The Allegory of the Cave

‘And if he were made to look directly at the light of the fire, it would hurt his eyes and he would turn back and retreat to the things which he could see properly, which he would think really clearer than the things being shown him’

-          Plato

Plato suggests the real physical world is a fantasy however; there could be a reality beyond the deceptive world. The allegory of the cave shows the stages between absolute truth and false reality, where things or people are manipulating the truth and creating this deception, which informs the ways in which we live. However if we could see the reality of things, would we decide to live in a different way or would we want to be lied to and carry on living in deception? In today’s world, we all understand to a point that we are most likely being deceived and lied to by the media but how many of us carry on accepting this and proceed to play by these ‘rules’ we have been told to follow. Most of us watch the news/films/programmes and read magazines and newspapers but how many of us automatically believe what we are reading without following it up or educating ourselves on the topic?

Allegory of the Cave 

During World War 1, there were many propaganda posters used to persuade young men of Britain to join the army and fight for ‘their country’. Posters included patriotic symbols, war heroes and text often of a bias and misleading nature to influence the country into believing war was the right thing to do. One of the more clever propaganda posters in my opinion was the, ‘Women of Britain say GO!’ by E.V. Kealy 1915 as it ‘cleverly balances a male patriotic imperative of enlistment with a sense of sacrifice by women and children, urging their menfolk to leave them for the larger cause’ Propaganda Power and Persuation, D. Welch, London, 2013. However, when you think back to such a horrific time, did women really want their men to leave them for war? Or did they feel forced into feeling this way down to posters like this? Therefore, did men feel guilty due to their women wanting (being forced to wanting) them to fight for their country?  And if they could see the truth behind these posters and the reality of the situation would they have made a change and gone against the idea of the posters or would they have carried on with the deception because this is what they were meant to do?

 

Propaganda Poster

This example links with ideas based upon a society of control and how the government want you to know and see certain things. They may not show you the whole story or the whole photograph, which leads me to believe we are being lie to; however, we choose to get on with it rather than doing anything about it and changing the way the media is being deceptive. Women proceed to be made to feel like we should look a certain way due to images in magazines within the media, similar to how women were made to feel a certain way due to the WW1 propaganda posters. However, even though we understand how deceptive these posters were, we still carry on to believe the lies are the truth. 

'Noone is perfect' http://sheismynutritionist.com/

Therefore, what Plato is saying in this quote sums up society in today’s world. We know we are being lied to but we do not make any changes or think in different ways. We carry on living with the deceptive media influencing the ways in which we feel or live. 

Simulacra and Simulations

‘Simulation.. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.’ 

- Jean Baudrillard

If we compare Jean Baudrillard’s arguments with Plato’s, there is an extreme, polemic contrast to what they both suggest within the ideology of reality. Plato proposes there is a reality beyond the deceptive world and on the other hand, Baudrillard considers the fact that any access to reality has become complex and maybe even impossible to a degree. He seems to believe that the ‘image’ that copies reality is all we have; that there is a disappearance of reality.

There are many contemporary examples, in which I believe support the ideas Baudrillard presents. The ways in which we have begun to live our lives has instant connections with the idea of hyperreality and how this has become a normal way to live.

‘Nearly 33.9 million people said they watch at least one soap episode a week and on average people spend 143 minutes catching up with their favourite shows, according to the Dalepak research. That equates to 336 days spent in front of the television over the course of an average lifetime.’ http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/07/average-briton-spends-one-year-watching-soap_n_1133490.html 2011. It is obvious to see that people of Britain like to indulge themselves into a proxy world that is not their own, yet get to feel as though they are part of it. Thus, they will inevitably develop skewed ideas of reality and relationships, which will then generate this idea of a hyper-real reality.

Another example of hyperreal in today’s world stems from the internet and social media, where most people are becoming more engaged in a world on the internet than their own reality. In computer games and virtual worlds, some people can find more confidence when they become a character than the real version of them.
This happens within social media and chat rooms, where people are more confident being someone because no one can really know who they are. There have been more extreme cases of people pretending to be someone they are the opposite of, such as on the MTV programme, ‘Catfish’.

I recently seen a more dark example of people portraying someone they are not over the internet in a documentary on Channel 4 called, ‘Hunting the Paedophiles: Inside the National Crime Agency’ 2015 which shown one of the largest, most harrowing child abuse stories in history.  ‘Beginning in 2011 it started with an Italian girl called Justina who befriended a 13-year-old boy in Britain for chats on social media. Except that “Justina” turned out to be a group of men based in Bahrain who were getting children in Britain to send them intimate photos, then threatening them with blackmail unless they took more pictures of an increasingly explicit nature.’ Telegraph.co.uk [London] 08 Dec 2015. This example was the most hard hitting one I found and shown me the dangers in which a hyper-real world can cumulate and how different people can feel/be when on social media or chatrooms, in virtual worlds where reality is lost yet can destroy lives.

Overall, I agree mostly with Jean Baudrillards idea that reality is a complex thing to achieve, and even when you believe you have achieved it there are still examples, whether it be advertising, TV programmes or social media that are skewing our reality. 

Medium is the Message

‘It is the medium that shapes and controls the scales and form of human association and action.’

- Marshal McLuhan

Marshal McLuhan is an eccentric, controversial, yet contemporary intellectual, who in my opinion explains his theories based more upon opinion than fact. He explains how electric modes of communication shapes us as human beings. In one of his most famous quotes, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." supports this idea as well as the idea that new technologies have decreased the interaction between man and his environment. Yet, his idea of the 'medium' that has shaped and 'controlled.. human association and action' is explained as a draw back in society and a 'trap for your attention', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw, Marshal McLuhan Lecture 1977.

Does this mean, according to McLuhan, that everything is a Medium? Everything in our lifetime shapes us as human beings for example, education, work prospects, friends and family, the news and media, however for McLuhan to state the light bulb as a medium blurs the concept of media and the concept of a tool in my opinion. If we accept his ideology of medium, we are accepting that everything is a medium.

 Are we as human beings a medium? If so, what do we blame the forms of human association and action on? Do we blame the 2011 UK Riots on the BBM (Blackberry Messenger) network like the media did? Or do we blame it on the criminals as human beings? 

Teens have turned to social media and technology due to crime rates increasing, thus leading to their parents protecting them from the outside world where they’re “not allowed to hang out the way you and I did, so they’ve moved it online.” Its Complicated; The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Danah Boyd citied in

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/ap_thompson-2/ 2014. 

However, by ‘moving it online’ have we unwittingly started a cycle where teens use social media and technology as a place to organise crime similar to the use of BBM in the 2011 UK Riots. This then questions are guardians/carers to blame due to trying to protect their teens from criminals, forcing them to stay indoors with only technology as a source of entertainment. Media and the news also play a big part in human association and action, for example, this is where guardians/carers get their information about the crimes where the media have, “began delivering a metronomic diet of horrifying but rare child-abduction stories, and parents shortened the leash on their kids”, Danah Boyd, 2014, Its Complicated; The Social Lives of Networked Teens.