Plato's Cave and Modern Slavery.

What does Plato’s Cave Allegory have to do with Modern Slavery?

Plato’s allegory of the cave is a concept devised by Plato as a reflection on the difference between belief versus knowledge: a useful allegory for the challenges faced by a minority today trying to help a majority to become aware of some of the harsh realities of this world.

Plato's allegory starts with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained – they cannot even turn their heads - inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall and the prisoners who cannot move watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality. They have known nothing else.

Plato posits that one prisoner could become free. She can finally see the fire and realises the shadows are a false reality. This prisoner could escape from the cave and discover there is a whole new world outside of which they were previously unaware. This liberated human comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen, and comes to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no other or better life.

Its application to Wicked Problems like modern slavery can be captured thus: the ordinary human does not imagine seeing anything beyond the shadows they are limited to seeing physically. These humans see only the images projected by the artists. They see capital accumulation, flash watches, and cars. These humans see spending on sofa art and “experience vacations” they have to fly to. These humans see Amex Platinum, Netflix, and football games and believe it is all there is to life. But, of course, as the allegory shows, these material things on which ordinary people are almost exclusively focused are only the shadows of life, an inaccurate representation of existence, leading people to buy oblivious to the life behind the material things.

Panem et circenses, these shadows are projected by the artists who would keep those people in the cave mesmerized by the shadows of life. The artists of our time are those who provide the fluff we are in thrall to: the Tesla, the Rolex, the sofa art, the credit cards and football games. Artists, our billionaires and politicians, have the average person captured and project on the walls of the cave what they want people to focus on. Distractions, deflections, charms, trinkets: fluff.

In contrast, the more-than-ordinary life belongs to those who are aware there is a reality beyond and behind the projections. Those who have escaped the cave. These people – pejoratively labeled by the shadow-watchers as “woke” - are aware of climate change. Aware of modern slavery. Aware of commercialism. Aware of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Aware of our Wicked Problems. These people know for certain that real life only exists beyond the distractions.

Most humans will live at the bottom of the cave oblivious to the modern slavery behind what they are conditioned to mindlessly buy, and a small few – the 1% - will be the major artists that project the shadows with the use of human-made light. Obliviousness has been made an art form made by the 1% for the capture of the unthinking and unimaginative.

If you bother reading this, you know there is infinite life beyond the shadows, and are part of the unknowable x% who see beyond the 1%'s puppets. And, in that life, wicked problems prevail and govern our real future while shadows distract the oblivious majority. The failure of most humans to see past the shadows in front of the fire does not reduce the reality of them. But it does reduce the collective weight of the response to those problems.

Our shared challenge is to find more and more ways to lead people out of the cave. The more people we lead out of the cave, able to see beyond their shadows, to realise the fluff is fluff, the sooner and more ably we can address our Wicked Problems such as modern slavery. Until that happens, the problems grow and grow, untreated, because of the obliviousness of the majority. People will stay in the cave until helped out. That’s the challenge of our times.