Myth of Plato's Cavern brought to our time

How times have changed! How stories change!

How many years are required for it to be verified, that is, for a change to become visible or tangible? Change of attitude ?, Change of mentality ?, Change of direction?… It doesn't matter. Change!

We change clothes daily, we change deodorant and position in bed. We change the menu and color the house . We change the curtains and mobile phone. There are changes that we are fully aware of; of others, however, we have not the slightest idea even when the only constant is the change itself.

There are expected and unexpected changes; visible and invisible changes and desired changes and changes imposed. Some people (the least) like, seek and precipitate changes; others, on the other hand, avoid them, run away from them and become frightened at the thought of changing.

We prefer the comfort of the known, that which does not reserve any surprise and that, consequently, we can anticipate, although and being honest, deep down we would like things to be otherwise. We know (mostly unconsciously) that comfort, stability and stillness are unproductive, lethargic and anachronistic conditions within a universe that is constantly expanding. We spend more than half of our lives sleeping, we even sleep at night. The modern world presents us with countless comforts that impel us to daydream, but one day, a holiday maybe, someone or something wakes us up and encourages inside us (maybe in a corner of the brain) a little voice that encourages us to open Eyes, get up and walk.

Deep down we know we should do it. We know from previous experience that our condition is not to be lying on a sofa with a can of beer in hand and watching the football game that happens on television (euphemism for the soap opera on duty or the absurd reality). There must be more. There has to be more!

We try to get up but we realize that we are tied hand and foot to the couch, but still, we are free. We can reach the fridge, the bed, the bathroom, the TV remote control and, even, we can go to the office to work and share with our family and friends a pleasant weekend. Moreover, once a year the chains become flexible as if by magic and allow us to take a plane to enjoy fifteen days abroad. Sometimes we change our choice and decide to buy a new car, after all, it's all a matter of taste.

Between television with its realities, sports and news; work in the office or workshop and visits to our family and friends, or to the mall, life goes away.

We have paid with our money (or that of the bankers, because the money really is not ours) the 42-inch screen that adorns the wall in front of our sofa. We have also paid for the car, the computer, the remote control, the bathroom, the bed and the fridge, we have even paid for the chains that tie us. Of course, the chains are a bit more expensive because, almost always, they are imported and of excellent quality. By the way, these chains sell them not only in hardware stores, but also in clothing stores, in supermarkets, in shopping centers and, of course, in banks.

Tied to the sofa, we are amazed at many things: the new national soccer team shirt, the last song of the singer on duty, the wedding dress of Countess Connivance, the weather reports in New York, the CNN news , the shortage of clothes of the catwalk models, the situation of misery and poverty of the protagonist of the soap opera of the day, the almost innate capacity of the superhero who in the highest grossing film murders one hundred people but remains the good one, the design spectacular of the new vacuum that will make us happy and the eloquence of the "politician-thief-lawyer on duty" sure candidate to win the next presidential election. Our 42-inch screen is the eye through which we see and know the entire world.

Someone knocks on the door on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. He is a friend we recently met and who invites us to turn off the screen and walk for a while on the desolate streets of the big city. Of course, we declined the invitation. What could be more important than being aware of everything that happens around the world? We said goodbye to our friend, closed the door, opened the fridge and reached for a new beer to accompany the soccer final that has just begun. There is always a final, a championship, a concert, a reality show, a new novel that promises to be better than the previous one… in short, a new candileja that leaves us perplexed and tied to the screen.

The football game started. Screams of jubilation and insults coexist in the same scenario where the protagonist is not the human being, or the favorite team. The cameras and looks follow a single object: the ball. Now he is the king, the god. A god that has changed colors and weight over the course of time. Before it was black and white, now it can be yellow or red. The passions are lit and screams are heard chanting one or the other team. Suddenly comes the climax, the peak of orgasm in the erotic game of chasing the ball: the goal. The passion is expressed anyway: biting the nails, looking at the giant screen that repeats again and again the act of the goal, the unconscious screams and the insults of thick caliber, until the humiliation of the opposite. Everything is worth it at that moment, even tears of joy or pain. Then, and as is logical, calm ensues, the restlessness that always follows the puerile and superficial joy of the crowd. I return home, to the couch, to bed, to work.

