Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine:
In Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" a group of prisoners are tethered from birth in a deep cavern.  All they perceive are shadows on the wall opposite its entrance.  They take these phantasmic images to be real, assuming that these distorted silhouettes are reality itself.  Their entire existence is in relation to a shadow-world, while the real world, in full dimensionality and living color, is unfolding outside the mouth of the cave.  The prisoners get a meager penumbral view of what is actually taking place.  Such, according to Plato, is the plight of humanity.

Plato's allegory provides an excellent explanation for the paltry state of human life in the present age.  Now, more than ever, we see things partially and upside-down.  What is truly valuable is denigrated and debased, while what is useless and destructive is held up as something to be attained.

Take, for example, the US as the most materially powerful nation on the planet.  Instead of using our awesome social, economic, and industrial power to serve humanity and life on the planet, the power is used to subjugate and take advantage of others.  As a relatively young nation, we are like a testosterone-filled adolescent beating up on his elders.  This is upsidedown, for the correct use of power is to serve, to refine, and to raise the level of life - not to oppress and destroy.

There has been much talk by the politicians recently of values.  In its usage the meaning seems to be left intentionally vague.  This is because it is a facade for lies, for they mean to promote anything but what is valuable.  For the composers of the Declaration of Independence what was valuable was clear.  It is every human's right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  But just as they talk about values our current leaders undermine these very rights both for American citizens and others around the world.

The current rendition of Plato's shadowplay is the upside-down reflection of ourselves we find in the media.  I take as an example the depiction of our president, "the leader of the free world" who, by all accounts is inarticulate, spiteful, and ineffectual.  His repertoire is on the level of an emotionally disturbed 10-year-old.  Of course this is to be expected since, to quote my friend Sparrow, "so many dictators themselves are unlikable, dumb losers." And yet, in a perverse twist, the media presents this charlatan and his administration's criminal escapades seriously, with nary a hint of irony.  And even more mysteriously, most of us accept this upside-down representation.

The corporate welfare state is perhaps the most insidious example of reverse consciousness in contemporary life.  This system is based on the fallacious premise that corporations have the same inalienable rights as human beings.  This perverse legislation was enacted after the Civil War when clever corporate lawyers argued that under the 14th Amendment (which was designed to give freed slaves equal rights under the law) they should have the rights of men, while their directors should be immune from responsibility and prosecution for their crimes.  The result has been the pillaging of the environment and the degradation of people, who are dubbed "human resources" (that we can utter this phrase without wincing is further evidence of our eroded common sense).  Under the rule of the transnational mechanical monsters human beings and the Earth's resources are chewed up and spat out to fulfill the profit-making mission of these entities.  (See The Corporation, Big Picture Media, 2004.)

The contradiction of the corporate system is that it is theoretically based on valuing the creativity and initiative of the individual, and trust in the naturally selective law that governs free markets.  The reality is that the corporate machines, governed by their business plans and unquenchable thirst for profits, turn human beings and their initiative into gears and cogs, functionaries in great conscienceless apparatuses.  And despite all complaints by Big Business about government spending for social programs and the "welfare state," they are the real beneficiaries of government hand-outs, through tax-cuts for the rich, corporate bailouts, building infrastructure to support new products (e.g., roads), wars to make resources available and open markets, and the clean-up of corporate economic, social, and environmental messes.  Individual tax-payers end up footing the bill so that corporations can rake in ever greater profits.

So we are huddled in this cave, mistaking shadows for reality.  Our only sensible aim is to unshackle ourselves from the chains that hold us in the grips of illusion and escape to the real world.  Clearly manipulating shadows and dealing with the system at its level will not change our situation.  We must divest ourselves of our belief in its reality and find a new way.  We can step into another world - a bright place in which relationships with ourselves and one another are direct, unmediated by social and technological appurtenances.  It will not be easy, but it is our duty to fulfill this potential.

- Jason Stern