Discovering Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in Cyber-world
where Freedom of Public Education Can't Be Denied
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid
of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato
An allegory is a story with characters and
events that reveal a hidden meaning or a moral message differing between right
and wrong. Plato’s allegory of the cave from ancient Greek times still has
morals to teach today's citizens undergoing a massive cultural revolution in a
formidable, relentless technological cyber-world. Not unexpectedly, we can share a common human bondage
with both past, present and future timelines, but the differences are profound
affecting even our youngest people.
There has never been a greater urgency to
make the case that public education must remain democratic, diverse and strong;
especially for young people who are the stimulus and hope as they inherit the
future with greater degrees of fairness, ethics and justice, both to the kinds
of society and environment they want to live in.
But 24 centuries ago, Plato started with an
image of a large cave descending into the Earth, our natural connection. At the
bottom of the cave is a large wall in front of which sit rows of prisoners in
chains, meaning that people as public participants need to follow social rules
or laws. (I would assume children were not present in these adult affairs.) Behind
them is a platform where various puppets and puppeteers are performing their
actions or events. Behind them burns a large fire so that only their shadows
are cast on the wall. The prisoners do not see or hear the real puppeteers or
their puppets but rely only on the echoes and shadows cast by these forms. Their
only experiences and only words they can speak are about these shadows, thinking
they are the real things.
For example, they may say “look there is a
rich man” by pointing to the shadow on the wall. Plato asks would they be wrong
in believing this shadow must be a real rich man without deception. Or is the
perceived rich man just manifesting his image and desires in order to make
people believe he is a rich man with special rights. Perhaps, it may actually
be a poor man who starts the mirage and illusion on the platform itself.
The spectators can only ask the ultimate
ageless question: do we gain knowledge as shadows of someone else’s reality or
do we seek our own truths based on facts?
From sitting in bondage watching shadows, people
know there must be the cave’s opening at the top where they can exit into
sunlight, meaning truth or enlightenment.
Obviously we do not live in an ancient Greek
world. Their wall would be more classical knowledge; images would be limited to
location, harvests, marketplaces, families, some warfare, many deities to
explain the forces of nature and wise philosophers who begat the name democracy
meaning “whole citizens able to rule in government.” Our connection is, as part of the perpetual human
condition, that we also care for our environment, our productivity, our
families, traditions, and our past and future histories.
What’s happening with today’s technological containment
with modern puppeteers?
However, our physical containment is channeled
deep into recent technology. We do not watch shadows cast by a fire, unless in
quiet repose in front of a campfire shooting sparks into the dark sky. Our wall
is the global worldview now where our planet Earth appears as “a tiny blue dot
set in a sunbeam.” The audience, including young people, sit neatly within
their social rules; but this time, the shadows on this wall are created by the
glow of the internet screen.
Our opinions, our glimpses of reality, our illusions
of truth are controlled by the light of the internet, even more brilliantly
enhanced by individual i-pads and cell phones at our fingertips.
So, who are these puppeteers and new kinds of
puppets, casting shadows and sharing messages for our behalf on our screens? Definitely,
the range of scale offers an infinite variety of acts from which to choose. Once
more, the nature of this medium overtakes the meaning of the message where the
focus is always on the moving parts without regard to background composition or
long-term effects.
Without precedence, however, this internet medium
has enabled, accelerated and extended this focus on the obvious, the loudest,
the most theatrical, without attention to personal and social consequences; in
other words, this is the brain limbic system fulfilling its key functions of emotions,
memories and arousal or stimulation.
And so, it is that the loudest actors, loaded
with the most spectacles and huckster speeches, cast their viral shadows not
only on the wall but also on the personal screens of the bonded prisoners in
our society; including even children, armed with their own devices.
Our modern cave has turned into a clamorous
and glamorous social media circus. Each big noisy shadow is followed by an even
bigger noisier shadow, without boundaries. Lines are quickly drawn along sexism,
ageism, racism and elitism. Furrows are made for nationalism, authoritarianism,
partisanship, and extremism. Egos thrive, tolerance suffers, toxicity normalizes, the word ‘hate’ surfaces again and again, human rights are questioned,
and society fragments. Twitter-verse becomes the new Twilight Zone where the smallest
words have the biggest bangs.
What kinds of problems can happen with the swarm
of the biggest players?
The biggest problem is that the biggest puppeteers
with the biggest shadows are the ones that proportionately fill both the
worldview wall and the individual screens. Often these are the wealthy,
academic and political players from corporate owned media outlets; and multinationals
such as industrial and medical platforms with plans to profit from and control
the masses.
There is even the rare possibility that one puppeteer with the
right celebrity hype and exposures can rise as a demigod to not only fixate the
seated crowd but infiltrate the moral public conscience and give license to
follow darker instincts.
