Cavemen

Do we want to know the truth? That's a serious question, one I suspect most of you will have already answered in the affirmative. I know I did. But do we really? And is there even a definitive, objective and unquestionable truth? Looking at the sharp divides present in public, political and ideological discourse, one would be forgiven for thinking that there isn't...

Are you familiar with Plato's "Allegory of the cave"? It's a thought-experiment describing a group of people living in a cave. They're chained in front of a blank wall, and on that wall they see shadows of all kinds of animals and other figures passing by. Those figures are in fact shadows, projected on the wall by someone behind them, with a burning fire behind that someone. Those shadows are all these people ever see and have ever seen; the wall and the shadows are reality as they know it. Plato uses this allegory to describe how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. A philosopher aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. I'll quote from the Wikipedia article how the allegory continues:

Plato then supposes that one prisoner is freed. This prisoner would look around and see the fire. The light would hurt his eyes and make it difficult for him to see the objects casting the shadows. If he were told that what he is seeing is real instead of the other version of reality he sees on the wall, he would not believe it. In his pain, Plato continues, the freed prisoner would turn away and run back to what he is accustomed to (that is, the shadows of the carried objects). He writes "... it would hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning away to the things which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him."
_{source: Wikipedia}

Here Plato describes how the ordinary"cave-dweller" wouldn't be able to see the truth, or accept the truth. But he then continues to describe how a cave-dweller would slowly adjust to the real world if he were forced to stay in the light, how he would gradually be able to see and accept the real world, and he then says: "Only after he can look straight at the sun 'is he able to reason about it' and what it is". If that man would return to the cave, and try to convince the ones left behind that the real world is much better, well...

Plato continues, saying that the freed prisoner would think that the world outside the cave was superior to the world he experienced in the cave and attempt to share this with the prisoners remaining in the cave attempting to bring them onto the journey he had just endured; "he would bless himself for the change, and pity [the other prisoners]" and would want to bring his fellow cave dwellers out of the cave and into the sunlight.

The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, would be blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. The prisoners, according to Plato, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Plato concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.
_{source: Wikipedia}

Isn't it strikingly beautiful how a Greek philosopher from the classical period was able to describe our modern online echo-chambers and confirmation-bias-bubbles with some men, a cave and a fire? The other thing to notice here is that it's only human to want to cling on to our own version of reality; maybe now's a good time to pause and read my post Lazy Brains from a couple of days ago where I explain how our minds often take the path of least resistance, if only to conserve energy and to make us feel safe.

There's a real-world example of a people who practice something like what happens in the allegory of the cave. They're called the Kogi, an indigenous people living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of northern Colombia, in South America. They are perhaps the only indigenous people in the world who, because of the particular nature of their surroundings, have been able to keep themselves apart and sustain their culture inviolate. They are a pure people, they only wear white and they treat everything in nature with the utmost respect. They don't wear shoes, as they say that it would make them lose contact with Mother Earth. They don't kill animals or cut down trees unless they've planted them themselves and even then they have rituals to take from nature what they need to survive. To maintain this respectful order, there are spiritual leaders, called "Mamma's", and it is in their training and upbringing where we see Plato's allegory of the cave reflected.

The future-Mamma is taken from their mothers after birth and locked up in a specially built house or, preferably, a cave. This cave has to be so dark that colors are almost undiscernable. No fire is allowed and food is restricted to white potatoes, white snails and other white and almost tasteless foods. For nine years this child is kept away from sunlight, smells, tastes, colors. During that time an adult Mamma meditates and prays to the spirits and the Mother. The Mamma also tries his best to describe, as best he can, all the things in the "real" world outside the cave. Without any sensory input the child is expected to imagine the plants, animals, birds, the sun, the moon, colors, smells, tastes... Without any reference material. The child knows nothing about reality other than the projection of it coming from the adult Mamma's mouth into his mind's eye. Much like the shadows in Plato's cave are the projections of the real objects moving between the fire and the wall.

When after nine years the Mamma in training first sets foot outside the cave into the sunlight, he is overwhelmed with the enormity and majesty of the real world. It's said that he goes on living in a permanent state of awe and deep respect for everything that lives, and that's how the Mamma is able to transfer that deep respect to the other members of the Kogi tribe, gets them to treat all life with an amount of love and care that's only seldom seen. If you're interested in learning more about this fascinating tribe, you can watch a documentary about them here; it's one hour long and comes highly recommended.

Now, both the theory of Plato's allegory and the reality of the Kogi's Mamma represent an ascension from a drab, colorless and incomplete reality to the full knowledge of the actual reality. It's a rising from the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge. Now here's where we have to mention the 1999 film The Matrix. It's one of the most influential films of our time and it describes the exact opposite. The film's protagonist is Neo, a hacker who learns about the existence of "the Matrix" and is eager to know the truth about it. He meets another hacker, named Trinity, who brings him to Morpheus. Morpheus offers Neo a choice between a red pill and a blue pill; if he chooses red, he'll learn the truth, if he chooses blue, he'll stay in the land of make-believe.

Now here's where the film goes in the opposite direction from Plato's allegory and the Mamma-education: the truth of the Matrix is much more of a descension instead of an ascension. The real world Neo's confronted with a drab, grey, dark and without sunlight. In the real world of the Matrix, there's only one city left, Zion, and the world of humans has been taken over by the Machines. Humans who are freed from the Matrix live in constant danger of being annihilated by those machines. Neo is brought to the real world because Morpheus believes he's "The One", the prophesied liberator who will free humanity and defeat the machines. But Neo's first reaction upon "awakening" is one of unbelief and rejection. "You can't handle the truth!!" Sorry, my mind wandered off to the film A Few Good Men for a moment... Anyhow, ultimately Neo's eyes, body and mind get used to and accept reality as it is.

The rejection of truth and reality is depicted in the film through the character called Cypher. He's also a redpilled (see how this film has influenced modern culture?) soldier, but he admits to Neo that he'd much rather return to the unreal world of the computer-simulation of the Matrix. And he eventually betrays the freedom fighters after having made a deal with the machines that they plug plug him back into the Matrix. While negotiating that deal he's in a restaurant, eating a steak and savoring it's taste while saying: "Ignorance is bliss!" It's probably a coincidence, but Cypher has lived, unplugged, in the real world for nine years, same as the Mamma education, wanting to move in the opposite direction, from truth to make-believe.

It's a sign of the complete weirdness of our time that the term "redpilled" has been co-opted by the online ideologues who fervently reject actual truth. The "Urban Dictionary" defines "redpilled" as "a term used by conservative internet users to favorably describe their own sociopolitical viewpoints; at its most basic level, it means to have been made aware of something obscure or forbidden." The ones who cry about being "cancelled" by the "woke left" deem themselves proud soldiers in the war against oppression from "cultural Marxists", and as brave enough to "face the truth" of the "white genocide" orchestrated by George Soros and other communist conspirators. That's so sad. But it fits right into this time, when up is down, left is right, white is black and conservatives, especially on the far right, are kept in the dark by nonsensical fabrications about evil, child-grooming homosexuals, pornography in school-libraries and stolen elections. They are Cypher. They are Plato's cavemen.

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