Plato's Cave Revisited

[Note: this post was prompted by a Quora question. My answer is provided in this blog post. Others are given on Quora at the hyperlink.] 

Atheists: Where do you stand in Plato's cave, and what are the other three groups of people from your perspective? As you can see in this picture, there are four kinds of people: 

• those watching shadows
• those who understand shadows
• those who are on the way out of the cave
• those that are out of the cave

My Answer

I’m puzzled that the question is directed to atheists. The heart of the allegory of the cave concerns fundamental epistemological and cognitive issues. Its theological and spiritual aspects are interesting but secondary, I think, to those core concerns. Theistic, agnostic, and atheistic views are likely to vary, but they are all capable of presenting a viable answer. To me, the question is better addressed to philosophers in general, or to no particular group at all, since all those answers are likely to invoke (or reject) theological and spiritual aspects of our cognitive abilities and capacities.

As an example, atheists' answers in particular must rely on scientism alone as it is rooted in Enlightenment naturalism and rationalism. As for where they would sit or stand in the cave or outside it, or on the way to or from one or the other, I expect they would be among all those groups - none of the four groups specified necessarily rules out atheism (or any other theology or religion). 

Regarding the four groups:

• Did everyone out of the cave come from the cave, or are there fifth and sixth groups who either know nothing of the cave or know of it but have never entered it? 
• Where do the people come from in the first place? Are they born into the bottom level or placed there as newborns? Is this a subtle view of a class-ordered or caste society? 
• Where did the cave come from? Is it a natural formation or was it constructed in this form? Either way, who put it to this use and who oversees its ongoing operations and activities? 
• Is there any conclusive evidence that "out of the cave" isn't just a vastly more complex and cognitively convincing "cave?" 

It may help to consider contemporary allegories dealing with the same concerns - cognition and epistemology. Two I expect many of us will easily recognize are The Truman Show and The Matrix franchise. These movies are equivalent to Plato’s allegory, transformed by Hollywood craft and effects, but keeping the arc and theme of the story intact. Here is the essence of what both the ancient allegory and those contemporary movies are about.

• cognitive dissonance - basically, Cognitive dissonance as explained in that Wikipedia article as “the (internal) mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an actions contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.” I prefer the concept of 
• semiotic dissonance, however, which subsumes the conventional definition of cognitive dissonance but expands and extends beyond it to include states of complete and total cognitive deception and delusion constituting a false reality or ‘irreality’ that may be self-imposed or even independently conceived, engineered, constructed, and implemented by external parties, powers, and forces for the explicit intents and purposes of mass totalitarian oppression, enslavement, tyranny, and control. This irreality establishes  
• epistemological imprisonment - through which all sentient and sapient aspects of cognition are constrained and distorted (if self-imposed), or (if externally devised) manipulated and controlled for the creation, maintenance, and exploitation of the irreality thus created and the captives within it as means to achieve the ends of the ruling power elite.

It is especially important to realize that the most effective irreality of semiotic dissonance and epistemological captivity is not necessarily unpleasant, painful, or even stressful. In this most insidiously seductive form and nefarious mode, most of its victims will have no awareness or recognition of their enslavement. On the contrary, most will adamantly reject the idea that they are in any way deceived or delusional, and will forcefully insist that their lives are true and real, even quite meaningful, fulfilling, and rewarding. 

Hence the crucial question: which of the following is the true reality, and which is the dissonant irreality?

1. We the people of earth freely exercise our inalienable rights, including those of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The US is a constitutional republic and representative democracy. As the most powerful country on earth, the US has moral obligation and authority to empower other people and nations to recognize and exercise those same rights and to adopt the same governance. Furthermore, the US has manifest destiny and just cause for the judicious use of military power and force to defend those rights and to establish and uphold that governance against all enemies foreign or domestic.
2. The vast majority of humans are victims of semiotic dissonance and epistemological imprisonment orchestrated and exploited by an elite plutocratic oligarchy and their corporatocracy. They exercise global power with virtually absolute control, lacking any humane, moral, or conscionable character or bearing, driven solely by greed, hubris, and depravity. This irreality is imperceptible but the oppression and tyranny hiding wide open within it is nonetheless totalitarian to the core.   

Are these two scenarios jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive as factual and true description of life on earth today? Or is it a false dilemma with a path between its horns to a different, truer, actual reality? If semiotic dissonance and epistemological imprisonment are the actual but imperceptible facts of human life today, is escape even possible? Can the cave be destroyed, The Truman Show cancelled, the red pill acquired and swallowed, and The Matrix overthrown? 

