The story of the troglodyte

The cave dweller: Portrait of a man as a prehistoric being. Collage by G.F. Potter, 1899.
 Gelatin silver print and ink; photographed by me in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Sometimes, I discuss thought experiments in my blog, but to my surprise, I have never treated Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, although it is one of the most important philosophical thought experiments. I have mentioned it only shortly here and there. So let me make up for the negligence now.
Plato treats the allegory in his Republic (Πολιτεία, Politeia, 514a–520a, Book VII). Here is a summary:

A group of people is imprisoned in a cave, already since childhood. Behind their backs a fire is burning and between the fire and the prisoners people are continuously passing by. The heads of the prisoners have been fixed, so that they cannot see what is happening behind them but only what is right in front of them: The shadows of the passers-by on the wall of the cave. Even more, each prisoner sees only their little part of the wall with the moving shadows. Therefore the prisoners know only what these people look like and what they do and what further is going on in the world behind them in an indirect way and they know it only insofar as it casts shadows on their parts of the wall.
Then one of the prisoners is released and he goes to the real world. First his eyes are blinded by the light, but gradually he succeeds in seeing directly and with his own eyes what is happening there. However, when he returns to the cave and tells the prisoners what he has seen, no one believes him. They say that the light has ruined his eyes and that it has no sense to leave the cave, and that they’ll try to kill everybody who wants to release them and to lead them out of the cave.

Over the years this allegory has gotten many interpretations, including one by Plato and/or Socrates themselves. It’s not my intention to summarize them here or to comment on them. Instead, I’ll give it an interpretation in line with my recent blogs, and apply it to the world of social media in order to show its modern relevancy.
The allegory of the cave gives us a deep psychological insight: Human beings are trapped in their own images and they refuse to accept any fact or argument that seems to conflict with them. They are fed lifelong or at least during the time that a world view is formed with the same kinds of images so often and in such a compelling way that these images have become real for them in the deepest sense. For everybody in the cave the shadows on their little part of the wall have become their images of the world as it is. Once someone, even if it is one of their own group – let alone if it were someone from the outside – criticizes these world views, the cave dweller, or troglodyte as we may call them better, rejects the criticisms; or alternatively tries to integrate them in their existing world views by saying that it’s actually what they are already thinking; or picks from the criticism only what fits what they are already thinking; or they blame the critic; etc. In psychology, such adaptation processes are known as cognitive dissonance reduction, confirmation bias, shooting the messenger, etc. We can also say that troglodytes live in their own self-maintained bubbles. One step further is that the shadows do not represent the world as it is, but that they are manipulated by people in the “real” world. Then we can see the shadows as algorithms, actually in a negative sense insofar as they are used to hide the “real” world for the troglodytes and are used in the interest of manipulators.
This brings me to the world of today and the caves that we find here, and even more that are created here. Of course, I don’t want to say that in earlier days people didn’t live in their mental caves. Even the fact that Plato or Socrates came with the allegory of the cave 2500 years ago would make such an idea ridiculous. Or, for instance, think of Galileo (1564-1642) or Spinoza (1632-1677) who escaped from the cave of religion and got into trouble by doing so. Moreover, I don’t want to be a culture pessimist. However, in the present digital world it seems that we are increasingly pushed into the caves of social media and that an escape from one such a cave is only possible at the cost of being trapped into another digital cave, because the world has become so digitalized that it would break down if the digital network that spans the globe were seriously disrupted. It’s a network that makes nobody survive any longer without having a smartphone or at least a simple mobile in their pocket or bag. It is in this world that social media – the most striking digital phenomenon – create their caves into which they try to lure their users. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or another social medium, it’s known that everybody gets there only a selective part of the information there is to get about a theme, sometimes on request, but always partly and often wholly manipulated by the algorithms of the social medium you are using. Social media information is usually selective, manipulated information. If you are left, you get leftist information, if you are right you get rightist information, and it is difficult to break the pattern and become informed about the other side, even if you try. Just as in Plato’s allegory, you see your own private shadows and you cannot see the shadows that other troglodytes see – only those of your neighbours at most – for your head is fixed. Isn’t it as if we are back in prehistory when humans also lived in caves, but with the difference that in this digital age we have become troglodytes in a metaphorically sense?