The NEVerending quest to find out the truth about Megan Faccio!

In Herzog's account of the exchange between the missionary and Fitzcarraldo, the missionary reports that they couldn't cure the older Indians of their idea that "ordinary life is only an illusion, behind which lies the reality of their dreams." Immediately, I knew that this was a significant quote, but what I later realized was he specified that the Indians suffering were older. Which then reminded me of how Plato warns in the Allegory of the Cave, that while knowledge is meant to ignite our souls and lead us to the Form of Good, sometimes it doesn't turn out that way. This is exactly what I saw in the documentary Catfish.
With Nev, I was able to follow his journey to understanding, and how he encounters many of Herzog's concepts in the Absolute, Sublime, Ecstatic Truth. After which, as Plato would claim, Nev fulfills his responsibility to those confined within the cave by releasing the film and sharing his knowledge. However, the journey did prove to be far more complex and daunting than that of the freed prisoner who only needed adjust his eyes to the new world after which he was able to explore on towards the Form of the Good. However, in our reality, separate from the cave, we have to adjust more than our eyes, but our minds. After all, Plato's strives to show us throughout the Allegory of the cave the way that our eyes and minds can deceive us. As we move throughout the stages of the cave, most of us are unaware that we are satisfied at the thought level, and don't dare to move. However, that is us being confined in a cave, in darkness, where we become dependent on our senses to determine truth. Yet, as Herzog points out, truth is only limited by that which we know, yet don't fully understand. Like puppets we talk masterfully about things we claim to know for a fact, plaster reality tv and true story tags to events and experiences that are nothing more than shadows and statutes we have created. The internet and magazines all claiming to give us the truth first, and images to prove it.

So how does Nev's experience relate to this? It goes back to Plato's vision that to reach understanding we must adjust our thinking and go against our nature. We must, as Herzog explains, experience sublimity, and go above our nature and away from ourselves and the views that we chain ourselves to allow knowledge to mold what we once believed to be true, into a whole new deeper truth just as Nev does. Afterall in Catfish, Nev begins begins in the cave, looking at shadows of things he knew to be out there, such as love and friendship. It is in this cave, that he sees Megan Faccio's shadow. With this in mind, it  is important that the audience realize that Nev's cave is virtual reality and facebook. He is confined within the darkness of technology. Then as he develops a friendship with Megan, is it possible for us to understand the way that virtual reality can blur the lines between what is and isn't real. As things between Megan and Nev heat up, they begin wandering into dangerous territory, where they want to know more and more about each other. Their souls desire's need more to survive. However, like Herzog discusses, the danger that lies behind virtual reality is that people are not limited to facts like they are in everyday life. They are no longer bound to nature, creating a sublime experience that allows them to escape reality and step into another's reality that they themselves have created. With this in mind, we also see the power of human nature and how regardless of the strength of our emotions, we still crave the most basic levels of intimacy. In the end, we still rely on our senses to a degree. This is why Nev gets stuck at the the thought level. His confinement to technology and his senses, leave him unable to understand the concept of love that he so desperately wanted to believe was real attainable. Yet, stops himself from starting anything because he wants physical proof, beyond what technology can provide him. He wants to see her in person, and prove that there is a physical connection between them, and not just emotional. With this he gets only so far in his journey.

However, Nev embarks on a separate journey and reaches understanding when he realizes that Angela, and her family are all fake. It is in his derailment and new discovery to a different understanding that captures the way mankind views knowledge. Able to compound upon truths one after another, spread over time, it highlights the connectedness and the idea from which the internet was born. Anyways, again we follow Nev, who is now trying to understand the truth about Megan. In this we see the same pattern, where he sees the shadows, which are her songs. Forms the belief that maybe she isn't exactly telling him the truth about the songs. Then again looks for tangible evidence to support his hypothesis, and finds the same videos and covers, revealing the truth. At which he point he says, "I can't believe this."  As Herzog points out, sometimes we look for truths and uncover hidden lies and what we find surpasses our expectation. We find ourselves at a state of disbelief, at which point makes you question whether you are willing to know more. This burden is what stopped him previously, the possibility of getting hurt if it was real, and it it did not live up to expectations. Could Nev handle the truth that if he met her, and there was no physical connection, he wasted all that time. However, it's only after we discover these truths do we look back on ourselves in a state of disbelief. When Nev reads back his text messages with "Megan" he says again, I can't believe I said this and laughs as he reads them. He says this expression again and again, and at one point tries to convince his friends that they (the family and Megan) had fooled him, but just told him things that he wouldn't care to question, and how that's not fooling. Once again saying he can't believe this, and finding himself unaware of how to feel. Nev, undergoes this journey many times, going back to the cave and adjusting his mind with each new concept of fact thrown to him, until he finally comes to everything. He learns all that he can from that particular experience, and keeps adding on. Like Herzog says about technology and the curvature of the water, it is always an uneven surface. There is no way for us to ever come to an absolute truth. However,  we can come to an understanding, and do the best of our ability to share this knowledge to those that need it. However, keeping in mind that although not exact, a precise representation can be enough to lead to others to understanding, and hopefully leave them to want more of this light.