The Allegory of the Media

 This the current year is 2024 and there is a problem. Approximately 2524 years ago Plato wrote down stories about Socrates, his teacher, which included his methodology and his struggle to stand up to the sophists. There are a number of online definitions on what a sophist is and I encourage the reader to look it up so they can form their own opinion; for the purpose of this writing VOCABULARY.COM will be used.

 A sophist is someone who makes good points about an issue - until you realize those points aren't entirely true, like a political candidate who twists an opponent's words or gives misleading facts during a speech.

 The best piece of Plato’s works that describes Socrates’ struggle against the sophists, and their ways, is titled “The Allegory of the Cave”. It is strongly recommended that the reader familiarize themselves with the prose and please spend more than four minutes regardless if it involves reading or video watching.

 The basic premise of this allegory is that a group of people are chained inside a cave restricted to facing the same wall and all they can observe are the shadows of animals paraded between them and the fire behind them. The narrative continues with a single man escaping the cave and via sunlight his world changes from 2D to 3D in something better than TECHO-COLOR. The narrative continues with the man returning to the cave and attempts to convince the occupants of the cave that there is a better world outside in the sunshine and those in the cave refute the claim. The current term for this is ‘living in a bubble’.

 With the foundations now set, the argument moves on. Many of the current Legacy-Media talking heads seem to be vying for the role of Cave-Manager over striving towards the title of Caver-Liberator. Many people working in Government(s), be they elected or not, walk hand-in-hand with those Legacy-Media actors; these people too are striving to become your Cave-Managers. Another assembly of aspiring Cave-Managers is the social-media platforms that have a TOS that provides for the preferential treatment of one recognized group over another group that has not been ‘recognized’. Then, when all of these want to be Cave-Managers are in cahoots with each other, the shackles holding those in the cave will only become tighter and heavier and unfortunately some of the spelunkers will never take note until it becomes unnoticeable to them.

 There are a plethora of phrases that we have heard as of late, such as: “no person is illegal”, “safe and effective”, “man made climate change”, “trans-women are women”, “Trump is literally Hitler and we are not going to let him on the ballot in order to save our democracy”, and finally “gender affirming care”.

 These phrases are the de facto shadows on the wall of a cave managed by the sophists.

 The quoted statements above are examples of sophistry, though upon first review the statement looks legit, yet it is in fact actually off topic. A good example of this is the first quote, the actual discussion at the time was about people doing illegal things and then the argument got twisted, thus presenting only the shadow on the wall.

 The third quoted statement simply denies “the science” as it can’t explain the ice age, unless of course the ice age is now a conspiracy theory. Carbon Dioxide makes up ~0.04% of the atmosphere and has been labeled as a green house gas (GHG). CO₂ is not a poison as it is a ‘food’ for plants, much like Oxygen is a ‘food’ for the animals and O makes up ~21% of the atmosphere that contains ~78% Nitrogen (N). Being reminded of the elemental table occasionally is always a good thing.

 It seems that Green Templeton College at Oxford is home to the oldest operational weather station that opened in 1767 maintaining daily full records since 1815. Now open your minds-eye and imagine what Green Templeton Collage looked like in 1815 with regard to paved roads, parking lots, and concrete buildings with black tar based roofs, all of which are heat sinks that are now surrounding the meteorological centre. The Canadian government has a weather website at HTTPS://WEATHER.GC.CA and the reader is strongly encouraged to visit the site, scroll down to the ‘Averages and extremes’ section and note the highest and lowest temperature information provided is limited to the years between 2006-2014; following that, apply the Socratic Method.

 The Socratic Method takes an argumentative approach towards seeking truth by asking the two smallest of all questions, HOW and WHY. The basic premise is that the student puts forward an assertion and the interlocutor/philosopher requests the how/why the student knows what they just asserted. That first question is followed-up by the philosopher, without vexation, asks ever more pointed questions driving the student closer and closer to a re-evaluation of the source of the student’s assertion. The penultimate step is for the philosopher to revisit the original question/assertion made by the student and echoes it back where the student responds after the philosopher’s questions and their own contemplations; and when you can, please be your own interlocutor.

 Socrates articulated using critical thinking based on philosophy and logic as the pursuit of truth over and above the sophistry of rhetorical devices. For this, he was found guilty of ‘impiety’ and “corrupting the young”; for this he was sentenced to death. Impiety is when someone is doing things that their church, synagogue, temple, mosque, school principal, government or parents would find unacceptable. Obviously in the Socrates’ time only temples, government and parents would be applicable. He was then required to carry out his own execution by drinking hemlock, thus showing that current ‘cancel culture’ quite mild by comparison.

 “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”

- Socrates -