Offspring in the Tetons

Plato’s Republic, Horkheimer’s America

Ever since Plato’s Republic and the Allegory of the Cave, (and probably long before that) humans have limned the disparities between appearance and reality. In Plato’s cave, the poor denizens are forced to view a dim refraction of reality upon the cave wall , cast by a fire which blazes behind their backs. There, they remain in chains, waiting for something-- I suspect, if I know Plato, that it is philosophy--- to set them free. "Good luck," we bid to the unfortunate occupants of the cave. Regrettably, those chains look stronger than mere philosophy.

In Plato’s cave, if I understand it correctly, humans merely perceive the shadows of real objects as these appear on the wall, manipulated by puppeteers. Reality, (the true, the good) in fact, operates behind the cave dwellers’ backs. The tragedy of this state is, of course, that cave dwellers don’t directly perceive reality; they see only the faint shadows. (On the more up-beat side, however, one can say, "Well, at least they have eyes and they are able to see something!" Hope springs eternal in the heart of the irrepressible optimist.)
I am convinced however, that in the contemporary period, the shadows on the cave wall are darker and more malicious than those suggested by Plato. There are ever increasingly potent and malevolent forces at work in the political and cultural "atmosphere," of late imperial America (or as I have long termed it, Imperial America, of late.) Increasingly ours has become a managed, regulated, and narrowly partisan culture. False consciousness abounds. (This is, of course, no news especially to our friends in the Frankfurt school, who explored much of this territory more than 50-60 years ago.) But my concern is that Adorno and Horkheimer, although through no fault of their own, may have woefully under-estimated the depth of the penetration by the culture industry into the daily life of the common folk. The media (the Entertainment-Industrial Complex) now frame so much of our world view, and direct us to think and feel in a constricted vocabulary that prevents almost any criticism of the way things are. (Thank you, Herbert Marcuse) And of course these cultural forces --Fox, CNBC, the NY Times, Disney, et al---are interested primarily in securing a populace hyper-attuned to consumerism, and obsessed with the trivia of People magazine and Hollywood movie culture (the latter, of course, are literally images projected on an opposing "cave" wall.)

Consequently, folks nowfind themselves immersed in an electronic, media-saturated civilization, bereft of any anchor or compass with which to orient themselves, awash—although by no fault of their own-- in the ideology of winner- take-all possessive individualism and market uberalis. How can it not be difficult for most to locate the most rudimentary means with which to formulate questions about what is really true about the world and how it works. Thus appearance, far too often, has become "reality." And ideology is "lived," not thought.

"Real news is the news we need to protect our freedoms.You get tabloid news, you get blood-and-guts news, you get news shot through with a self-glorifying facade of patriotism, but people have to sift too much for the news that we need to protect our freedoms. It should be gloriously presented to the people on a nightly basis. The loss of some of the soberness and seriousness of those institutions has had a devastating effect uponpeople's ability to respond to the events of the day." --Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stone September 22, 2004

I am, rather sadly, convinced not just that social reality is other than it seems, a mere refraction, but that it is the OPPOSITE of what it appears. Peace is thus War. Occupation, liberation. Democracy, administered plutocracy.

Thus Spake Moo Moo Camus