Perception and Deception

‘The Allegory of the Cave’ by Plato and Black Mirror’s episode of Men Against Fire have striking parallels. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Plato gives us a tale about prisoners, who are chained up to where they can only look at the wall in front of them. On this wall, the prisoners observe shadows projected on the wall from objects passing by the fire which is behind them. These confined prisoners are forced to determine reality based on their own perceptions. They assume what they perceive to be reality. They accept it as truth.

In the film Men Against Fire all of the soldiers who have Mass implants are like the prisoners in the cave of Plato’s allegory. The protagonist nicknamed ‘Stripe’ and his military squad seek to eliminate the ‘roaches’. Early on the in the film, we see Stripe and his squad mates on a mission to eradicate these roaches who raided a nearby town. They end up encountering the roaches, and eliminating almost all of them. As we see during the face-to-face encounter Stripe had with the roaches, the roaches appear to be inhuman, monstrous beasts. However, one of these roaches had a device that gave off ‘light’, which would soon take its affect on Stripe.

Light plays a pivotal role in Plato’s allegory and in Men Against Fire. Its leads to the eye-opening, epiphany moment of the escaped prisoner and Stripe. Light is the source of knowledge and truth. The light casts its bright beams into the darkness of the prisoner’s mind in Plato’s allegory, and the light does the same to Stripe in Men Against Fire. However, unlike the Sun being the cause of the escaped prisoner accumulating truth and knowledge, a device configured by a roach gives off rays of light. This device causes Stripe to gradually understand reality and see it for what it truly is.

I think it is no coincidence that the writers and producers of Black Mirror titled this episode “Men Against Fire”. The prisoners in Plato’s allegory are exactly like soldiers in Men Against Fire. Their backs are turned against or away from the fire. They are subject to only perceiving whatever is being shown in front of them. They determine to what they perceive to be reality.

Like Plato, I think the producers of Black Mirror were seeking to convey the idea that our perception might not always be the actual reality. In other words, we can sometimes mistake appearance for reality. For instance, a clear example of this is the monstrous appearance of the roaches to soldiers injected with Mass implants. We learn these ‘roaches’ actually look just like your average human. It is the soldiers who are falsely assuming what they perceive to be true. Reality is different. They were like the prisoners in the Plato’s allegory. They were subject to what was being projected for them to see. They had no control of it.

Are there instances nowadays where people assume truth based on appearance? In other words, do most people assume what they perceive to be true as reality? Do most people just automatically assume truth purely based on appearances?

I think a historic example of this is the Holocaust. Jews were specifically targeted and labeled as subhuman by the Nazis. Young German’s during WWII were raised to join Hitler’s youth, and become soldiers who marched with anti-semitic beliefs hardwired into their brains.  These Nazi soldiers were just like the Mass troops in Men Against Fire. In order to systematically kill millions of Jews, they had to view Jews as subhuman.

Can anyone think of current examples where people have determined another group of people to be subhuman based upon their appearance or how they perceive them? Why does this happen? Is it because of social media? The news? Are there examples of this going on right now?