Interpretation and The Allegory of The Cave

Interpretation and The Allegory of The Cave

By Charles Sullivan
Dissident Voice.org
January 4, 2014

The ideological chains that bind and subdue us are stronger
and more effective than any chain forged from steel.

These manacles are more freedom inhibiting than a prison
cell or solitary confinement.

Belief, faith, and hope can imprison as well as liberate us.

By the power of suggestion, a thin cotton string can effectively
tether an elephant.

Politicians and their associates in the corporate media are
master manipulators of language and images.

Anytime you hear them speak, think of Plato’s Allegory of
The Cave.

Virtually everything that we see and hear, nearly everything
we have been told, is an officious lie, an illusion created to
deceive and control us.

The purpose of deception is to promote the dogma and welfare
of those in power, while implicitly disempowering those who are
being deceived.

Language is rarely, if ever, neutral. Coercive ideology lurks
behind every sentence.

In a sense, all language is propaganda, even the words on
this page.

For instance, in this short essay, I declare my intention to
lead my readers to a conclusion that I hope will awaken them,
promote consciousness, and encourage principled behavior
that is conducive to the collective emancipation of the working
class.

Our faith in capitalistic institutions promotes the pretense of
democracy, while it delivers plutocracy, corporate fascism, and
militarism.

Similarly, imprudent belief in the American Dream induces
people to behave in ways that promote the welfare of those
in power rather than the perspectives of those of us struggling
to be free.

Belief in this discredited notion keeps workers from
organizing against their oppressors.

The puppeteers casting shadows on the cave wall
know that the images they project are not real.

By contrast, the indoctrinated audience interprets the
shadows as authentic figures rather than the phantasms
they are.

The purveyors of myths and propaganda, the authors of
the sanctioned historical narrative that defines reality for
the masses, are consciously misleading us.

The empowered are aware that we are attempting to navigate
a house of mirrors with trap doors, but we continue to believe
that the flickering images on the cave wall are real.

Interpretation is everything.

Americans believe that we are a free and representative republic,
because that is what we have always been told, despite evidence
to the contrary.

But choosing our oppressors every few years makes us
neither free nor democratic.

Electoral outcomes that are determined by capital do not give
us a real voice in fashioning an equitable economic agenda,
taxation, or foreign policy, including decisions about war.

Participation in bogus systems of power binds us to delusions
and keeps us ideologically imprisoned.

They prevent us from taking meaningful action.

In America, working people are excluded from all of the
important decisions that profoundly affect their lives.

Legislators at all levels of government are beholden to the
corporations and wealthy individuals who fund their campaigns.

To the power elite, “we the people” are little more than
background noise to be tuned out.

Cast a stone at the mirrors and the illusion immediately
dissolves into shards of broken glass.

A perplexing chain reaction is set in motion; worlds fall like
rows of dominoes and fill the vacuum vacated by appearance
with new images, new ideas, and new possibilities.

Polaris abruptly appears with the stars of Ursa Minor wrapped
around her like a jeweled necklace glistening in the velvet black
darkness of eternal night.

She was always there but concealed behind striated walls of
silvered glass in the great American funhouse of lies and
delusion we call reality.

Bearing the Allegory of the Cave in mind, consider this: If a
worker puts his faith in an economic system that exploits and
alienates him, his faith shackles rather than liberates him.

Correspondingly, if a man believes that his oppressor is his
liberator, or protector, he ideologically imprisons himself,
and promotes behavior that benefits and strengthens his
tormentor, rather than himself or his socioeconomic class.

If he believes that the systems of power serve him and promote
justice rather than work for his capitalist masters, he will not
attempt to dismantle them.

The worker must then not only overcome his oppressor, he
must first transcend his own ideological beliefs and ignorance
before he can even begin to extricate himself.

In many ways, us workers are our own worst enemy.

We lose our humanity, become alienated from our highest self,
our families, our communities, our coworkers, and the Earth
Mother.

As participants in and recipients of unfettered capitalism, we have
become the unwitting tools of universal oppression and militarism
we claim to disdain.

Our demise stems from the misinterpretation of reality and our
shifting location within a volatile matrix of phantasmagoric
holograms, none of which are real.

We believe what we hear and do what we are told rather than
think critically about anything.

Questioning authority makes us uncomfortable, and there are
always consequences to challenging the dominant paradigm.

We have an abiding psychological need to believe that everything
we think we know about our country and the world is as advertised
because the alternative terrifies us.

We thus surrender our conscience and our life to become
a tool of the unscrupulous sociopaths in power.

The American worker must comprehend that his assigned
role within the capitalist system is not to be a thoughtful or
conscious human being, but rather an efficient economic serf,
a dehumanized automaton concealed within in a human husk.

Painful as this reality is, it does not behoove us to believe
or act otherwise.

The worker’s plight is like being a solider in the war-torn
Middle East: take orders and do what you are told.

Check your conscience and your humanity at the door.

We all know where that leads.

Armed with this knowledge, perhaps we may finally begin
the vital work of our individual and collective emancipation.

Our subordinate role in this unequal economic, social, and
political arrangement must be challenged and subverted.

No one is born a slave.

The only power anyone has over us is that which we allow
them to have.



Charles Sullivan is a Master Naturalist, community activist, and
free-lance writer, residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of
geopolitical West Virginia.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/interpretation-and-the-
allegory-of-the-cave