But what happened to that friend or acquaintance who on Sunday knocked on our door and invited us to turn off the television and walk? This question arises in our mind from time to time, but we move it away so we don't have to think. Thinking is difficult and always creates discomfort. That is the greatness of the football game: in the middle of the crowd it is not necessary to think, just to feel. What do we know about him? Almost nothing. We met him one day at a meeting of friends, someone introduced him to us but we talked little or nothing that day.

Now I remember that I had a somewhat strange look and that I spoke little, almost nothing. Anyway, it will surely be fine in the midst of his madness, because he was crazy, no doubt. You have to be crazy to refuse a Sunday afternoon in front of the TV watching a football game.

The next weekend arrives. The party is not very promising and our wife fervently wishes to go to the mall to buy some clothing, but above all to figure a little (that magical art of appearing in front of the showcases, unleashing what we see in them but as we cannot or do not dare, we console ourselves with our neighbors and friends see us asking for prices). Many people in the mall. The reason is simple: here you also don't have to think, just feel. It is curious but the stadium and the shopping center are not so different, they have similarities that are also present in other places such as most schools, universities, churches, hospitals and cemeteries around the world.

Ah Now I realize: when we are in the midst of these crowds, since we don't think, we just feel, the chains disappear or we think they disappear. We do not feel them. It is like when we have a small wound on the little finger of the left hand that hurts and bothers us, but when we miss the pointer and instead of hitting the nail, we hit the right thumb, then the Pinkie pain disappears as if by magic. Consciousness focuses on another point, the thumb. Now I understand that I do not understand . A large chain around the neck makes the chains of our hands and feet disappear. With the rope around the neck and the other end of a beam, you don't think about the hunger that the stomach feels.

After endless hours of visiting one and another store, she ends the journey. He has only bought two things. Homecoming. There awaits us the comfort of the known, of what no surprises, of stillness and inertia. The chains of feet and hands are visible again and feel heavier, but after all, we are at home. That night the memory of that madman who invited us to walk that Sunday returns to our mind. Why does the mind keep bothering us with that thought?

The next day and during lunch someone tells us that he finished reading an excellent book. “Wow! Are there people who still read? ”, We ask, bewildered. We also see him very excited, although he is almost always alone because he does not know football and does not like it. People prefer who knows everyday topics.

Some time later we realize that the acquaintance of the Sunday walk is a friend of the book reader. It is no coincidence, both are "weird". The like are attracted, come together. "God creates them and they come together, " said my grandmother. That's why my colleagues love television, realities and soap operas.

What will be beyond these walls of this house? From this city? From this country? As a child I used to ask myself these questions and wanted to travel far away. I wanted to be a fireman, or doctor! But work, home, family, society and television made me forget those crazy things. Maybe the Sunday walker and the book reader don't have a television and that's why they do what they do.

Life goes on and commitments become heavier and harder, harder to fulfill while somewhere, real life keeps calling us. We do not pay attention to these calls because we are too busy with daily chores while social commitments fill the little space left by work and new technological developments consume the time and money we have left. It is curious to note the force and transcendence that technological devices and social conventions exert on us, those that over time and uncritical acceptance become norms. A simple analysis would allow us to see how over time the social norms have been basically the same, but with different names and methods of application and sanction. Have we not learned the necessary lessons? How many times will we have to repeat the same processes before we can extract the teaching that life intends to transmit? Learning will be very slow as long as we remain locked in the four walls of our comfort. It is necessary, then, to "open the windows", because if we do not do it, everything will remain the same.

To “open windows” or even create them, the appropriate elements or tools are required, but first of all, it is necessary “the fervent desire” to see the light or breathe a new air. Once that motivating desire has been detected, the creative will comes that makes us take the tools in our own hands and start hitting the walls. But the intention can only come from within us. Only when our true being realizes everything that is lost by sitting, locked and chained in the middle of four walls, pending the television program, attentive to follow social conventions and repeat traditions, only then can we "make waves" .

But what things do we miss by being in that miserable position? I do not know! My understanding does not reach that much.

Considering the synchronicity and the law of cause and effect, the resolution does not take long to appear. On any given day, perhaps on a Sunday when there was no football or soap operas, we went into the usual cafeteria to have the usual coffee. On the side and sitting at the same table are always two usual characters having coffee. But today they look different, or perhaps we are the ones with the deepest eyes. As we get a little closer to try to find the differences, we notice that they do not carry chains and that they signal us with their eyes so that we sit at their table. With some fear and some suspicion we accept your invitation. If they see us there, what might our friends think? Anyway, after some doubts, we sat down.

