Plato’s Allegorical Cave, COVID-19, and the Infodemic
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” ― Socrates
By Sayf Eddine Merzouk
COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the world since its emergence late last year. Beyond the thousands of lives it has claimed and millions more who have been quarantined, this novel virus has also created the threat of economic collapse and widespread societal stagnation. As governments worldwide continue to fight a relentless uphill battle against this invisible enemy, a parallel, equally significant and distinguishable foe is covertly invading their private and innermost territories. This self-styled adversary is indeed the ravaging infodemic, characterized by an unprecedented spread of disinformation, promises of false cures, and conspiracy theories.
Amid such a devastating public health crisis, it is entirely understandable to follow the news closely in order to obtain vital information on how to survive and protect our loved ones. The only issue, however, is the world’s increasing reliance on social media for information, which has made it more challenging to distinguish truth from falsehood. As the crisis began to unfold across the globe, it was almost immediately accompanied by harmful or simply obtuse information. Although some people may possess the necessary judgment to meticulously digest this avalanche of information and navigate through its traps, many continue to unquestionably believe everything they see, which can lead, in certain cases, to adverse results.
One way to explain why these individuals lack this techne and express such blatant gullibility is to revisit Plato’s prominent Allegory of the Cave, found in his foundational text of political philosophy, The Republic. The allegory, which serves merely as a conceptual tool to help the reader see the distinction between appearance and reality, clearly illustrates the visible potent influence of ignorance on our nature.
In this story, Plato portrays several prisoners who have been chained to a wall deep within a cave since birth. They cannot look at anything but the stone wall in front of them. Behind them burns a fire that provides just enough light for them to perceive flickering images of objects on their wall, which are cast by puppeteers hiding behind a rampart. Naturally enough, the prisoners presume that the images are real when, in reality, they are just shadows.
By all means, we are currently living in a post-truth epoch, where the average individual cannot discern truth from falsehood and is mentally indolent. It appears we are trapped in a contemporary version of Plato’s allegorical cave, where natural reality is distorted and clouded by WhatsApp humbugs and Facebook charlatans that are consistently misleading our near and dear ones.
In fact, the dramatic scene that Plato paints is almost analogous to our current quarantine predicament. If you think about it, at this very moment, most people are prisoners in their homes chained to their smartphones and TVs. Engrossed in the peripheral world of digital images, they rely solely on their senses and forsake the authority of their intellect. In most cases, their senses have driven them to a state where they cannot correctly analyze, criticize, or internalize any piece of news. Without being able to see the clear picture, they entrap themselves within false perceptions where the truth remains hidden.
Take, for example, the recent French study of twenty COVID-19 patients, which indicated that the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine may treat the coronavirus. You may have seen news articles or watched videos of pseudoscientists touting these drugs. You may have even heard public statements from various world leaders, including President Trump calling these drugs potential “game-changers.” However, the truth of the matter is that the efficacy of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19 are at best unproven. If one were to read beyond headlines and actually take a look at the original study, they would very easily realize that the results were inconclusive. If anything, the study warns that in the wrong hands, these drugs can be lethal:“the margin between the therapeutic and toxic dose is narrow and chloroquine poisoning has been associated with cardiovascular disorders that can be life-threatening.” But despite countless warnings from health experts about the dangers of these drugs, their demand and consumption have continued to surge to the point where one man in Arizona fatally poisoned himself after taking a toxic derivative of chloroquine.
The shadows of images that the prisoners perceive in Plato’s cave represent the lowest form of knowledge: opinion. Paradoxically, in the media sphere opinion is held in high regard. Social media suffers from a dearth of truth and is instead filled with an abundance of experts providing their opinions. Their self-fabricated worldview becomes the only standard for truth, which gives those without critical thinking skills a false perception of what is really going on.
Because human beings generally fear change and covet the comfort of the familiar, they seek out like-minded individuals who are in agreement that the shadows on their walls are real. As a result, when a frightening and unlikely event occurs, such as this outbreak, they propose conspiratorial explanations as a coping mechanism and sacrifice their common sense in the process.
For an example of this, look no further than the most prominent and unfounded theories alleging that the novel coronavirus was a bioweapon created in a Wuhan government lab and then deliberately released on the Chinese people. There is zero evidence to support this claim and several researchers have confirmed this theory as illogical. In reality, we know that COVID-19 is just another zoonotic infection — a virus that jumped from animals to humans. Yet, contrary rumors have continued to spread on social media outlets, and even seem to be getting a second wind.
Individuals propagating misconceptions generally do not realize the repercussion of malicious content framed or forwarded by them. In the wake of a pandemic, such practices can be dangerous, if not deadly. Here’s why. When someone endorses conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, they become less likely to obey professional health advice or self-quarantine after visiting high-risk areas. Instead, they grow negative attitudes towards prevention behavior and put others at risk. In South Korea, for instance, most cases have been linked to a secret religious sect called the Shincheonji Church of Jesus after it deliberately withheld information about its membership. This hindered health authorities’ efforts to contain the virus, as they could not trace and test every person who might have come into contact with someone infected in time, which resulted in a rapid spike in cases.
With all this being said, there is no problem devoid of a solution. In his allegory, Plato goes on to describe what would happen should one of the prisoners somehow escape the cave. The former prisoner would set eyes on sunlight for the first time, which would initially dazzle him. After acclimatizing to the sun’s radiance, the prisoner would then be capable of seeing everything in its true essence for the first time. Thus, he finally experiences the objects he had hitherto only known as shadows in their exact nature.
While a vaccine for COVID-19 has not been developed yet, the cure for disinformation and conspiracy theories has existed for millennia. It simply consists of critical literacy skills. These competencies help one discern fact from fiction in order to determine whether they are a prisoner of the social media cave or an astute reader liberated from the shackles of folly.
The bottom line is, in this day and age, we cannot afford to take everything we see, hear, or read at face value– regardless of how reputable we believe the source to be. When we read news stories, we should not simply assess them on plausibility, but also on authority of the source and knowledge of content. That is why it is crucial to inquire about information from credible and reputable sources, instead of the WhatsApp expert aunt, Instagram conspiracy theorist, or fraudulent Twitter troll. In doing so, we might come closer to freeing not only ourselves from the cave, but also those around us.
