The System
Merkulov Vadim
English 102
Professor Teddy Chocos.
Nowadays, the world seems to be lost. Humanity consists of ‘blind’ people, not just
people who are incapable to see the light of knowledge but also people who are non-thinkers. Do
people want to be blind? If you ask them they would say ‘of course not’ but at the same time they
just don’t realize, they are actually blind. How it may happened to the whole of humanity and
nobody sees the truth. It should be considered that society controls people as it constructs such
system there is no place for chaos. Many years ago to achieve some of communication between
mankind we created the whole sphere, which we called society – government, army, police etc.
However, this system started to control mankind itself and we could not resist it. Human beings
are born into this darkness, into this community of moral issues, laws, values, even what beauty
is dictated.
Socrates’ student Plato was born into an aristocratic, probably Athenian, family and
educated according to the best precepts available. He eventually became student of Socrates and
later became his finest student. Plato immortalized Socrates in his works and mostly represented
it in situation of dialogue between Socrates and one of his students. After Socrates’ death, Plato
traveled for 12 years throughout the Mediterranean region. He studied mathematics with the
Pythagoreans in Italy and geometry, geology, astronomy and religion in Egypt. During this time,
or soon after, he began his extensive writing. Plato founded a school of learning, known as the
Academy, which he presided over until his death. It is believed the school was located at an
enclosed park named for a legendary Athenian hero. Over the years it operated, the Academy’s
curriculum included astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory and philosophy. Plato
hoped the Academy would provide a place for future leaders to discover how to build a better
government in the Greek city-states. Thus, Plato worked hard to understand the society, he
reached this point there is society become a system and he truly tried to represent it in his works.
‘The Allegory of the Cave’ is about dialogue where Socrates explains to his student
Glaucon how our nature is enlightened or unenlightened. In Socrates’ situation people is put in
the cave, behind them is a great fire and they cannot move themselves because of chain around
them. The truth is on the blank wall in front of them – their shadows. It is considered the
metaphor means that reality to each of us is subjective and level of one’s subjective view is
proportional to his or her level of enlightenment. Moreover, imaginations and assumptions
replace the truth and this is one’s opinion. Furthermore, Socrates believes this cave represent the
world and shadows represent our knowledge and that is given to us - ‘…certain professors of
education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was
not there before, like sight into blind eyes.’ In other words, Socrates suppose in order to gain
knowledge ‘student’ needs to open his eyes towards the enlightenment. As a prisoners person
should turn to the ‘light’ – ‘… just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without
the whole body…’ The essence of Socrates argument is that all men have its own capability of
learning and the professor as a teacher, as a thinker, as a prophet in the world of knowledge
should point the way to the ‘light’. Later on, Socrates would talk about responsibility to teach
others as people could turn in the wrong way and this should be illustrated by an example. In our
modern society we can find a lot of philosophical currents which will lead us to the way of being
‘thinker’ but which way you can decided as not all of these currents is on the right path.
Philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Niccolo Machiavelli motivates Hitler to think
about super-mankind, mostly it was Nietzsche. This creature has the highest rang in society and
others should follow and serve to this nation and jointly with philosophy ‘ends justify the means’
all this leads to the despotism of Hitler, racism, oppression of Jews, seizure of European and
Soviet Union’s territories. That’s how wrong philosophy can manipulate and change person, and
not only person but the whole decades even human history. Thus, this is how important to lead
one person’s mind on the right path. There is another idea of teaching people in Socrates’ view,
‘Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have
never received… and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been
educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty’. Actually the last part of this
phrase is meaningful as you are better share with our people with your knowledge. It is not about
that you should do it, you must, and you have double duty to do it. Undoubtedly, teacher has a
great responsibility for anything he teaches his student, in the same time student should
understand it in the proper way. However, if teacher mislead his follower it will collapse the
ideal society and create the system which is based on misunderstanding, full with wrong
information and wrong values. Leaders and followers would create this metal box with no
chance to escape. Socrates reflects it in this way – ‘And thus our State, which is also yours, will
be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of others
States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the
struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good’. Thus, Socrates is saying not only your
reality will seem to be a dream but also your State will improve spiritual power with knowledge
which is shared and gained by others to each other in the right way and order. Therefore, we as a
mankind are responsible to not only teach but also to think, to manage and collect knowledge.
On the other side, one should never mislead neighbor to the bad way by using knowledge and the
confidence. It may concern that one as a truly thinker should be sure about his ‘enlightened’
because the power always comes with responsibility. A lot of historical examples prove that lots
of people have misled by others who is more powerful in knowledge, like Hitler did. Why does
this happen? System works this way, you are born here, born in the cave with lie around you, and
lie leads us to the sin which is greed. For instance, you may notice that good hero in Hollywood
movies smokes or drinks alcohol, let’s make some logic why creators put bad habits as base for
good character. It is obvious that advertising may be here as a sponsor of this or that movie, so
the main character have to smoke this kind of cigarettes. All of advertising manipulations is a
purpose of making money, around the globe people come to shops and buy products which they
don’t need. This system creates itself to replace values, replace spirituality with material things
such as money, prestige and style. Mankind is puppet which is easily control, simultaneously, to
control easily the system provides us with movies, TV shows, reality shows, computer gaming
etc. In order to entertain us not to enlighten, but in modern world everyone in two clicks can read
a lot of about ‘The Allegory of the Cave’, about Hitler, Machiavelli or Sigmund Freud. However,
there are many billionaires in this world and they may not spend all the money on their selves
and this is how greed is illustrated by a number of non-thinkers in this world.
