Recall that in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners are shown shadows on the wall created by firelight and diffuse sunlight. These shadows are created by those who aim to distract and deceive. After a time, the prisoners accept that the images on the wall are reality itself.
Indeed, should one of the prisoners be freed and led into the true light of day above, they would be painfully blinded by the sun and desire to immediately return to the familiarity of the cave.
It doesn’t take much to see ourselves as those prisoners, gazing intently as we do at our mobile phones, tablets and computer screens, Facebooks, Twitters and Instagrams. It doesn’t require a huge leap of imagination to envision outselves as gaping cave dwellers as we switch from FOX to CNN to MSNBC to SNL to Oprah to HBO to NETFLIX and back again.
Our reality is the reality we consume for most of our waking life. It is a manufactured reality in the age of convergence where fiction, fact, fake news, entertainment, headlines, commercials, causes, spin and ratings all blur into one great miasma of non-stop images and sounds.
For me the most important aspect of Plato’s allegory is the notion that the prisoners actually prefer the shadows on the wall to reality. It is far less painful and far more entertaining.
What then should those of us do that are willing to endure the harsh sunlight in order to better ourselves in the long run? We will have to engage the parts of our minds that have been atrophied over time and by those who prefer we not think too much.
Critical thinking. Slow thinking. Dialectical reasoning. Semiotics: understanding the difference between a Sign and The Thing Itself. Recognizing who and what is to gain when a new shadow is presented to us in the cave. Seeking elusive objectivity. Resisting the urge to seek the lowest common denominator. Embracing complexity. Living with uncertainty and doubt. Denying extremism and polarization. Exalting learning. Valuing intelligence. Knowing reason.
These once lauded attributes are becoming rarities in the 21st century as more and more of our reality becomes digitized, pixelated, commercialized and profitized. I can attest to being a first hand witness to the extinction of whole mind thinking. For 12 years I taught in higher education as a tenured professor who always endeavored to inform every subject I presented to students with a caveat: develop the tools so that you can make up your own mind. In order to do that, develop a mind first. Learn how to think critically. Most of my students simply wanted to know what was on the test and how the material being presented would help them since employers never listed having a whole mind as a job requirement.
Thankfully, a small percentage of my students came to believe that thinking critically was important. Perhaps one day they will come and lead us out of the cave and into the sunlight. If it hurts too much and we need to crawl back inside, we can always return to our virtual reality and lose ourselves by spending too much time writing and reading articles online.
Comments