Written by Bryan Kyouran
In the last 15 months of “lockdown” I have observed all manner of behaviours. Some typical, while others reminded me of Plato’s cave allegory.
The allegory begins with prisoners that are fixed and tied to a cave wall without ever having any knowledge of the outside world. They are unable to see one another and behind them, a continuous fire. In front of the fire is a pathway, the prisoners only see shadows that look like puppets of the people and animals that walk along it. The noises they hear are muffled, confused, and echoed off the cave walls. The prisoners believe the sounds they hear come from the shadows they see. For the prisoners this is their world.
One day, a prisoner is taken by force to the outside, he is stunned by the light emitting from the sun. He learns that shadows are cast by light, that sounds do not come from shadows, but from people and animals. With enthusiasm he returns to his fellow cave prisoners and tells them about what he saw. They do not recognise him, nor do they understand their fellow prisoner as he tries explaining to them all that he has seen, it is otherworldly to the prisoners. Scared of their friend, they decided that they would kill anyone who would take them from their cave. So ends the allegory.
When we were ordered into lockdown, I wondered why a majority were content, but not for too long. As you know well, people always return to places, environments, and others, where they feel safest. Government made our natural home alien. People returned to their caves, a world they were familiar with, a place where they felt safe. The Covid cave prisoner.
The shadows and sounds the Covid prisoners saw and heard from the outside were the refused minority telling them our natural home is not diseased. Nevertheless, the language was foreign to them. Moreover, the Covid cave emits light from televisions and computers, where comforting puppets can still be seen and heard.
So why is this cave allegory still relevant? To me it is simple. People do not want to leave their caves.
I would like to explain why.
We can turn to Isiah Berlin and his conceptions of freedoms.
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The first conception is viewed as a ‘negative freedom’. The freedom is an ‘absence of external obstacles’. It is a freedom without being impeded. It is to have a power within your means.
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The second conception is described as a ‘positive freedom’. This is a freedom of ‘self-governance’. Governments recognise people as a locus of autonomy.
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Another ‘positive freedom’ is known as ‘self-realisation’. This is understood to being able to recognise your self-governance and act rationally to get the thing you want or goal you wish to achieve.
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Lastly, the fourth concept of freedom is a ‘positive freedom’. It is the freedom of ‘empowerment’. A person is freer by the more things they can do. A person is more free by virtue of having power.
These are Berlin’s conceptions of freedoms. While the conceptions seem similar at first glance, there are distinctions between them. The freedom of ‘empowerment’ is not the same as the freedom from an ‘absence of obstacles’. For instance, during lockdown, we are free to move around our house without being impeded.
We can also be self-governing and have powers, but not the power to decide what to do. I would argue that for the minority, the power of self-governance was taken from them, while the other self-governing having the same powers could not decide how to use them so they just followed orders.
Self-realisation is different from all the other freedoms because a person can have all the other freedoms, yet fail to recognise the goal that they want to achieve. For example, I am not being obstructed from writing, nor am I being ordered to write, also I am not going to lose power or freedoms from writing this piece. However, if I failed to recognise these powers, and that I have goal I want to achieve, this piece would not exist.
Interestingly, Berlin says, the second and third conceptions of freedoms can be collapsed. If a person fails to recognise their self-realisation and self-governance a totalitarian state can force a person to be free, as a totalitarian government believes they know what is better for the people. Loosely, Jean Jacques Rousseau says, “Sometimes you have to force people to be free.” To Berlin, this is abhorrent; he believed that nothing could be worse than a person being forced to do something under the guise of freedom to the point that the person believes they are acting freely. This eerily resonates with our society today.
The U.K. government ordered the self-governing that lacked decision to stay home. The unrealised were filled with a perverted sense of duty, that they were doing the right thing. So little wonder these people arrested their own freedoms.
The allegory talks of a prisoner being forced out from the cave. For the self-governing without the power of decision, they will continue to follow orders, they will continue to be biological automatons. However, the unrealised with their perverted duty cannot leave their home. The government has provided them with a new perversion, the “New Normal”. Of course, the ‘new normal’ is anything but, yet it needs a new religion to give the unrealised, purpose.
We must all obey the holders of truth, the priests of technocracy. To cleanse ourselves we need the miracle vaccine, and in by doing so we will be set free.
The zealots of the new normal go further. People must be committed to their devotion and show proof of the miracle. The unrealised show that they are the last remaining prisoners. They will kill anyone that are to take them from their Covid cave. The killing is the freedoms that they never knew they had. In this way, the unrealised never leave the cave.
