Plato's Wii cave
Jan. 5th, 2009 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThere is a madman in my living room, and the madman is me.
He stands in the middle of the room, and from his actions it seems clear that he believes he is playing tennis. He lunges and lobs, waving a stubby white racket handle in actions vaguely suggestive of "forehand smashes" and "backhand chips". He curses when he "loses a point". His whole attention is focused on the wall in front of him. He tells me his Mii -- a sort of alter ego resembling a younger, more fresh-featured version of himself -- has attained over 1800 points.
I have mixed feelings about this madman and his Mii tulpa. I am glad that he seems more animated than before. Before the delusion that he is playing tennis seized him, he was inclined to sit slumped in his chair, paying attention to something called "the web", which moves much more slowly than the Wii window, and hardly involves the body at all. On the other hand, his switch from the web window to the Wii window is clearly the transition from one illusion to another.
For all his modern technology, I believe my friend the madman is living in the cave Plato described more than two thousand years ago in his philosophical dialogue The Republic. Here, let Orson Welles guide you through Plato's parable:
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Now, I've always had problems with Plato, and especially his metaphor of the cave. I mistrust the metaphysical impulse which leads philosophers and religious people to tell us there is a realm which is utterly real but absent and hidden. This formula -- "the real is elsewhere" -- is, in fact, exactly what worries me about the madman in my living room. Whether he's on the web or the Wii, I worry that he's elsewhere and not here. At least, though, the Wii involves his body.
It's not that "elsewhere" is a lie. There are real games of tennis, and the Israeli state is systematically killing poor people in Gaza. These events flood into the madman's living room via the web and the Wii. They have a reality, a force, an immediacy he does not doubt for a moment. He is not mad or deluded, merely given to metaphor and metonymy. For him, the part can stand for the whole. One or two (or two hundred) news stories can stand for "everything that is happening in the world at the moment". One sport can stand for them all, and a few gestures with a motion-sensitive controller can become participation in a sport. No doubt if he were able to lash around, Wii controller in hand, and watch his Mii smash the Israeli security barrier to the ground with a digital sledgehammer, he would do it, and feel somewhat better. And he would be happy to read, on the web, that eight and a half million networked Miis felled a representation of the illegal wall around Israel, and that the symbolic protest had led the real Israeli government to reconsider their actions.
I think my problem with Plato is that his metaphor is so dismissive of one of the two worlds he shows us. The world inside the cave is illusion, the world outside it is reality. It's too insulting, too reductive, too lopsided -- as unjust as the power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians. If Plato had said that both were real, and that one world was represented in the other, and that this representation was an important business conducted via metaphor and metonymy, I'd be much happier with his image of the cave. Then we'd be closer to the situation Kafka described: "We're each looking out at the world through a tiny peephole. Since this is the case, we should at least try to keep the peephole clean."
He stands in the middle of the room, and from his actions it seems clear that he believes he is playing tennis. He lunges and lobs, waving a stubby white racket handle in actions vaguely suggestive of "forehand smashes" and "backhand chips". He curses when he "loses a point". His whole attention is focused on the wall in front of him. He tells me his Mii -- a sort of alter ego resembling a younger, more fresh-featured version of himself -- has attained over 1800 points.
I have mixed feelings about this madman and his Mii tulpa. I am glad that he seems more animated than before. Before the delusion that he is playing tennis seized him, he was inclined to sit slumped in his chair, paying attention to something called "the web", which moves much more slowly than the Wii window, and hardly involves the body at all. On the other hand, his switch from the web window to the Wii window is clearly the transition from one illusion to another.
For all his modern technology, I believe my friend the madman is living in the cave Plato described more than two thousand years ago in his philosophical dialogue The Republic. Here, let Orson Welles guide you through Plato's parable:
[Error: unknown template video]
Now, I've always had problems with Plato, and especially his metaphor of the cave. I mistrust the metaphysical impulse which leads philosophers and religious people to tell us there is a realm which is utterly real but absent and hidden. This formula -- "the real is elsewhere" -- is, in fact, exactly what worries me about the madman in my living room. Whether he's on the web or the Wii, I worry that he's elsewhere and not here. At least, though, the Wii involves his body.
It's not that "elsewhere" is a lie. There are real games of tennis, and the Israeli state is systematically killing poor people in Gaza. These events flood into the madman's living room via the web and the Wii. They have a reality, a force, an immediacy he does not doubt for a moment. He is not mad or deluded, merely given to metaphor and metonymy. For him, the part can stand for the whole. One or two (or two hundred) news stories can stand for "everything that is happening in the world at the moment". One sport can stand for them all, and a few gestures with a motion-sensitive controller can become participation in a sport. No doubt if he were able to lash around, Wii controller in hand, and watch his Mii smash the Israeli security barrier to the ground with a digital sledgehammer, he would do it, and feel somewhat better. And he would be happy to read, on the web, that eight and a half million networked Miis felled a representation of the illegal wall around Israel, and that the symbolic protest had led the real Israeli government to reconsider their actions.
