The Allegory of The Cave

The Allegory of ???? Money

Remember this one from Philosophy? This is the key to breaking out of the trap what it is generally bull shitted to refer to by highly educated philosophers and sociologists.

It goes sort of like this in the traditional Allegory of the Cave:

A bunch of slaves are chained to a wall in a cave facing the dark back wall, and have been so chained all their lives in the dark, while up above behind them is a fire in front of which some demented socio-psycho-philosopher is putting on puppet shows and placing objects in front of the fire. The reality of those chained to the wall is that the shadows are reality, a book is not a book, but the shadow, and on and on thus that all things they experience are not the things themselves.

Now the general leap to conclusion is that this was Plato showing the wise that they thusly cannot know anything as all experience in the human consciousness is a reflection of the real world and thus we actually know nothing of the real world, all that we see hear and feel is just a representation.

What I say is Bull Shit.

The Allegory of the Cave is the lesson taught to and for the Rich and Powerful. The lesson is that in order to maintain power the ruling class must keep the majority, and especially the philosophers and the educated and the professionals and the managers chained to that wall enthralled by the shadows cast by a powerful all encompassing set of premises and social constructions which keep them chained to the wall and blinded to all other possibilities.

Money = Real things. Religion = Off world God. Accumulation of Wealth in Symbolic Accounting Systems = The Only Way to Have Human Relations. War = a necessary Evil. Social Systems take Centuries or Millenia to Change. The Natural World is here For us to Exploit and Convert to whatever at the moment makes a quick symbolic profit.

So that’s it folks. The chains are deeply embedded and run back thousands of years to when your ancestors were enslaved, made to be indentured warriors or servants and denied of all any rights for centuries while being beaten down by the shadows cast by religion and feudal governments and then by enlightenment science and technology and now by a global fascism of war and corporate dominance.

The Green Phoenix Allegory of Money.

You are chained to your cultural epoch, the chains are invisible yet they bind you tightly to illusions cast brightly by religion and education and the certain and swiftly painful yanking back into darkness that accompanies any turn towards the light. The shadows dance and frolic all the time cajoling and enticing you towards a dream. All real things are converted to symbols, all life to death, peace to war, and freedom is crunched into what is called free market and democracy and rewards for the competitive. You jerk on the chains from time to time and the result is dismissal, jail, bankruptcy, ridicule for not playing the game, they come and take away your possessions, you say I am free I do not want to pay taxes, I do not believe the government has rights to my land, I want to build a house as I see fit not to some code, I think animals or fish or birds or plants have rights, they jerk your chain tight and call you a lunatic, as no free rational person could have such notions of freedom and life, look back in to the brightly cast shadows and be a true believer or suffer the consequence. You say no, War is wrong, and they say you are a crazed unpatriotic weakling who must be shunned, you say using up all of nature for short term profit is absurd and they say you are deranged and cannot comprehend the all encompassing way of the universe and that you must participate or be confined. You go out and search for things that do not exist as they cannot exist in a shadow world in the shadow world real things are not possible. Every thing in the shadows is converted from reality to symbolism, every human action is reduced to a monetary transaction, every good is converted to evil, and all sustenance is turned against its nature and made into a shadow in the books of accountants and the essence stolen away by men and woman who thrive on the consumption of the soul of the word and the universe.
The shadow of the converted reality goes hand to hand, credit card to electronic transfer, consumer to producer, person to person, all blind and alienated from reality, trading and bartering in absurd reductionistic conversion of reality and life to death in the shadow of money. War money, Food money, housing money, fish money, dog money, children money, health service money, tree money, wood money, dirt money, nuclear bomb money, stock money, wife money, death money, bread money, cheap useless crappy products money, quality money, book money, idea money, law money, sewage money, taxes money, clothing money, accounting for money money, fun money, addicition money, air money, water money, heat money, sex money, entertainment money, death money, liberation money, freedom money, slavery money. The shadow is deep and dark and all encompassing. And in it you scramble and writhe in agony and reach for ever more possibility of of…. Money.

And you cannot even see it, you cannot like a fish in water you cannot see it, the chains are invisible currents running so deep and embedded in a million channels within the shadows reaching into the far past and entangled in every religious and economic institution such that you are bound tight by the strands and kept enslaved by the nurturance and sustenance almost completely. You become befuddled and confused when you are for a moment undistracted from the roaring blaze stoking the fire that casts the shadow. The halo of liberation appears and it so contradicts your reality in every way that you are shocked and afraid to even look upon it as possible. For a moment perhaps you see a glimmer of something, a loosening of the chains, for a little bit you see a hope, a better way, some movement, or some small thing that opposes the darkness, but then are gripped in thrall again, a stock report, a tug from the chains of academia, another study some more polls, another extinction banally reported as infotainment, the history channel, green planet, NPR regaling you with martial music and important sounding announcers lulling you back into submission and surrender, after all we in the rich world have it so swell just add some more to that 501-K plan, maybe refinance the house, perhaps a change in careers? Move to a less populated area and build a green home? Your friends, your family, your career, the mortgage my god what about the mortgage or the rent payment for god sake!
Ah no, no that glimmer, that lightness of being, that reasonable possible ultimately sensible way is just nonsense, stupid , even insane. It is all so complicated and look at how much Money they have anyway, the corporations and the banks and the big evil government and its gigantic awe and terror war machines all over the whole planet… better to just go with the flow and get by with the good life before it all goes to hell and the glimmering shimmering dream cast by the fires is so enticing and beautiful when one really does get down and consider the whole thing, could the economic dream machine, the money power machine stokers of the fires casting the shadows and bestowing the shadow illusion money that sustains us all be wrong?? Could they be wrong? Could it possibly be that life and death and food and trees and animals and birds and wolves and whales are not convertible to generally acceptable principles of accounting? How could it be that counting up all things using mathematics and having the cleverest or most evil person gain control of everything by manipulating symbols representing the conversion of the whole world to death be wrong??? .

How could that possibly be true because that is fucking insane.

Away away look away from the flames and stay deep in the comfort of the shadow.