The allegory of the cave, which is one of Plato’s most famous writings, depicts humans chained and immobilized in a cave. They turn their backs to the entrance and don’t see the objects as such, but the shadows that these objects passing in front of the entrance project against the wall of the cave. The chained men believe they see reality, when they only see a projection of it.
The allegory of the cave works on an opposition: the world below (the cave) is a world of confinement, ignorance and appearances. The senses are used to acquire what is believed to be knowledge and the shadows are false values that are ultimately only illusions. Men do not seek truth or Good there, they seek pleasure and comfort.
The world above (illuminated by natural light) is that of reality, reason, science, logic, knowledge – and therefore, freedom.
The one who is lucky enough to leave the cave to go to the higher world and who makes the effort to return to the cave to share his experience and educate his fellow men comes up against their incomprehension and hostility because they are jostled in their habits of thought and their illusory comfort.
This opposition allows Plato to devalue the sensible world in favor of a reasoned world, where the sun of science illuminates everything and allows to reach the truth.
One might believe that the allegory of the cave is only a philosophical writing. This is not the case, it is also a political writing. At the time of Plato, Athens is in decline: the golden age of Pericles has long since passed, the city sees its democratic model perverted and the Thirty Tyrants reign over the city, with its share of confiscations, banishments and massacres. This distortion of democracy challenges Plato and we can read in his philosophical writings a political critique of his city, of which he stigmatizes the widespread corruption and the injustice of the Athenian oligarchy.
Am I talking to you about philosophy? No.
Am I talking to you about the ancient period? No.
I am talking about politics in the modern era.
I can’t help but compare the allegory of the cave to the phenomenon known as “hypernormalization” theorized in 2006 by Alexei Yurchak in his essay “Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation” and taken up by a highly renowned English documentary filmmaker, Adam Curtis in his 2016 documentary, “HyperNormalization”.
Let me explain.
The essay published by Alexei Yurchak in 2006 demonstrates the decorrelation between the daily, painful and sometimes grotesque reality experienced by the Soviet people in the 80s and the media and political fiction that replaced it. Everyone was aware of the failure of the Soviet system, but since no one was able to propose a viable alternative, the status quo was accepted as a last resort that would ultimately lead to the total collapse of the Soviet Union (and not the Soviet Onion, as quoted by Philomena Cunk – those who know, know).
If one were to attempt to define this phenomenon, hypernormalization consists of the acceptance and normalization of distorted or simplified versions of reality by individuals and society as a whole.
The term is taken up in the documentary produced by the BBC and directed ten years later by Adam Curtis, who moves away from communism to apply the concept of hypernormalization to capitalism. He explores the idea that economics (and more precisely finance) has killed politics because the search for stability conducive to the profitability of economics and finance has replaced the instability that the resolution of complex problems supposes. The two-hour and forty-six-minute documentary may seem crazy and hallucinatory in its montage of pop and shock images, but for Adam Curtis, there is no difference between fiction and documentary since our reality is in fact a fiction that offers us seductive and simplified discourses.
Because if the issues of the modern world are more and more complex, the discourses presented to the public are more and more simplified. If we talk about narrative in English when it comes to political or institutional communication, it is not entirely innocent since it implies a notion of narration, storytelling, language elements that more or less de-align the message from the reality of the facts.
The simplification of discourse inevitably leads to a polarization of opinions, which explains the emergence and success of personalities like Donald Trump, who is coming back stronger than ever in 2025. However, don’t be fooled: this simplification of discourse has existed for a long time and transcends all political parties.
Discursive simplification and polarization of opinions also lead to a persistent Manichaeism, which will justify acts serving more or less hidden economic, financial or geostrategic interests not publicized to the general public.
Two examples.
While 9/11 is only the result of a disastrous American Middle Eastern policy, the attacks that occurred that day on American soil are presented as a gratuitous declaration of terrorist war to which the US responded by inventing the famous weapons of mass destruction that will never be found but which will justify an invasion of Iraq.
While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most complex conflict of the 20th century, it has been reduced since October 7, 2023 to a war of Good (Israel) against Evil (Palestine via Hamas).
(I do not in any way condone or endorse terrorist acts, but anyone who opens a serious book on the Middle Eastern policy of the US or on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict realizes that the conflicts that animate these regions are complex and can hardly be summed up as a fight between Good and Evil).