I think my problem with Plato is that his metaphor is so dismissive of one of the two worlds he shows us. The world inside the cave is illusion, the world outside it is reality. It's too insulting, too reductive, too lopsided -- as unjust as the power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians. If Plato had said that both were real, and that one world was represented in the other, and that this representation was an important business conducted via metaphor and metonymy, I'd be much happier with his image of the cave. Then we'd be closer to the situation Kafka described: "We're each looking out at the world through a tiny peephole. Since this is the case, we should at least try to keep the peephole clean."
Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 04:39 pm (UTC)You say that after every lull in violence, they only come back stronger. Evidently. Why? Because it's a lull in violence. Not a cessation of it. They perceive that violence will start again. Give them salaries and McDonald's, and they will believe the world is their oyster. They will pile on the kilos, they will become compliant, and they will take anything their sovereign feeds them much more willingly.
See, I'm not being a soft, lefty idealist. I'm being a bastard. Use them. Manipulate them. Give them easy existences, and then you can screw with their liberties however the hell you please. If I object to that, then you can call me a soft, lefty idealist. We can do that too. But don't tell me that the most effective method of shutting them up and stopping them lobbing bombs is by hitting them hard with sticks.
Right. Basically. I'm making completely amoral, Machiavellian calculations here. I believe that the most efficient method of quieting disturbance is sustainable development to offset impoverishment engendering it. You believe it isn't. Fair enough. I still think you're very wrong. The reality will never change unless they are made to stop suffering.
But no one's been rationally convinced of anything ever over wall posts. More's the pity.
-David Leon
Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 05:21 pm (UTC)Also, there is a limit to tolerance. Even if the average Gazan eventually embraces (or at least tolerates) Israel, the leadership of Hamas is full of unrepentant terrorists who will not stop fighting no matter how good a life they have. On the other side of the fence there are plenty of wacko settlers, but to their credit Israel has cracked down of them... maybe too little too late, but that's another topic.There are some people who need to be eliminated before they can talk peace, and hopefully that is all Israel aims to accomplish in this war.
Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 05:47 pm (UTC)Where, in your view, does their political power come from? What fuels them? What could Israel do to give them more power, and what could it do to give them less?
Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 06:01 pm (UTC)Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 06:49 pm (UTC)Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 06:59 pm (UTC)Re: Realism
Date: 2009-01-05 09:46 pm (UTC)Hamas' main power is its pull on large sectors of the population. They have no other advantages, as it were. (Bushbashing aside for the sake of time), if genocidal extremists were in charge of the government of the United States and the population wasn't pleased and tried to wrest back control of their institutions, the government would still have a massive army and nukes. Those are assets. But Hamas doesn't. If they did have nukes, that'd be an entirely different question. But if that's not true, all we need to do is eliminate popular support for them.
There are extremist elements wherever you go. I live in Berlin and have met neo-Nazis. They seemed pretty extreme to me. But they are not a problem. Why? Because they are marginalised. And they don't have nukes. And even then, why are they so much in vogue in and around Berlin? Because Berlin's in Eastern Germany, which is much worse off than Western Germany. Even within Berlin, the neo-Nazis are concentrated in poorer, industrial, mostly former-Eastern sectors (Lichtenberg springs to mind). When these areas develop, the neo-Nazis will effectively disappear. There will still be a couple banging about, but their teeth will have been pulled.
So how do we marginalise Hamas? True, it will take time, but if concrete measures are seen to be taking place, the population will lap them up. Let's idly fantasise:
Israel finishes up its invasion of Gaza. Somebody snuffs Ehud Olmert (politically, surely -- I wouldn't want to advocate assassination or anything). New face in front of government -- preferably one with dashing smiles. Or Ehud Barak. He kicks ass. This new head of government then declares Gaza and the West Bank Special Economic zones, as China has with major population centres such as Shangai, or indeed Hong Kong. Dislocate funds from military spending to structural development in these regions, with industries geared towards trade with Israel. Get Fatah support in all this. Hamas will be a shadow of the past in, say, 5 years. In the best case scenario (Machiavelli Machiavelli Machiavelli), they'll even turn to indiscriminate terrorist bombings inside Gaza, and then you can easily demonise them within Gaza as well. After ten years of this, you can do what you please. Grant these territories full sovereignty -- grant them sovereignty outside of military matters, which will be handled by Israel -- declare them self-governing zones within the sovereign state of Israel -- whatever you please, really. And then they won't bomb you. Right. Solved.
OK. Now the problems. Quite a few of those. Tradition. Political culture of the Israeli elites. As Momus alluded to in the Brian Eno link, there's the military-industrial complex. But what we have to do, and fast, is change these, so that such a plan (wow, I had fun with that one) could be put into action.
-D.L.