Plato’s Cave: Do the Working Joes Want To Be Set Free?

I spend a fair amount of time considering philosophical issues related to money and financial independence. One that I keep returning to is the question of whether the lifestyle philosophy of frugality, efficient resource (money) management, and ultimately financial independence is a morally superior approach as compared to the predominant alternative of being a perpetual slave to a paycheck. I certainly lean in the direction of concluding that it is a morally superior philosophy—one that can be proven as such through logical thought and reason—but I haven’t fully completed that analysis and argument just yet. 

But nevertheless I found myself asking the question in the last few days as a result of being re-exposed to a piece of instruction written by Plato nearly 2,400 years ago.

The Allegory of Plato’s Cave

I recently came back across the allegory of Plato’s Cave, an instructional lesson contained in the ancient Greek philosopher’s tome The Republic. Here are the basics of the story: the narrator, none other than Socrates (Plato’s mentor), explains to a student that there exists a cave in which a number of individuals are kept in chains in the dark, and have been in this state since their birth. Behind them there is a burning fire partially obstructed by a half wall that casts shadows on the cave wall in front of the prisoners. Unbeknownst to the prisoners, there are people behind the half wall that move various objects in front of the fire creating the shadows that comprise the entire existence of these poor souls’ lives. 

The action in the story comes when one of the prisoners is freed from his bondage and heads toward the distant light of the cave mouth. Once outside he encounters the discomfort that results from the bright light of the sun. After his senses adjust to the new environment, he revels in the new-found delights of the three-dimensional world that he has recently discovered. He now realizes that the two-dimensional shadows on the cave wall that used to be his exclusive reality were not reality at all. And a pitiful substitute for reality at that. 

Since he’s an upstanding and (now) enlightened gentleman, he returns to the bowels of the cave to inform the other prisoners of what he has found, and to help them escape. Upon entering the cave, however, he experiences difficulty in seeing the shadow images on the cave wall in the relative darkness, and appears to his former cohorts to be unable to cope with the world that they continue to be suited to. This fact, combined with the freed prisoner’s description of the discomfort initially encountered in the “real” world, lead the captives to conclude that this alternate world is not one that they would want to encounter, and that they will kill anyone that tries to drag them toward it. 

Plato’s Cave. By Jan Saenredam – British Museumhttp://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=261145&objectId=1490634&partId=1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4040982

Interpretation of the Allegory

The generally agreed scholarly philosophical meaning of the allegory as intended by Plato was to compare the perspective of everyday, unenlightened Joes to that of enlightened philosophers like himself. While the unenlightened plebs draw their conclusions regarding the meaning of things from the empirical evidence of what they perceive with their senses here on Earth, the enlightened thinker interprets meaning through philosophical reasoning. The unenlightened, he implies, are in effect scared of knowing philosophical truths, and do not trust the philosophers that espouse them. 

Sidebar: In his book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, Nassim Taleb writes:

“I suspect that they put Socrates to death because there is something terribly unattractive, alienating, and nonhuman in thinking with too much clarity.”

If true—and I suspect that it is—this would indicate that there is some historical evidence in support of Plato’s characterization of the unenlightened public. 

Another take on Plato’s Cave. By Veldkamp, Gabriele and Maurer, Markus [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Of course the allegory of Plato’s Cave can be (and probably has been) used by any advocate of any position to compare his asserted “enlightenment” to the ignorance of anyone taking a contrary position. I recognize that. But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t situations where the allegory is properly applicable. Therefore I will continue on to apply it here. It appears obvious to me that we here in the FI community are represented by the escaped prisoner and the rest of the Working-Joe world is the group of prisoners left behind. 

The final group of the cast includes the persons behind the wall that use props to generate the shadows on the wall that are the manufactured reality for the prisoners. I think of this group as today’s marketers and consumer-crap purveyors that bombard us with constant messages of consumerism and resulting shame for failing to keep up with the consumption of our peers. Anyone that has ever produced a luxury automobile commercial falls into this camp. 

So if it is fair to conclude that our world-view is the morally superior one, we here in the FI community are the enlightened souls that have broken free of our bondage, crawled toward the light, and realized that there is in fact a three-dimensional world that offers much more than the two-dimensional shadows produced by the puppet masters and appearing on the cave wall. And after a period of allowing our eyes to adjust, overcoming the initial discomfort, and appreciating all that this new world has to offer, we have raced back in to the cave to help our friends. 

But here is the harsh reality according to Plato: only a very small portion of the group will be willing to hear us and to take steps toward the mouth of the cave. The vast majority won’t. And they are likely to be hostile if we continue to tell them about the world that exists beyond the shadows on the cave wall. They find our story annoying, and quite frankly, it impairs their ability to focus on and fully enjoy the show that’s currently playing. 