The result is – for the public – a constant simplification of public discourse and, in fact, a distortion of reality. Misnaming things contributes to the world’s misfortune and the degradation of language and discourse is a tool of ideological manipulation: imprecision, repetition of shock phrases and slogans are all ways of shaping the perception of the public.
The logic of the rebel is […] to strive for clear language so as not to thicken the universal lie.”
Camus, “The Rebel”
This is what is called “perception management,” which is a technique primarily developed by the American army and which covers “actions consisting of providing and/or camouflaging selected information and clues to foreign audiences in order to influence their emotions, motivations and objective reasoning” (I’m not the one saying this, it’s the US Department of Defense definition). Practiced in the military field, diplomacy and the intelligence world, the perception management technique has undeniably extended to relations between governments and citizens, to large companies and the media world.
The “Cambridge Analytica” scandal was the most flagrant example in recent years, but the constant flow of fake news issued by certain leaders (the famous “they eat dogs, they eat cats” by Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign) is part of the same phenomenon. In the same way, the resounding declarations of hostility from one nation towards another often hide more consensual secret inter-state communication or even the conclusion of confidential diplomatic agreements. There are military war, hybrid war, public announcements – but there is also the reality of negotiations which often presuppose the defense of purely economic and/or geostrategic interests.
All this leaves the public in Plato’s cave: it is obscure, it is inconsistent and it is not reality. Polarized, contradictory and/or politically oriented speeches proliferate and the allegiance of Elon Musk (who owns X, ex-Twitter) and Mark Zuckerberg (who owns Facebook and Instagram) to Donald Trump is, in this vein, not reassuring, just like the reunion of the major press groups in the hands of a few French billionaires, some of whom clearly display their political opinions.
The phenomenon of hypernormalization means that we are not only confronted with simplistic speeches but also with a flagrant inaction from our governments – and this goes well beyond partisan politics, it affects politics as a whole.
For thirty years, politicians, both liberal and left-wing, have withdrawn from reality to offer us a simplified discourse. Arranging reality has become easier for them than confronting or explaining the complexity of the events we are experiencing and which are beyond their control. Trump is only the culmination of all this: a constant simplification of reality.”
Adam Curtis, “HyperNormalization”
We are all aware of the problems that plague our societies. We all know, beyond our political divergences, what measures could be implemented to eradicate poverty, to fight the climate crisis, to annihilate rape culture – and these are obviously only a few examples among hundreds.
However, nothing changes. The heaviness of an entire system that functions on its own and includes finance, politics and the media breaks the attempts at change by protesters, collectives or political figures who really want to work for the public good. The striking actions combined by Donald Trump and Elon Musk in charge of the DOGE during the first weeks of the second term of the American President seem to address these issues of inertia and sluggishness, with simplified media messages and radical actions aimed at eradicating the so-called deep state. Is this demagoguery? Is it about replacing one deep state with another, at the center of which Trump and his oligarchs would have total control? Only time will tell.
Beyond the fact that Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) are used in a political context thanks to the open allegiance of their respective owners, social media have probably aggravated the phenomenon.
First, the ambient cacophony of social media puts the ignoramus and the expert on the same level. The voice of the one who holds the knowledge, the data, who rationalizes and who has a scientific approach will be drowned in a flood of unsupported and false claims, when they do not deliberately peddle fake news. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the one who tries to transmit his knowledge upon his return comes up against the incomprehension of his peers and their hostility because they are jostled in their habits of thought and their illusory comfort (I can’t help but think of the ones returning from the concentration camps that no one believed at first, well before the advent of social networks).
Which brings us to the second problem induced by social media: they (i) advocate a culture of emptiness, where everyone gets lost to escape a sometimes frustrating real life, (ii) cultivate a world of illusions where everything is staged and (iii) offer attractive worlds that encourage overconsumption (I’m thinking of fashion and makeup trends, decorative aesthetics, the Stanley Cup, and so on) or that perpetuate stupid systems of thought (conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, and so on).
Finally, this illusory comfort is reinforced by the very algorithm of social media, which will never confront the user with opposing opinions because one will only ever see opinions that are consistent with those one already has. Nothing will shake up the system of thought of the one who is chained in his personal cave, made of illusions created by cognitive biases.
If we had to sum up sadly, the inert world in which we live has little reality and is not very satisfying. But knowing it already allows us to take a first step out of the cave.
Max Mara coat – Dior handbag – Authentic Panama hat – Monoprix jumper and trousers – Pretty Ballerinas shoes – Amédée Paris scarf
February 21, 2025