The biggest immorality of such unrefined
media ascension and access is when despots with the biggest microphones begin
to shape the attentive populace to fit into their realities, illusionary and false
as they may be. The purity of freedom of speech is ransacked by fake news and
yellow journalism. Our common moral justice demands that news must rely on
observed truths; but history shows how the term ‘fake news’ has been used
before by tyrants to cover their own propaganda. There is no other way to
explain the phenomenon of an educated man with a strong Christian faith who can
blatantly describe an actual photograph of a terrible event with the most
comforting lies to suffice his followers…the infiltration is complete.
Back to Plato, both our ancient and modern
societies also share this common human bondage. Most people would prefer to
remain in chains or keep tuning into those performers who replay their favorite
programs. We tend to prefer to see shadows of reality from others, because it releases
us from seeking our own truth. At the same time, often these manufactured social
images affect our normal self-images to think we have no comparable abilities,
skills or results but need a king on a white horse for rescue.
As changes become tougher to face, it’s
easier to discriminate, bully, blame or victimize the person next to you who
may be watching a different screen. In fact, the allegory continues, that if
for some reason we find ourselves outside the cave, where we can find freedom, this
state can be very frightening because illusions are more satisfactory for the moment.
There is pain associated with liberating yourself from the past or coming into the
daylight or enlightenment.
And so, people keep exposing themselves, keep
clicking, tweeting and twerking, keep looking at false illusions on the wall
and their screens, facing personal traumas, believing there is some sanity at
least within some shadows of the loudest puppeteers. Unfortunately, this
transformation can also apply to young people.
Can Plato’s
truth fit into our modern society?
Back to Plato’s philosophy which is that truth
exists outside the cave on the wings of education. The sun is a metaphor for
freedom described as enlightenment. This is where ideas flourish, the essences
of love, justice, beauty, and service to
others with decency and morality are encouraged. This is where the arts and
sciences are nurtured, where the creative and spiritual contributions make
connections and bind relationships.
Plato believed that everyone wants to crawl
out of the cave of darkness and ignorance and walk in the light of truth. He taught
his students that all of us want to be part of something higher, a transcendent
reality of which the world we see is only a small part to where our human
bondage can unite everything into a single harmonious whole.
Why is the Freedom of a Public Education
Essential for Democratic Society?
So how do young people fit into our modern
technological social revolution?
As a captive audience, they have also been
exposed to the streaming shadows and fake realities in front of their internet
screens. They have vicariously adopted
adult roles while often facing media abuse, trauma, addiction, hyper-sexuality,
materialism and market manipulation.
The moral outrage here is they are still
young; their adolescent brains have not fully developed to make rational
decisions or judgement calls. The associative prefrontal cortex doesn’t have
the experiential inter-neuronal complexity until their early 20’s to make
deductive critical reasoning.
This transformation of youth culture via a veritable
social media invasion is unprecedented, crying for discussions and solutions because
young people must remain as our main stimulus to better manage changes in
societal and environmental spheres. Can anybody dare
say this is insidious indoctrination?
There is no doubt that digital technology
saturates today’s educational platforms. Definitely there are advantages to the
ability to “connect to specialized information nodes and resources in real
time” and learn from social networking, blogging, message boards, Google
searches, and Wikileaks. But how does individualized social autonomy explain
the difference between teaching and learning via traditional methods in public
schools?
My reference is personal experience. In a
public classroom there are students of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and goals;
including special needs. The lesson objectives are shared equally and
collaboratively. Students interact at their levels and interests with a one-on-one
teacher who encourages brainstorming by understanding the basics of critical
thinking and making consensual decisions.
Public education creates the public
where the country’s interests and civic responsibilities are talked about so
that every person can hear their own voice and feedback to manage situations
where multiple representations, or truths, can exist. There is no one elitist
or biased puppeteer to promote his or her agenda with private enterprises. What
is the better way to develop citizenship values?
In Plato’s world, the main purpose of
education was to “ban individualism, abolish incompetence and immaturity, and
establish the rule of the efficient.” Publicly, education was the positive
measure for the operation of justice in an ideal state where ignorance was the
root of vice. Properly, education started with storytelling to young children,
continued with teenagers and citizens with civic roles and progressed as long
as 50 years to the rare individual capable of governing the country.
Plato said, “that those who are able to see
beyond the shadows and lies of their culture, will never be understood, let
alone believed, by the masses.” Maybe, perhaps
you also wonder what Plato might say
about his “transcendent, integrated development of human personality” in today’s
internet world of change?
Our hope is public education with equality for
every child minus the bright lights of illusion. We must do better especially
for our children’s sake.
The further a society drifts from the truth,
the more they will hate those who speak it ... George Orwell
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