I've been wanting to talk about Plato's allegory and adapt it to an analysis of our society, however a few days ago I found it the best opportunity for my analysis, the London Times published this brilliant illustration by Ella Baron and with the following quote from the allegory of the cave that appears in the seventh book of Plato's Republic:

The allegory of Plato's cave tells the story of some prisoners - a metaphor of society for that time, and which today is still being shaped as if it were yesterday - who live in chains (today we would say "connected to the Internet"). They can only observe the shadows that are projected on the wall, it is the case that the author relates different objects and statues carried by other humans that move in the upper part of the cave. These prisoners spend their lives watching a series of puppet shows, something very much related to what we are doing today with social media, if you have read me before you know how critical I'm when it comes to social media, if you have not I recommend you read my article SOMA: SOcial MediA.

Plato wrote:

Men like these would maintain that the truth is nothing but the shadow of the artifical things that these men perceive through their senses, their eyes (smartphone for us).

With this allegory of the cave, Plato tried to explain to the men of that time - immersed in ignorance - or perhaps the false education that man received in his society (It is still a description and explanation that fits with ours). Perhaps today we could call this false education "information" as opposed to what Plato calls the knowledge of the soul. Education is provided by giving access to information - data - and not by teaching critical thinking and developing what Plato called the mind's eye. Plato suggests that true education is to turn the whole soul towards the light, towards "that which is", with regard to ideas and particularly to the idea of good, which in the "visible" world he engendered in the light.

From Plato's teachings in this allegory, we might conclude that true education consists in contemplating the source or essence and not the projections or shadows. That is to say, in contemplating reality and not virtuality for our current society. Perhaps another analogy is permitted: today we consume new, predigested and diluted information but we do not know the sources, we are simply immersed in this time of consuming information in the most condensed way possible and this is what is really worrying as people are being manipulated and as the prisoners in the allegory do not see the reality of things. The world - the cave - presents us with distractions that hypnotize us in such a way that we remain dull while witnessing a simulation, without even thinking that another world is possible.

In Plato's ideal state, the work of the scholars - the philosophers - was to ascend into the light of eternal ideas, not to contemplate that light, but to return to the cave and instruct the other that still see the shadows. These philosophers, who were capable of remembering the ascent of the soul, were to rule the city, no longer asleep - as cities are usually governed, according to Plato - but awake and with a clear vision. This aristocratic or meritocratic view of Plato has been especially criticized in modern times. Today, where public opinion, "society" and political correctness rule, all opinions count equally and a mob on social networks can end up with a philosopher-king, as Plato defined it.

Once, I read of W. Giegrich's monograph The Occidental Soul's Self Immurement in Plato's Cave and I would argue that this illustration is perfectly combined with the reading, the author argues that Plato's cave today has been introjected and has become portable and self-immersive. Technology makes us interact with the real world through a platinum cave - cell phones, iPads, computers, etc. - that we always carry with us. An example of this is the man who runs through nature listening to music on a smartphone headset, which are "instruments for voluntary introjection... into a cave, here a subtle body, a cave of music". The human being withdraws to an inner world, but that inner world is not the world of his soul; it is an artificial world, a world of secondary images, shadows or simulations of the primary reality. We take our cave with us: our screens are like that ubiquitous wall on which low-resolution shadows of reality are projected and that we never stop looking at.

The human being creates around him a virtual bubble that makes him feel connected to the outside world, yet he lives in a fictitious world, where truth is manipulated and has no real meaning. In this case, we are voluntarily connected. Perhaps these analogies are a bit hyperbolic, but the current state of technological dependence admits or even urgently requires this kind of radical comparison in order to get one or the other out of the everyday slumber of the cave.