You’re texting your friend goodnight. Ever since quarantine started (and never ended) Whatsapp has become your second natural habitat, if it already wasn’t. But this time, instead of sending your usual love stickers, you decide to send your good night wishes via a beautiful picture of yourself doing a funny face, with bad lighting and with an always-on-the-move feel. Suddenly you see yourself. Who are you?
Nosce te ipsum
You walk past the question and finally achieve an acceptable photo to send. Sent. But the question remains. How many times in the day did you look at yourself today? But then again, why should you? Don’t you already know yourself after all these years of vital existence?
Life wasn’t always like this. Originally, we used to take pictures of the outer world, and even if we flipped the camera to take an auto-picture, we would never see what the actual photo looked like. We were now part of the looked-on side. But then selfie cameras appeared and the photographer gained the potential of being the photographee. Photos became live mirrors in which to immortalize flashes of light reflected in our bodies at a definite time and place. Our reflections started to look back on who was behind the camera.
In ‘The Allegory of The Cave’ by Plato there are also light (or shadow) reflections on a flat surface that’s in front of you, just like your phone. As a tied up prisoner, you see the world through the shadows that stare back at you from the cave’s wall. They are your world. But, as we know, they are just black shapes that form when the bonfire’s light hits things that are carried along the cave by some mysterious men. On the outside, the real world: nature, life, the shining sun, freedom. On the inside, darkness, prison, mediocrity, all-you’ve-ever-known. So what happens when all this shadows look just like you in a very realistic way? They move as you move, they have the same colors, the same hair. Isn’t this reality? Truth? The problem is distinguishing when you are in the dark and when you’ve reached the light. What defines the outside and the inside. What lights each of these spaces, when we cannot merely trust our senses and have to look beyond the foreseeable world.
So the surrounding reality can be misleading and sensory knowledge can be mistaken for the Truth. Noted.
Survival in the digital cave
There is a whole other world happening outside our house, our head, our phone. Sure, these are all valid spaces where the world takes place, but they aren’t absolutes. Have you ever listened to the sound of your thoughts? Seriously. Did you know that they sound inside you? Well, of course they actually don’t emit a sound but you can still hear them. Just close your eyes and listen. What are they saying?
That’s exactly how sensory inputs can be misleading because even if they are truly objective, they are translated inside our heads and it is really our mind who defines what is what.
What the allegory also tries to tell us is that the life that surrounds us is a reflection of our inner self, our interpretations, our ways, opinions, beliefs. They are our real eyes.
Man fights, fears, hates and even loves that which he perceives as (or in) the world, instead of realizing that the world is reflecting back to him his own belief in duality. In order to change what he sees he must step out of the “cave/mind”.
Source: How does Plato’s ‘Allegory Of The Cave’ relate to today’s modern world? — Quora by Vivian Amis
Stepping out of the cave/phone must be real nice but instead I’d like to encourage you to look into these reflections. To look inside this smartphone-shaped mirror. To look around your house, your room, your windows, your streets, your Whatsapp, your Instagram. Really look. What do you see?
The key isn’t being set free and finally going out but lies in learning to look inside.
To wipe your eyes and start fresh, not with what’s happening on the other side of the world but with what’s in front of you. Your reality, yourself. These daily reflections have more to teach us about who we are and what life is, they are the real challenge.
Socrates wasn’t the wisest man (according to the Oracle of Delphi) because he was an all-mighty philosopher but because he was the only man willing to admit his own ignorance rather than pretend to know something he did not. “Know thyself” means you should start by asking questions inside to understand how you understand the world, what shapes you and therefore, it. So that when the time comes, and we realize we’ve been chained this whole time, we shall know what those chains are and how we can set ourselves free.
And the world outside the cave will be truly dazzling.
“I warn you, whoever you were,
you who wish to probe the arcane nature, that if you don’t find within yourself what you are looking for,
You won’t be able to find it outside either.
If you ignore the excellence of your own home
How do you intend to find other excellence?
In you is hidden the treasure of treasures.
Oh! Man, Know thyself and you will know the Universe and the Gods.”
The Oracle of Delphi