It has been three hours since we accepted the invitation, three hours that seem only five minutes. After just listening to them, we have learned more than in the last ten years. We have learned real, true, beautiful, fair and eternal things. Now we realize two things: 1: We have too much crap of all types inside our brain; 2: We were wrong.

The first is not really a problem, because it has an easy solution. The second is deeper because it detracts from us the essential foundations on which we had built our entire last life.

Pretensions, beliefs, resolutions, dictates of a supposed conscience, social norms, erroneous structures of thought, skewed elucidations, incorrect judgments and conceptions of the universe barely clarified. Of course and as rational beings, we wonder if the wrong ones are not the two of them, since the majority, the vast majority of humanity follows these behaviors. At that moment a quiet little voice echoes inside us saying: "A lie is not truly transformed by the fact of being believed and repeated a thousand times . "

A house has made us lose sight of entire buildings; exclusive dedication to another person has prevented us from knowing the six billion human beings that populate this land; the attachment to our city drove us away from the wonders of distant villages, as distant as they were attractive ... And now we wonder what would have happened to medicine if the first doctors had not broken dogmatic rules about the prohibition of opening corpses? Conventionalisms and social norms, as well as religious dogmas, insane attachments and traditions only lead to the stagnation of the species because destruction and construction are two sides of the same coin. The chains continue to bind us to the things, feelings and thoughts that we have increased throughout a lifetime.

The conversation between the two friends continues and we are only right to listen. It is better not to say anything if there is nothing to say. It is not a coincidence nor is it rare that they are talking about a humanity locked in a cave, bound hand and foot and condemned to survive by repeating the same life patterns. This is nothing strange. In those almost four hours we have learned, among other things, that there is a universe in full development; that human beings are not the only species that lives on this planet, that there are developing species above and below the human being; that concerns about the future are absolutely unnecessary; that emotions, desires, passions and thoughts can and should be controlled; that reality is merely mental and that a sensible improvement in a single individual improves the species. Never before has existence been so clear, simple and profound. Another coffee and back home.

It has been a few weeks, perhaps years before our brain warned us of the changes that precipitated in our mental essence from that Sunday afternoon in that cafe and with those friends. Without knowing how, when and why, the changes were also evident in our daily lives: the routines were changed, the tastes were transformed and the senses sharpened. We find ourselves more sensitive to the suffering of others, to the miseries of the world and for the first time we begin to believe that there is something beyond what we have considered until that moment as existence. The sun shines more than before and it seems that it did it only for us, the birds sing more clearly and we hear new sounds. We were deaf to life. Life becomes easier and the universe is now a set of wonders ready to be explored and understood. We no longer feel chains in our body, and at the beginning, that terrifies us. Freedom has a relative close to loneliness. In the midst of so many wonders we notice that everyone, even our own family and our closest friends, have moved away, have taken distance and now consider us “something separate”, apart from the rest of the crowd. The deeper we are from humanity, the more separated they will see us from it.

In this state we understand the motives of environmental groups, vegetarians and those who fight for a new humanitarian understanding. We also understand that, although we don't know the reasons, the consequences will appear sooner rather than later. We accept that we are not alone and that our existence is interdependent with other human beings, animals, plants and minerals, as well as with the species whose state of development is above humanity itself.

We have changed! No doubt. We discover ourselves as intact beings, new and had to face our own evolution with the tools that the universe had since the beginning of time. We recognize that past, present and future are coexisting and that time is only a social convention, such as schedules, clothing or social commitments. We do not care about the corruption, evil and misery of the world because deep down we know that they are only passing states, that they have no real essence and that the effect on our own being depends directly on our will to accept them within us. It is clear that all of them are playing the same game within a systematized and fully controlled cavern with a remote control that we do not see. We know that television, newspapers, magazines and all technological developments are nothing more than new rattles that they put in our hands to entertain us and thus prevent us from thinking and taking the evolution of our consciousness and our being into our own hands. Freedom becomes somewhat compromising, hopeful and dangerous.

Now we are light, now we are life and essence of this universe in constant expansion. We are creators and aware that "the vessel" became "the source . " Now on the side of the cafeteria, at the usual table, there is someone else. Tomorrow there must be another, and another one the day after. That is our real fate.

Myth of Plato's Cavern brought to our time