11mo ago

"Touching grass" is the modern equivalent of Plato's allegory of the cave

When we get too involved in online matters, disconnecting from the internet and getting a hold of the real world is an analogy to the Greek Philosoper's work

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Imma need a full report and analysis posted on philosophy memes
- I better stop smoking weed then
  
  that's touching grass
  
  Or do more?
I mean not really, kind of the opposite.
Touch grass is a call to action - to discard the convenient abstractions enabled by words alone, and to embrace the messy, gritty complexity of physical reality itself.
The allegory of the cave is the opposite: a wry lament about the inherent limitations of perception itself. You can't experience physical reality at all; you're just a bot in the chatroom of your senses, and there's no such thing as stepping outside it. Your senses may be a lot more detailed than words, but it's only a matter of degree.
- Plato didn't believe we're fundamentally limited by our senses in an absolute sense, though. He leaned toward the possibility of transcending the limitations of sensory perception to grasp higher truths.
I mean yeah shadows in the cave wall is a pretty great analogy for how we see our world through social media not a lot of nuance or detail
- teeve/radio before internet, news paper before that and church before peasants learned how to read propaganda.
What is this grass of which you speak? Is it a new app? Does it have haptic feedback when you touch it? I could really go for some haptic feedback.
Dammit, this is a pretty good shower thought. Fine, have my upvote.
- You mean to say "... but they are in their phone", which can be shortened to "they're in their phone"
  The clue was in the fact that you had "their" twice, so one of them must've been wrong!

15 comments