Exercise for the reader: can you name other highly similar or equivalent allegories (e.g., in film, print, or other media)? Would Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, or Eyes Wide Shut qualify? How would you interpret current events (such as the presidential 2016 election) from the perspective of the two alternate realities described above? Does Noam Chomsky's documentary film, Requiem for the American Dream, imply that #2 above is correct? 

P.S. As an evangelical Christian, of course, the spiritual and theological issues are anything but "secondary." They are both primary and transcendent. But the aim of this post is to present a more inquisitive and religiously unbiased perspective. Obviously my sociopolitical biases are showing, but I think that's precisely what Socrates would have wanted, especially since the cave allegory appears in the political philosophy context of The Republic.

Revolutionary Iconoclasm (Position Update #2): Cirque de Sophismes

As a logician and semiotician, the power of fallacious rhetoric to completely defeat truth and rationality never ceases to amaze me. The 2016 election is panning out to be a grand circus of sophistry galore, and we have only ourselves to blame. 

Know first that I am an evangelical Christian. That spiritual commitment is integrated with logic, semiotics, and a well-reasoned philosophy of science to form my worldview. All the rest of who I am and how I live derive from those grounds and foundations. 

Taken together, the quotes above from the 19th-century British 'Prince of Preachers' Charles Spurgeon address fatal flaws at the heart of the 2016 election it is already unfolding:

1. anyone still failing to see the most likely scenario - i.e., a ballot with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the 'candidates of choice' - as a forced choice between the lesser of two evils suffers severe cognitive dissonance; and,
2.  the same is true of anyone believing what 99% of the media - mainstream and fringe stream alike - are feeding us about the candidates, and the truth will almost certainly never surface and be settled with rational clarity and assurance. 

At its very best, a Trump vs. Clinton decision requires taking either of two equally severe risks. But that isn't the real problem. The fallacy underlying the choice is the real problem - it's a complex question fallacy.

The Clinton vs. Trump question lures the unwitting voter into believing one or the other, not both, and no other must be chosen. The vivid example I like to use is this: 

In one hand you're given a .45 caliber M1911, and in the other a 9mm Beretta FS92. Each gun is loaded with hollow-point rounds, chambered, safety off, ready to fire. You are told, peer-pressured, and actually believe you must shoot yourself in the foot with one or the other. 

The truth is that you really don't have to pull the trigger at all. Don't vote. 99% of the peer pressure that says not voting is unpatriotic, un-American, un-Scriptural, un-Christian, and all the rest is simply wrong: abstention can be (and in 2016 will be) a fully viable and rational alternative (more on that shortly). 

You can also shoot between the horns of the dilemma at the system (?) or individual (?) convincing you that you have only those choices. You have the right to vote by writing-in any name(s) you choose. Anyone telling you otherwise is violating that right. It only sends a message and it won't be heard, but as a matter of principle, it's a more rational and moral action. Here are two ways to consider doing this: 

• Voice Your Rights - Write Your Voice, namely, write-in the name(s) of someone you personally know, respect, and trust, with your life (the American way of life is at stake, after all); or,  
• The ANONYMOUS 'THumP' option, namely, "To rise for change, simply register to vote and at the polling booth on the day of elections, write in the word ANONYMOUS."

Other ways to find yourself impaled on the horns of a complex question fallacy: when anyone asks, "Are you a Democrat or Republican (liberal or conservative, socialist or communist, fascist or capitalist, Muslim or Christian, and so on, ad nauseum)? The lethal danger of this fallacy is its inherent divisiveness - it forces our own thinking against itself, and it conquers and rules us by dividing us against ourselves.

Allow yourself to thus be semiotically branded and labelled and rational discourse becomes impossible. Refusal to be branded and labelled produces the same outcome - and just as swiftly - proving that rational political discourse has become virtually impossible. The meanings of these signs have exactly one content, intent, and purpose - emotional bias buttressing prejudiced opposition without benefit of objective reason and critical thinking. The most univocal position one will experience is violent condemnation of the rational decision to abstain from voting when only evil (or horribly risky) options are presented. 

Yet this is exactly the moral and spiritual principle taught and preached by the Apostle Paul in Romans 3. Accused of teaching that evil should be done that grace may increase, Paul refuted the charge by exposing its implicit absurdity: it ultimately leads to the conclusion that since all are guilty of sin, none are guilty of sin.