An Alternate Theory: Inattentional Blindness

If the allegory of Plato’s Cave is applicable to our movement and describes the mindset of the rest of the world, then we conclude that the prisoners don’t want to know about the truths of the real world, and that they will be hostile toward the philosopher-messengers that try to change their reality. 

But there is another psychological construct that could be applicable here, one that researchers refer to as “inattentional blindness.” You may have heard of some of this work from the “Invisible Gorilla” videos that went viral (if that was possible) more than a decade ago and the subsequent book of the same name. In these psychology experiments, participants are asked to watch a video where two small teams of basketball players, each wearing different colors, are moving together and throwing basketballs to their team members. Participants are given a task: count the number of passes between members of the black team. In the middle of the short video, a person dressed in a gorilla suit appears prominently in the middle of the melee and beats his chest. After watching the video the participants are asked whether they saw the gorilla. A surprisingly high number of participants missed it altogether. Never saw it. They were totally unaware of and blind to the gorilla that appeared in the middle of the screen.

In an interview in 2012 one of the researchers, Professor Daniel Simons, explained the phenomenon of inattentional blindness like this:   

“How could they miss something right before their eyes? This form of invisibility depends not on the limits of the eye, but on the limits of the mind. We consciously see only a small subset of our visual world, and when our attention is focused on one thing, we fail to notice other, unexpected things around us—including those we might want to see.”

These experiments show that when our brains are focused intently on one thing, we may fail to notice something that is right in front of our eyes, even something we may want to otherwise see.

What if we posit the theory that our society tells each of us at an early age that our assignment is to focus on living a “nice” life, which we are then told is to acquire as much consumer stuff (and therefore presumed comfort) as possible. Could we then inadvertently, subconsciously, be completely blind to the gorilla of financial independence resulting through diligent resource management (otherwise known as frugality)? 

Philosophical Conclusions

At least for today I am going to conclude that the rest of the world—the non-FI and non-FI-pursuing population—is comprised of people that labor under one or the other of these two conditions. That is, they are either: (1) willfully blind to the alternate reality that is offered by the pursuit and achievement of financial independence (and violently opposed to being brought out of that condition), or (2) they are inattentively blind to this alternate reality, and would potentially be very happy to learn that it existed . . . if someone could only get their attention.

The difference between the two seems to be whether the individual has any inclination whatsoever to question the nature of “truth,” and to be willing to at least entertain the possibility that the majority view (on any topic) is flawed. Those who don’t possess these traits are in group (1), and those who do are likely in group (2).

I’m reminded here of a conversation that I had a number of years ago with a well-to-do friend during a time when I was doing some soul-searching related to career, meaning of life, etc. I asked him if he genuinely enjoyed what he did all day and the manner in which he was spending his life. I’ll never forget his initial reaction: he was confused by the question. It was as if I was speaking a different language, or had asked him if he liked to eat purple grass. As we discussed further it became clear to me that he just hadn’t thought that deeply about the issue. He had subconsciously decided it was irrelevant, or that the concept didn’t exist or was moot. He worked, made tons of money, and spent tons of money on sculpting a “nice” life. What else was there to think about? What did enjoyment, meaning, and fulfillment from labor have to do with anything? I didn’t push the conversation further in a way that would have allowed me to determine whether this individual was in the Plato’s-Cave Camp or the inattentional-blindness state. 

I’m still working on my defense of the presumed moral superiority of seeking FI. For now I’m going to continue to operate under the premise that there is merit to the position over and above a simple preference of personal choice, and that allows me to savor the idea that we are the enlightened escaped prisoners of Plato’s Cave. But I’m also going to resist the idea that all of the Working Joes in our world are the captives in the cave that will violently resist being brought into the sunlight. No, I think that there are plenty of inattentively blind prisoners out there that just need to be told about the gorilla. 

Postscript: It occurs to me that some of the thoughts in this post could be interpreted as inconsistent with some of my prior writings, particularly where I have stated in the past that if someone loves what they do, is adding incremental value to the world by doing it (no matter how small), and therefore knowingly (and maybe even somewhat rationally) spends every cent he earns with absolutely no care for planning for a future without a paycheck, then I have no argument in opposition to his chosen financial lifestyle. So to be fair (and consistent), I will stipulate that for this class of individuals, their selection is no more and no less morally (or otherwise) justified than the pursuit of FI. They can go their merry way with old Joe Freedom’s stamp of approval (which I know they desperately desire), and I’ll go mine. Good day to you sir. (But remember: my theory also posits that this type of person is incredibly rare; unicorn-style rare.) So if there are any unicorns out there, we’ll consider them to be happily roaming the three-dimensional world and basking in the sunlight alongside all of us escaped philosophers.