Amazing the vast number who have adopted the Stockholm Syndrome feature of developing affection for their captured situation – It is the childhood need for parental approval on steroids – Seeking parental approval is a huge benefit to advanced species and becomes so strong it carries into adulthood and is at the core of the civilising effect of enjoying the approval of peers and mutual respect as well as respect of worthy authority and likely the actual reason for development of civilisation in the first place – Anyway governments tap into this to get obedience and have done really well with it to build this Pyramid of Power and Fraudulent Fortune under the Star of Covid and those in it never want to see it dismantled – So many believe and obey the authority even though we see that Lockdowns and Masks make no difference to infection outcomes in separate territories regardless of the harshness or not of the Mandates – The only actual difference is the harsher the Mandate the greater the collateral damage of economy, well being and mental health – The latest data that the pandemic year we lost less life years than in the previous 11 years and the age of Covid death is two years longer than actual life expectancy and of course it is so mild most have to be tested to even know they are ill – In spite of this non event our masters have instilled the Fear everywhere – Lets hope we have more luck with the experimental injection and that our masters do not breach the Nuremberg code by enforcing experimental medication like Dr Mengele did.
This article sounds like “Classical Liberal”, who’s been in Independence Daily before.
I can assure you – this article is not by ‘Classical Liberal’!
The more of these articles there are, the more we will all chip away at understanding. And it’ll all come together sooner or later. And the realisation that we actually had something we didn’t know about, But are about to lose .!! That is very annoying, and therefore powerful.
My struggle is not those that do not understand, but those that do not care. The apathetic person. How do we get them to be concerned about any of this?
You can’t. Don’t waste time on them anymore. I have a close friend of 50 years, almost family, who totally stonewalls and refuses to discuss. Collaborates with the whole thing and patronises me when I try to reason with her.
A psychologist might be able to explain but I never will be able to.
The plato illegory is about the line (of credit ) the shadow ( of ourselves) the cave = the hole in ground we put ourselves in .
Noone was forced to leave the cave . There are still a lot who find the present situation attractive , mainly in the long Covid public sector.
EG Police who no longer have to confront criminals , firemen without fires , surgeons with no operations , teachers with all children sent home.
I do find the allegory can be useful to peak into different aspects of our lives, even spiritual ones. I suppose that is the point in Allegories.
I agree with you that there are people that find the whole thing “attractive”. Thats the sad part in it. I hope after the bread and circus have quieten down that people will become agitated with these people.
I am all of the sudden reminded of Kafka’s “Josephine”.
Total drivel.
How would you, or someone you know, like to be dead?
In many third world countries with no/little vaccination, that’s exactly what’s happening.
What’s happening is malnutrition, pollution and energy poverty – all of which have been worsened by global lockdowns which have a disproportionate impact on poorer nations.
I appreciate that people are dying around the world. Yet this to me has always been the case. I grew up on “feed the world” and as I grew up I looked to those that had power and the means, and if they believed in what they sang, why did they not end hunger.
I would realise that the sing songs and “charities” or NGO’s were unctuous at their root.
A classic example of this was seen when Bill Gates pushed for a contract between Oxford university and AstraZeneca. Why? Because Oxford university wanted to make the Vaccine available to all by the means of open source technology. This would have given all the “Third world countries” the capacity to create the vaccine for themselves without having to buy them. But, Bill Gates and his buddies had a different idea, a more profitable one.
If only Bill Gates, AstraZeneca and Oxford university cared about the “third world” as much as you do.
harry – you get around wuite a bit don’t you. Got blocked too much over at The Conservative Woman did you??
Very emotive essay! It certainly gets the brain wheels turning. I read that quotation from Plato couple of days ago. It disturbed me then and it disturbs me now!
Looking back I think that the first lockdown was an ‘experiment’. They didn’t really know how we would all react. It was a calculated supposition. They would have backtracked, I think, if there had been immediate pushback. But the psyops had done their job well and people accepted without question that there was a ‘very dangerous virus’ out there! So, buoyed up with their success they have turned the screw ever tighter until they now have a majority of the population in a vice-like grip of fear. They may hate their servitude but they are just too afraid to explore the possibility of freeing themselves from the prison they have accepted and created in their own homes.
How tragic! What a waste of human potential is happening before our eyes! Our children are being sacrificed upon the altar of overweening political power! Humanity of feeling is totally foreign to those who have found themselves in a position to tyrannise over others. They are enjoying that power and will not easily relinquish it without some cataclysmic happening.
Like the poem about the kingdom being lost because of the lack of a horse shoe nail, we have lost our freedom because of the lack of an education that should have created a logical thinking, questioning population
I agree, the first lockdown was most definitely a reactionary one. I remember myself being extremely cautious about it all until more information about Covid came out. By then the damage had already been done.
After the first lockdown, Covid was not that scary, we were given food tokens to go outside and eat haha. Yet in isolation people became fearful like you say, and now, people want to police one another. I wonder how many actually feel like they are serving over those that feel like its a duty.
I refuse to let the children become a sacrifice. But more on that another day.
I do believe people enjoy the power of finger wagging. I think there is a deeper psychology to it. I think it reveals how little power a person has in their lives. So policing one another to wear masks and get the dam jab gives them a sad power. Which reminds me of what you said about a thinking person. A thinking person is empowered just by thinking. My worry is not the person that feels empty, rather the automaton. Silent but deadly for the right government.