Marty Tate, Pastor of the Peaceful Valley Baptist Church in Rising Fawn, Georgia links Paul's teaching directly to the fallacious thinking of many evangelical Christians, who all too comfortably and often rationalize their voting actions as follows: 

I want to borrow that phrase “let us do evil, that good may come” in application to the prevailing notion that one must vote for the “lesser of two evils.”
 
Christians probably use this flawed argument more than any other segment of the American electorate, because Christians must continually give up ideological ground when it comes to the support of Republican political candidates.
 
The argument goes something like this:
 
“Candidate R is not all that great. In fact, he is really weak on issues a, b, c, and d. However if we don’t vote for Candidate R, then Candidate D will win the election and we all know that Candidate D is really scary.”
 
When the possibility is raised of a 3rd party candidate, the argument switches to something like this:
 
“I really like what Candidate 3 stands for, but he has no chance of winning. If I vote for Candidate 3 I am wasting my vote. In fact, if I vote for Candidate 3 it will be the same as voting for Candidate D since it will siphon votes away from Candidate R. I know Candidate R is really not what the country needs, but Candidate D is really, really scary!”
 
This is a “let us do evil, that good may come” proposition.
  
That is, let us vote for an acknowledged, although supposedly lesser evil (“let us do evil”), so that the supposed greater evil won’t win (“that good may come”). This path has led America consistently to the left for at least the last 50 years! The “lesser” evil has become progressively more evil, so that we have arrived at what Pastor Chuck Baldwin refers to as “the evil of two lessers!”

Chuck Baldwin exposes this fallacious rationalization even more vividly in characterizing a "wasted vote" as "a vote for someone you know does not represent your own beliefs and principles ... for someone you know will not lead the country in the way it should go. A wasted vote is a vote for the 'lesser of two evils.'" He was commenting on the race between McCain and Obama in 2008, but that just shows how things haven't changed - or have only worsened - over the past eight years. 

The worst of it, perhaps, is the extent to which the blinding semiotic fog of media manipulation and deception make it both virtually and practically impossible to form a rational grasp of the truth about the issues or the candidates, or how they stand on issues even apart from their values, character, etc. Truth falls hopelessly behind, irretrievably lost in the disinformation tsunami. 

It is the circus of cacophonic sophistry and the theater of absurd irreality. We aren't even spectators enjoying the show ... we're the sawdust underfoot of the clown masquerade and the emperor's and empress's hubristic naked strut.  

Revolutionary Iconoclasm (Position Update #1): Today at the Circus

The Republican wild card is 'raging Bull Elephant' Trumpeter. Most if not all of the trailing pachyderms in the herd are just clone puppets of the corporatocracy establishment. Rand Paul is a bit of a wild card from a more rational deck, but, sad to say, he's now just one of the dark-horse longshots. For the moment Cruz appears to be the Bull Trumpeter's only challenge for nomination.

The Democrat wild card is Sanders. The other soulless ass at the podium is Clinton, clearly the party's insider for the ruling machine; perhaps even a puppetmaster trained and mentored by Henry Kissinger, ranked by some as one of the world's most rabid and effective psychopaths (see NSSM 200 for a sample of his pathological eugenics; the full memo is worth reading, but the table of contents alone is chilling enough). TBD: whether the DNC fix is already in place to Burn the Bern and ensure the MADam Minion nomination ... IA and NH suggest it's at least a deal in the making, however.

Kudos to the Donkey-Dums for keeping it comparatively simple and merely foggy (vs. totally darkpool). BOO-HISS and thumbs down to Elephant-Elitists for turning it all into yet another free-for-all circus of absurdity (and remaining totally darkpool).

Much as I shudder to even imagine so, fringe perspectives from the likes of Alex Jones and Lew Rockwell actually seem to offer a more rational analysis of 21st century reality than anyone else with a mainstream presence. They are voices worth listening to in any case, and Anonymous is also worth tracking. Jim Fetzer's podcasts, videos, and blog posts are also compelling, and his thinking is likely to be the most scientifically and philosophically astute.

The race is just entering the back stretch so it's still early on. But thus far I see absolutely no signs that 2016 will be anything more than ongoing acceleration of tyranny and erosion of liberty and justice. Plenty of financial signs are surfacing that may imply 2008-09 was prologue to much worse in 2016 ... right on track with historical economic trends.

Trust Jesus and suit up in the Armor of God every day! The War of all wars rages on and -- thank God! -- we know where it's headed and we know the outcome ... but there's plenty of hell to pay in the meantime.