Around 380 BCE, one of the pillars of Western literature was written; Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Written in his seminal book The Republic, it describes a scene where prisoners are chained inside a dark cave, with their heads fixed into position to a wall where shadows are being projected. The prisoners perceive these shadows as reality, completely unaware of the world and the true nature of existence beyond the outside world.
Plato used the allegory of the cave to convey his idea that our senses were fundamentally deceptive. An imitation of the objective reality (Plato said the true reality was The World of Forms), where there existed a perfect version of everything in the world we see. Your senses imprison you in a false reality, said Plato.
Even after over two thousand years, it remains one of the most prominent pieces of literature in the Western World. Even in Hollywood. The blockbuster movie franchise "The Matrix" can easily be described as an enactment of Plato's Cave. The protagonist Neo is abducted from the mundanity of his daily life to find out that is all an illusion, a synthesised reality. He then sets out to dissemble the fictitious reality he was once imprisoned in.
It is easy to see how The Matrix achieved enormous popularity and notoriety in Hollywood. If you switch on the TV, and you wouldn’t have to wait long for a world of death, destruction, and disease to play the part of the shadows in Plato’s cave. Sensationalised media narratives powerfully reinforce the shadows in our collective cave, perpetuating fear, captivity, and helplessness.
With the explosive rise of social media, the boundaries on this habit are getting blown further afield. One study showed that Americans in 2011 took in 5 times as much information as they did in 1986, and with the amount of information we are exposed to increasing by 5% each year – it is an exponential phenomenon.
The saturation of social media, coupled with the pervasiveness of ominous news and media contributes to the formation of a penetrating social fabric. As individuals, we shape our perceptions of the world based on the information we are exposed to. In turn, our biases, beliefs, and opinions are simultaneously formed and consolidated.
Psychology research suggests that your opinions serve to establish a sense of self and familiarity in an increasingly complex world. Questioning this system, therefore, poses a threat to your self-identity that has been amassed over the years.
William Swann underlined this notion in 1983 when he published his Self-Verification Theory. This states that individuals have a desire to maintain their existing self-image, their beliefs, and opinions, helping them feel more secure in an increasingly complex world, as outlined above. Around twenty years before, John F Kennedy captured the same sentiment of Swann:
“We prefer the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”.
To maintain this worldview, we habitually consume familiar information that aligns with our existing worldview. We watch the same material, read the same books, and interact with the same kind of channels on social media repeatedly. Joseph Klapper asserted this notion with his Selective Exposure Theory in 1963. Look at your bookshelf, and the people you’re following on social media. Is this true?
I’m sure you are all too familiar with a sinking uncomfortable feeling when evidence is presented to you that completely contradicts your point in a conversation. The rush of thoughts to defend your idea or flat-out rejection of the evidence, no matter how compelling. This would be the Cognitive Dissonance Theory at work. Presented by Leon Festinger in the early 1950s, it says that you will avoid information that challenges your worldview.
People find challenging or scrutinising their worldview, extremely uncomfortable. Or, in the candid words of Thomas Edison:
“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
Many of your judgements are simply not objective and truthful analyses of the world. Our interpretations and opinions are often mistaken for objective, cleverly arrived at, accounts of the world. Setting up camp in the comfort of your opinions negates the uncomfortable process of self-analysis, where you can often find unsavoury truths about your beliefs, thoughts, and behaviours, severing any opportunity for self-discovery.
A lot of people persistently lament about their lives, focusing on even the most insignificant details. However, it’s fair to say everybody complains. Whether it’s about short-term things like traffic, or medium to long-term positions in life such as having no money. But all these are deceptive thought processes to take comfort in absolving our responsibility for our lives. In line with Kennedy's assertion, unearthing these destructive thought processes will be virulently uncomfortable, but ultimately necessary to becoming a fulfilled individual.
Particularly when analysing the state of our lives with a broader perspective, like the menial job we’re in, or the unhappy relationship we endure, as opposed to someone cutting you off in traffic. These thought processes merely resemble the deceptive shadows peddled by the puppeteer in the cave, a familiar but distracting glumness.
Rigidity in thought can consume individuals and have implications for society at large. Some 29 years after his Self-Verification theory concerning the individual, Swann devised the Identity Fusion Theory (IFT). IFT refers to the psychological state of closely intertwining personal identity with group identity, creating a strong emotional bond, and shared agency. In short, the dissolution of boundaries between the self and a particular group with potentially dangerous consequences.
