I often tell people that the world’s not getting worse. 

We just have the ability to see more of it than we used to. 

Even just looking through the lens of American history ⏤ especially considering the sheer number of Black lynchings in the south as documented by Florence and Monroe Work, the overall treatment of Native American people, and the fact that we straight up put Japanese people into internment camps in the United States for about four years during the 1940s ⏤ it’s really not a hard argument to make. 

But lately, I think the shift in our perceptions goes a lot deeper than that. 

I can’t speak for the entirety of American society. My ego’s only big enough to take credit for an area the size of Texas, at most. 

However, if what I’ve noticed happening in my life is indicative of a greater trend, I think I know what’s happened to us and how it happened. 

In short, we’re able to see more, but we’ve also been trained and conditioned to be hyper focused on only a few parts of everything.

Before I explain my view, let me just briefly take us back to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. 

Instead of me taking the time to break it down in my lackluster way, here’s how Plumbstone Books briefly summarized its context in its 2016 translation of the work by Shawn Eyer (provided by Harvard University):

Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, written around 380 bce, is one of  the most important and influential passages of The Republic. It vividly illustrates the concept of Idealism as it was taught in the Platonic Academy, and provides a metaphor which philosophers have used for millennia to help us overcome superficiality and materialism. In this dialogue, Socrates (the main speaker) explains to Plato’s brother, Glaukon, that we all resemble captives who are chained deep within a cavern, who do not yet realize that there is more to reality than the shadows they see against the wall.

(full version can be found here.)

Now, here’s my take on how we got to where we are:

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A very long time ago, we got out of the cave ⏤ collectively, as a society. 

We started building our own things, creating our own families and trying to find some kind of beauty in the balance of our place in the real and natural world. Or at least have some kind of tenuous peace with it. 

But once we had evolved to a certain point, survival became less of a concern. Suddenly, there were times of nothingness. There was time for our minds to wander and wonder about the greater world around us. 

There was time to come up with the concept of happiness.

And at some point, someone shouted out the idea that it’s not communities that make us strong, but that it’s our status on our own as individuals that leads to “happy” and “successful” lives.

So we left behind our communities and families and the simplicity of that life we knew.

And we entered a transparent tunnel. 

One that someone told us we had to walk down in order to be more fully-developed beings that could stand on their own two feet out in the “real world”. 

So we trudged along, even as the glass walls started to get a little dirty and harder to see out of.

We kept pushing forward even as we swore that we felt little pebbles of rock and dirt at the bottom of our shoes. 

And just when we thought about looking back and questioning the dim and dank dark that was closing in around us, we saw this bright scene on the other side of it. 

For some maybe it was a wife and child playing out in the yard, or a partner listening to music on an old record player or just simply your favorite place in the world waiting just on the other side of whatever this little hiccup in the journey was. 

And at some point, the space we walked through started getting a little more cramped. And we realized that the backpack and things we’d brought with us weren’t going to fit.

So we left them behind and turned and started shimmying our way along — because we could still see the light, and that meant that there was something better on the other side. 

Then, at some point, the ceiling of this corridor we’d been in (for, quite honestly, too long now) started descending, to the point that — at first — we had to hunch over so that we didn’t bang our heads on it. 

But within a few minutes, we were crawling on our hands and knees as mud and rocks clung to our legs and fingers like the memories of the things we left behind in order to “be somebody”. 

Then, the moment came.

We forced our way through a crack in one last wall. We barely squeezed through, and cut our arm on something jagged protruding from the wall in the process. But by that point, we couldn’t tell what it was.

And we didn’t care.

There it was. The light. 

We started running towards it, overjoyed ⏤ only to crash head-first into some invisible barrier.

A small line, a subtle crack wormed its way up and down it until we could see a line cutting through the pretty scene of everything we dreamed.

And we realized it was a wall of glass, one that stood immovably in our way.

Meanwhile, the whole time those scenes of all of our dreams coming true continued to play out just on the other side of it.

If we could only shatter the glass, we could reach out and touch them. Grab hold of them.

We could finally feel the warmth of them sliding down the little individual prints of our fingers.   

And we can’t help but linger there.

So there we are, lured back into the cave. 

Because free creatures are hard to control or convince that they need material things in order to be happy. 

And how do you get someone to give up their own happiness and freedom? Tell them that what makes them happy is wrong or promise them something better — but that it comes with just a “little” more effort and sacrifice.

