Blissfuly ignorant... or are we?

The phrase “Ignorance is bliss” has been proven to be true in some cases. White Bear being a very special case, especially when seen from Victoria’s point of view. Even though she’s being chased by people with “weapons” who are trying to kill her.

Taking a step back to the beginning of White Bear, we find Victoria in an empty house waking up in front of a television with a strange symbol on the screen. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or why her head hurts so bad. Throughout the entire episode she’s being chased by masked people with guns and electric knives. It’s harrowing to watch, but what makes it even worse is that there are bystanders just watching, videoing her every move while these people attack. What in the world is going on with these people? Victoria wonders the same thing, she chalks it up to brainwashing.

Fast forward to near the end, Victoria and a girl who has helped her through most of the show find themselves in a transmission station surrounded by weapon-wielding killers. When Victoria gets the gun away from one of them and shoots it, confetti flies out. Yes, confetti. Her confusion is multiplied when this wall opens up behind her and she’s standing on a stage with an audience clapping. Come to find out, Victoria, who we’ve seen as the victim the entire time, is actually being punished for being an accomplice to kidnapping and murder. At the very end, she’s brainwashed and the whole thing happens all over again with her not remembering what she’s done. The man running this “show” marks off a day on a calendar in the third week of October with all previous days marked off as well. We can assume from this that the “show” has been going on for at least three weeks.

Now that I’ve discussed this, let’s talk about Allegory of the Cave. In this we find Socrates speaking to Glaucon about prisoners chained inside of a cave where all they can see are shadows of objects that people are carrying behind a wall. This is all they’ve seen for ages. Now, when the prisoners are freed and are able to turn around and see the fire behind them, they’re afraid of it. They don’t understand what it is and why it is so bright. They run back to the place where they’ve been chained because they have now come to think of it as “safe”. This happens again when the prisoners are lead out of the cave and into the sun. They’re blinded and terrified by its brightness. 

Comparing the two stories, we can see an alignment: each character (Victoria and the prisoner) are actually both prisoners. The cave prisoner is obviously a physical prisoner, bound and chained. Victoria is a prisoner of the mind. She is sent on this same daunting journey over and over with her mind erased every time so she won’t remember it has already happened. Reading this story and watching White Bear has made me realize that we are prisoners too. We are imprisoned by technology. It takes over our day to day lives, cell phones have become a permanent accessory. They have to be somewhere on our being at all times, and if it’s not then we feel as lost as the prisoner does when it is freed. In my opinion, we need to quit being a prisoner. Shut it down, turn it off, put it away and enjoy the sunshine while we’re not brainwashed by technology. Ignorance really isn’t bliss, but technology thinks it is.