You only must glance at the virulent polarisation in worldviews today in Western society, particularly in the bitterly divided political landscape in the United States to demonstrate this. A 2014 Study found that 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican. Further, since 1994, the portion of the party with a highly negative view of the other party has more than doubled. What the study describes as "ideological silos" have begun to develop on each side, with concentrated nuclei of radical opinions enveloped in the worldviews of each party, eroding the middle ground.
The current divided landscape, defined by rising animosity, and contempt for differing worldviews demonstrates the harmful effects of rigid opinions. Plato himself located opinion as the midway point between ignorance and knowledge, rooting rigid opinions in ignorance.
Be that as it may, I did not write this to advocate distrusting your mind, not believing in anything, and simply being aimlessly blown by the winds of life. Fundamentally, the strength of someone’s belief or opinion is the fuel that powers innovation.
During the immense change and innovation in the 19th Century, there were repeated attempts to create a vessel that sailed the skies as a ship sails the sea. It was in the summer of 1896 when German Innovator Otto Lilienthal thought he had cracked that coveted prize when his newly created aircraft reached the skies and sustained flight. History, however, somewhat overlooks Lilienthal, for he plunged to his death from his aircraft that same day. So, the wait continued.
Unperturbed by the fate that beset their predecessor, two brothers by the names of Wilbur and Orville still heralded the torch that Lilienthal had lit. For decades, they persisted in the idea that they could create a vessel capable of flight. Despite numerous failures and injuries, the Wright Brothers finally got their just rewards when, on a bitterly cold, windy December day, the brothers’ cemented their legacy when Wilbur Wright soared into the history books with the new machine.
A deep belief in their idea that flying was possible equipped them with the armour to overcome the inevitable turbulence they would face on their journey. The injuries, the wind, and the ill fate of their predecessor could not prevent the brothers from actualising their unwavering belief.
After nearly six decades, a victorious 18-year-old Champion returned from the Rome Olympics proudly wearing his gold medal and entered a restaurant in his hometown – Louisville, Kentucky. It was the 1960s America, however, and it happened to be a "whites-only" restaurant, and the colour of his skin took precedence over the colour of the medal around his neck. When reminded of the policy, the vexed Olympian then took the medal from his neck and hurtled it into the Ohio River, where it still lies today. A bold gesture of disillusionment with the flag he had just fought for victoriously.
Through boldly standing up for his beliefs, through utilising his unrivaled platform to shed light on the social and racial injustices that seeped through the United States, Muhammad Ali became an icon of the 20th Century. He not only transcended boxing, where he cemented himself as arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time, but he also transcended sport.
Would he have done this without opinions? Would he have done this without a deep conviction in his beliefs? The answer is almost certainly not.
Without a strong conviction in the belief that a man-made machine could fly, the Wright Brothers would have remained anchored. Without a strong belief in his need to fight through adversity and injustice, Muhammad Ali would not be one of the pillars of the Civil Rights movement and the cultural icon he is today.
Before his seminal bout against the universally feared, knockout artist and undefeated heavyweight Champion Sonny Liston, the 22-year-old Ali stole the headlines in the build-up with poetical trash-talking and brash camaraderie. An embodiment of confidence. Yet, in the dressing room before the fight, he later recalled in an interview that this was the most nerve-wracking of his entire career as he battled to console himself from his nervous nausea. Ali fought, won, and the 7/1 underdog upset the world. Despite his temporary and fleeting nerves, Ali still boldly acted, drawing on the self-belief he entrenched in himself and was rewarded.
Plato outlined in his allegory of the cave that people are often quite prepared to have a narrow life experience through their mindless attachment to the most readily available information. In the prisoner’s case, this was the cave. In the world today, the narratives of mass media construct a desolate, anxiety-inducing reality that hypnotises millions. Furthermore, the surge of social media forms an echo chamber of our personal opinions and beliefs, themselves a product of environment, and experience with the world, which has fragmented society into neo-tribalist groups.
The readiness to judge and settle for our current perspective of the world can be the shackles that bound us to the cave. By putting yourself in unfamiliar, new environments, therein lies an opportunity to test the durability of your world perspective, or if it was, in fact, a by-product of your ignorance in an area. By shedding light on ignorance, we can gradually uncover the truth, become more confident individuals, and gain assurance in our beliefs through the lessons we have learned. Observing our opinions can slowly peel away those that a socio or self-imposed and uncover our native hue.
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