See, the Powers That Be can’t leave people completely hopeless anymore. They learned their lesson after the first time we got out.

Hope is the very thing that they have to use to keep us in chains, after all. 

So they put beds in the cave now ⏤ really nice ones with all the latest memory foam advancements (and only at half the price they was before, but just this week only). 

And how about that glass, huh? Clear enough for us to not even notice it was there — all thanks to the Powers that Be’s sponsor, best window cleaner in the business.

And they know it gets lonely here sometimes, so they’ve given all of us the latest smartphone from that company that plans obsolescence for all its devices so that you have to go back and get the newest model — you know, the one that came out this year, not last year or the year before that. 

The Powers That Be even sprung and got us all the pro version ⏤ big enough that you’ll struggle to fit it in your pocket, but it’s more important than your other things, right? 

Plus, now we can talk to the friends and family that we left behind out in that boring, lifeless and colorless world we left to get here while we wait ⏤ here in this lovely little 10-by-10 (which anyone would absolutely kill for in New York City, for the price that we’re getting that is). 

Oh right, forgot to mention that.

Listen, the Powers that Be know this wasn’t exactly what we were expecting, and they apologize for the inconvenience. But they thank us all for our patience and understanding. 

Also, they’re going to need us to pay rent. 

After all, it takes a lot to run electricity through this place, and it’s only fair that we should be a team player and help cover that cost, so they say, as we wait to move on.

Don’t freak out. They’ve already got jobs lined up for us, and there should be a laptop underneath our beds. Just follow the login instructions and someone will send you a message to explain what you’ll be doing. 

Yes, they know that all of us want to get to the other side right now.

But you see, the Powers That Be are just simply not in a position, financially, yet where they can move the glass and let us keep going all the way to the other side. 

But they’ll schedule a meeting to talk about it with each of us again in about six months. 

Now, again, it takes a lot to keep this space comfortable and running efficiently for us, apparently, so they can’t give us a lot of money to start either.

Good news, though. That should go up in about 90 days ⏤ at least that’s what they said. 

They’re also going to need us to pay for the laptop, cellphone and the crack in the glass. They ARE the top of the line, and we KNOW that quality is expensive in today’s society. And we really shouldn’t have charged at the glass like that.

Don’t worry. We don’t have to do anything extra on our part to take care of it.

They’ll just take it out of whatever pay they were going to give us for the work — we’ll be working completely remote, by the way — for the next, say, five years until it’s all paid off. 

There WILL be interest, just so we’re all aware of that. 

They know we’ve sacrificed so much to be here. And they are absolutely blown away by our enthusiasm and commitment. They think we’ll do great things here. 

… Leave? 

Hmm. Suppose we could. 

And they say we’re absolutely free to. 

But it might not be safe.

The Powers That Be have warned us that not a day goes by that someone around here doesn’t hear about someone who tried to leave being found dead somewhere in the tunnel. I mean, people here were ⏤ quite frankly ⏤ shocked that we didn’t report seeing even one dead body on our way, you know, with how frequent violent attacks are out there.

Or at least that’s what they said.

Apparently, there are also these savages that have taken up in the tunnels. They blend into the dark. So they just quietly watch while you’re stumbling your way through, and they can easily sneak up on you and attack you without warning.

They can’t be trusted. And they’re everywhere.

… has anyone seen these creatures? 

No, but … well, they say there are some reports that prove something’s going on there. And they say they have the best people looking into it and that those people say that they definitely most likely maybe undoubtedly exist. 

Did you hear them at all while we were coming here? They say everybody who comes through the tunnel also reports some periods of hearing them.

Anyway because of that, they encourage us ⏤ for our own safety ⏤ to just stay here for a little while. 

The Powers That Be promise that they’ll let us know when it’s safe to leave ⏤ if we so choose, because we totally can at any time.

It’s just … Well, you see, we owe them that money now. So, we should probably stay in order to pay that off.

I mean, we are good people, right? 

We don’t want to leave them high and dry after all they’ve done for us, do we?

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Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Oh, I could go on and on with this rant using more of the phrases and sayings and the feigned compassion of the corporations of our society.

I could really belabor my point until I’m just beating the wet, boney mass of what the dead horse used to be. 

But you see the real picture by now.

Don’t you?

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