Over 2,000 years ago, Plato described prisoners in a cave, shackled and forced to watch shadows on a wall, mistaking these illusions for reality. When one prisoner escapes and sees the real world, the truth is overwhelming. But when he returns to free the others, they reject him.
Now, swap the cave for a smartphone. The shadows for social media, curated feeds, and AI-driven content. Are we any different from Plato’s prisoners? We consume reality through screens, shaped by algorithms that decide what we see, think, and believe. Our attention is bought and sold, our perceptions manipulated.
If you were shown the “real world” beyond this digital illusion, free from biases, dopamine loops, and controlled narratives. Would you even believe it? Or would you, like Plato’s prisoners, reject the truth in favor of comforting shadows?
Are we still chained? Or is there a way out?
Sorry, but we are still “on the train” without windows … so we can not see out
Perhaps it’s not about the lack of windows, but about the train’s destination. are we blindly trusting the tracks, or are we too afraid to question where they’re taking us?
True, but for those who would like to look out into larger perspectives, that there is an existence that is much bigger … outside the train … so one can start looking for that door one entered … as a child … and get out of the train again … then it just has to sail its own way
But even if we find the door, how do we know we aren’t simply stepping into another train, another set of tracks?
As Heraclitus said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.”
The world beyond might be vast, but it’s not free from its own currents. Still, the search for that door—the willingness to step outside, to sail the unknown—is the essence of philosophical freedom.
It’s the courage to question the tracks, to acknowledge the illusion, and perhaps, to embrace the sea of uncertainty.
He who dares to get out of the “hamster wheel” and go step by step out into the unknown … will see and experience and come out into the greater perspectives
“As soon as anyone starts to think, this society is no longer safe for them.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
To step beyond the wheel is to leave the comfort of the familiar and dive into the unsettling freedom of the unknown, where new perspectives await.
See you refer to different thinkers. What do you think yourself …
For me, it’s about getting out of the “thinking box”, out of your head … before you can glimpse into the subjective … and you will discover a lot of that.
Nice to be able to philosophize a bit in a new arena. Thanks for the conversation so far :-)
Surely looking around the next turn :-)Jan
I’m not going to go as far back as classical antiquity, but I do think there has been a shift from 20th corporate mass media to a 21st century corporate algorithmic media.
free from biases
No one can be free from biases. That is literally impossible, even nonsensical.
Are we still chained? Or is there a way out?
Again recycling my past response:
The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media* are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.
The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’.
This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.
The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”
None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.
- Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
- Propaganda model
- Edward Bernays
- Walter Lippmann
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Powell Memorandum
- The Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy
* I’ve criticized MBFC & Ad Fontes before:
You make some solid points about media and its role in shaping our perceptions. The shift from corporate mass media to algorithmic-driven content is massive, and while biases can never be fully escaped, the manipulation of those biases is more systematic now than ever.
The “post-truth” era you mentioned isn’t just about misinformation, it’s about the controlled narratives we’re fed. Media literacy is crucial, but as you pointed out, the institutions that should be teaching it are often part of the problem.
Chomsky’s “5 Filters” and Bernays’ work are key to understanding how this manipulation works.But the real question is.
Can we truly break free from this system, or are we always going to be caught in the cycle of being manipulated by those in power?
