Echoes Of The Cave
Fracturing Consent And The Disintegration Of Reality
Part of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice series. Originally released privately on January 13, 2021. Updated and revised for public release on May 31, 2024, with previously omitted content restored for completeness, edits to improve readability, and enhanced graphics.
In early 2021—amidst the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic—we found ourselves reflecting on the profound shifts in society and the increasingly blurred lines between what is real and what is not. Now, in 2024—as we navigate the post-pandemic world and witness the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT—the ideas we contemplated in 2021 have only grown more relevant.
Echoes Of The Cave
In Plato’s Allegory Of the Cave, prisoners have been held captive since childhood in a dark, subterranean cavern—their bodies shackled and their eyes transfixed upon the cave wall ahead of them. Behind them, a fire burns brightly, its flickering light casting mesmerizing silhouettes on the cave’s surface.
Every day, a cavalcade of objects and figures passes along a raised path between the fire and the prisoners’ backs. The shadows of animals, people carrying goods to market, and other objects project an elaborate, moving tableau of shadows on the cave wall before the captives. This interplay of light and shadow, along with the murmurs and noises echoing from the hidden realm, constitutes the entirety of the prisoners' known reality.
As the prisoners gaze at the wall—unaware of the true nature of their existence—they become utterly entranced by the intricate display of shadows that dance across it. Having never encountered the real objects themselves, the prisoners mistake these ephemeral shadows for the very essence of truth and reality.
They marvel at the shadows’ shapes and movements, assigning them names and meanings and engaging in fervent debates about their nature and significance. They pride themselves on their ability to predict the sequence in which the shadows will appear, never once suspecting that their understanding of reality is dictated by the confines of their prison. These projections—two-dimensional representations of the three-dimensional objects that cast them—conceal the reality that lies beyond the cave’s walls.
Shadows & Substance
Reflecting upon the tumultuous events of the past year compelled us to confront the creeping realization that our perception of reality may have been founded more on shadows than on substance. Just as the prisoners in Plato’s cave were unable to discern illusion from reality, we too find ourselves trapped in a world where the very nature of truth seems increasingly elusive.
As investors, we have long been preoccupied with the financial skirmishes that play out in the markets. But the events of the past year have illuminated a far more profound struggle. It has become increasingly apparent that society has been waging a war against reality itself, and that this war transcends the financial mêlées that have long captivated our attention.
The COVID-19 pandemic shattered our sense of normalcy, exposing the fragility of the societal systems we once took for granted. The presidential election and incessant debates over “fake news” revealed deep fractures in our society, highlighting the extent to which our discourse is shaped by competing “narratives” rather than objective truth. Indeed, the growing ubiquity of the now grating term “narrative” is itself a symptom of our post-truth society—one in which the very concepts of objective truth and reality themselves are under assault.
Fracturing Consent
Perhaps the most alarming development in recent years has been the way in which relatively minor, localized reality distortion fields have metastasized into a society-wide fracturing of reality. This state of affairs was foreshadowed by a striking quote from 2004—attributed to George Bush’s aide (allegedly Karl Rove):
The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'
At the time, we naively dismissed this as mere hubristic delusion, believing ourselves to be members of the “reality-based community”. However, in retrospect, it reads more like a sobering description of the post-truth society we had already begun to inhabit.
The fraying of a shared factual reality—already underway by 2004—dramatically accelerated and amplified over the ensuing years, reaching a crescendo during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 and the U.S. presidential election later in the year. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, where the citizenry is split into many alternate realities, each with its own set of “facts” and its own narrative of the world.
In one reality, Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president; in the other, the election was stolen from Donald Trump through massive fraud. In one reality, the COVID-19 pandemic is a genuine public health crisis; in the other, it is a hoax perpetrated by Bill Gates and to usher in a tyrannical New World Order, implant microchips in people to impose the Mark of the Beast, and depopulate the world. QAnon believes that a shadowy cabal controls the world, while a secret military operation known as “The Storm” works behind the scenes to bring them to justice—but as the movement has splintered into countless offshoots and sub-theories, even these core tenets have fragmented into a kaleidoscope of conflicting and ever-evolving beliefs. In one reality, the meteoric rise of meme stocks like GameStop is a triumph of retail investors (“plebes”) over Wall Street elites; in the other, it is a dangerous bubble fueled by money printing and market manipulation.
We (perhaps) slightly overstate the various positions for rhetorical effect, and our intention here is not to adjudicate these disputes. Rather, we aim to underscore how—on every topic of societal import (and many of no import)—the citizenry is fragmented into myriad factions inhabiting diametrically opposed virtual “realities”, unable to reach consensus on even the most rudimentary “facts”.
Differing opinions and conspiracy theories are nothing new, obviously, and we are hardly the first to grapple with the nature and perception of reality—it has been contemplated, questioned, and challenged by various thinkers, religions, and movements throughout history. This is evident not only in Plato’s Cave or the remark by George Bush’s aide, but in the teachings of the Buddha and the Gnostics, who emphasized the illusory nature of the world; Descartes’ Evil Demon thought experiment, which questioned the reliability of our senses; and Martin Luther’s challenge to the Catholic Church’s intepretation of religious truth during the Reformation.
In more recent times, figures like Edward Bernays—the pioneer of public relations and propaganda—have demonstrated the power of shaping public opinion and manipulating reality. Huxley’s Brave New World, Baudrillard’s writings on simulacra and hyperreality, and Chomsky’s concept of manufacturing consent have further explored the manipulation of reality in various contexts. Even back in the 1930s, George Orwell—reflecting on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War—observed:
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.
Fragmenting Reality
The current fragmentation of reality represents a fundamental departure from the challenges posed by most earlier thinkers. Both Plato and the Buddha, for instance, taught that although reality is an illusion, it is an illusion that we all share—that there is still a common ground of experience that unites us. In the past, even when reality was distorted or manipulated, as described by Orwell, the manufacturing of consent still operated within the framework of a shared reality.
Now, however, we are witnessing the splintering of reality into countless irreconcilable fragments. It is not simply that different groups interpret the same events differently, but that they inhabit entirely separate and incompatible realities.
The concept of "reality tunnels" offers a lens through which to view this unprecedented fragmentation of consensus reality, which we will explore in the next installment.