Life is pain and Walker Percy really knows what it is. How can you live without father in
thirteen and lose your mother in fourteen? These accidents cannot be described, there aren’t any
words to say how hard it is and how painful it is. But even loss of the father and mother shows
what the destiny is – after his father death he go to his uncle house in Greenville, Mississippi,
and then he meets his closest lifelong friends – Shelby Foot. It is not needless to say that Percy
graduated from Columbia Medical School, and although with diminishing enthusiasm for the
profession, intended to be a physician. But unfortunately, while serving an internship in a
pathology lab, that plan ended when he contracted tuberculosis. He was in confusion and
misunderstanding, why anyone should judge him for his dream, none has rights to unfairly
deprive his goal. Here Percy Walker start to be a thinker and in his work he finds what a root of
all problems is.
It should never be forgotten that Walker Percy talks and describes exactly about system,
about its measure and dictation. In his work ‘The Loss of the Creature’ he shows how far away
mankind is from its reality and from truth. If one reads his example of tourist guy and researches
the ‘surface’ of the quote he or she may notice that it is hard to define who ‘our complex friend’
is. Phrase: ‘Our complex friend stands behind his fellow tourists at the Bright Angel Lodge and
sees the canyon through them’ provides to us the evidence that this ‘friend’ is the tour guide, but
in the same time, the same phrase shows this friend may stay ‘behind’ because he is a tourist.
The contrast and complexity make it difficult to define the real meaning of the quote. A lot of
questions, such as – why is this friend complex? Why doesn’t he take pictures? Why does he
stand on their shoulders? Why this tour group is on the beaten track? All of these question cover
the idea of what this quote does really means. It used to think that Walker Percy want to bring the
idea of beauty truly is. It doesn’t matter if he is a tourist or guide, ‘stands on their (tourists)
shoulders to see the canyon’. He does not take any pictures, he does not ignore the beauty. This
man feels this is the point when beauty and his soul have merged and now this man feels how
great the whole place is. The boundless and bottomless mountains, transparently blue sky, azure
river are all of the things he is feeling, and at this moment it can be called pleasure, happiness or
peacefulness. Also Percy provides us with information about biology student, who is similar to
tourist, but what more important is ‘measures’. Percy find himself in words, ‘The situation of the
tourist at the Grand Canyon and the biology student are special cases of a predicament in which
everyone finds himself in a modern technical society--a society, that is, in which there is a
division between expert and layman, planner and consumer, in which experts and planners take
special measures to teach and edify the consumer. The measures taken are measures appropriate
to the consumer: The expert and the planner know and, but the consumer needs and
experiences.’ These measures are the tools to differentiate people, to divide people into separate
groups where some of the groups are better than others, some people more competitive, others
suffer in this race for recognition and Percy himself feels how bad it is. These ‘measures’ take us
to the product of the system. The product is to blind people with unnecessary feelings as people
are controlled easier when their emotions don’t allow them to think properly. Therefore, the logic
take us again to the Socrates’ point with his blindness, enlightenment, responsibilities to think
and teach each other. Measurements put us in the ‘box’ of social opinion and if one is inside his
‘box’ he cannot leave it. Planners, consumers, leaders, followers are the measurement of the
system, the system uses our feelings such as egoism, greed, envy etc, can control mankind and
puts all of us in the cave of darkness with a great fire behind us.
This idea the same with Socrates’, but Greek philosopher puts it in the other situation and
explains it in clear way of what mankind should do, on the other hand, Percy tries to make reader
to think about it he ‘bury’ his idea deeply inside his work. Researching his metaphors will help
reader to understand what is meaningful and what is not. It should be said that it is very hard to
understand not even adjudge it. Humanity is under the control and their mind is in fog of rubbish,
people themselves don’t want to be enlightenment as values is opposite. Now values can be
represented by style, prestige, money in one’s pocket. For example, youth want to be recognized,
therefore, they try to be cool, they try to look like famous actors or characters in Hollywood
movies and they also try to smoke cigarettes or weed, drink alcohol as this way is attempt to selfexpression. From mankind’s childhood wrong values are inflicted, so people are put in den, have
never seen light only shadows for the whole life. Thus, the main task of humanity is destroy this
system, it must be done or we never see the ‘light’.
Bibliography.
Plato. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:34, Mar 12, 2013, from
http://www.biography.com/people/plato-9442588.
‘A World of Ideas’ – Lee A. Jacobus
‘The Loss of the Creature’ – Walker Percy.