of the gilded ornaments would bedazzle the eyes of the faithful attendees, suggesting and further emphasizing the divine inspiration and origin of the priestly office. The ancient Babylonia priesthood predates Plato’s writings by five millennia, however its traditions and practices spread throughout the ancient world, preserved in Egypt, Judea, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and then throughout Christendom for an additional two millennia. And what is at the root of all this golden splendor, and the worshipful element of gold? The sun cult, the sun worshipers, the glorious Amun-Ra, the great giver of life, the source of all life on this planet. As ignorant as those ancient Babylonians were, they understood a grand fundamental truth that eludes 99.9 percent of all the people on the earth today. For all our wizardry in technology, I dare you ask even the most brilliant MIT student the simple question: What is the source of life on this planet? After some careful and well thought-out consideration, you might receive a detailed analysis set forth in a standard and well crafted argument. However, the simple answer will not be reached. The sun. Ultimately, this planet has been ruled by a cult of solar worshipers from time immemorial. Their God, their great deity in the sky is, well, just that. They still rule us today, and you will find their gilded symbols everywhere, if you look close enough. In fact, tune into CBS Sunday Morning today if you think me a garrulous old fool. And ultimately, I believe, that is solution to the parable of the cave. The ignis fatuus throughout all the ages is not a fire in the cave, but the fire in the sky. And all living things find their source inextricably chained to its glorious, golden, life-giving light. Then you must follow its annual course amongst its twelve noble disciples in the heavens. The answer to the parable of the cave is to find the source of the shadows on the wall. And there is no shadow without light. The great trick the ruling class has achieved throughout ancient and modern history has been gulling the masses into believing in their ancient deity the Sun. They are in fact custodians of that golden star, that golden chariot. Their currency has been, and will forever be, gold. The paten and ciborium sit in golden splendor in the gloomy navel of even the most magnificent cathedrals in Europe. The ancient priesthood has never, in 20,000 or so years, relinquished its grip on the masses. It has used golden rituals in myriad forms and iterations to gull the ignorant into belief and subservience. To offer tithes and taxes. Once the office of the priesthood, now the office of statehood. All the symbols lead to a single source. Even that old square and compass are rooted in its symbolism. Oh, and as for those pesky little Phoenicians, that old Phoenix is the ancient bird of the rising and setting sun. But you’ll only hear that from me.
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Very well-thought-out reply, much more than I expected or hoped for. Thank you. Just because I cannot help myself in the face of irony, I note that the IPCC claims that the sun has no meaningful impact on our climate.
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