2007 - When enough people leave Plato's cave?
I wonder - Will enough people leave the cave and experience the sunlight to cause a Tipping Point in 2007? Will Life 2.0 take hold? I think so!
What progress has been made! I recall talking with Jon Husband 3 years ago. We were filled with passion for the new world that we had seen but, as in Plato's Cave, we could not get the mainstream to see what we saw. We had already experienced the price of insight and could not get much work. Both of us had been priests of the traditional system but, like Saul, had become Paul. We had shifted from being the persecutors to being the persecuted.
Another more simplistic interpretation of the Allegory is the process and consequence of enlightenment. First one has to awaken from the dream we call life (breaking the bonds); then we become aware of the webs that influence and move us (shadows on the wall); and finally we see the truth for what it truly is (the sun and world outside the cave). Our instinct and natural desire is to free others and awaken them to the truth, but doing so is futile for they cannot see past the illusions and will only attack the truth bearer.
The Allegory becomes a metaphor for the life of Socrates. Awakened to the truth and killed for trying to bring that truth to the chained.(Wikipedia)
In our own pain and confusion, Jon and I were unaware how deep and broad the shift was and how many others would be going through the same experience as we.
What was special was that this new insight was spontaneously moving others as it had us. What was special in those early days of blogging was how small and village-like our world was and hence how we all started to know of each other. The 'sphere was maybe only 30,000 strong. The size of Athens under Pericles. With 60 million blogs this can never happen again. 2000 - 2004 was a time of ferment as all these that "saw" outside the cave took refuge with each other in a world that either laughed or attacked.
The Cluetrain was the Prophesy that guided many of us. As the book of Isiah foretold of the Messiah, so Cluetrain put in words back in 1999 what would occur. Each of us came to the conversation with our own initial revelation and then we found others who had had much the same experience. This Collective Aha was ecstatically exciting.
Each of us had our own world of influence. Every name here has their own interlocked version with their own special names. Here is my own partial Venn Diagram.
Jon had seen a new world that he named "Wirearchy". I had seen the same world that I named the "New Renaissance". Jevon MacDonald and I agreed to commit a year to each other to find out how to spread this idea. Peter had a year earlier introduced me to blogging. I had discovered Cyn only a mile away and conversations about the Commons had begun with Dan. Dave Pollard had called it the "Natural Organization". Ross Mayfield had just founded Social Text. Will Richardson was seeing the world of education anew. Euan Semple was toiling in the fields of the BBC helping them to talk to each other. Chris Corrigan was working with his people and was thinking more about the Art of Hosting. Hugh was having a drink with Tom Mahon. Scoble had just moved to Microsoft. Dina had just burst upon us from Mumbai. Johnnie Moore was rethinking Branding in London. Dave Winer had just started Userland, invented RSS!!!! and thought up Podcasting. John Robb was leaving Userland talking about how all this applied to conflict and terror. We all looked up to Doc Searls as our Gandalf.
There were of course many others but I mention only some who have become special for me. If we did not know each other we were only one link away.
2005 was perhaps the most frustrating year of all for me. I and many could now see the New World so clearly. The Sketch that had been the Cluetrain was now visible to me and to many in rich color and definition. But the powers of the traditional were seeing it too and they were pushing back,
2006 has been for us a year of vindication. I find myself still very frustrated but I am also filled with hope. What was once a mystery is now the lead in Time Magazine. Few really "get it" Many who use the new language, use it to attack or pervert it. But an interactive and more social world is emerging. I don't think that it can be stopped now.
On this Christmas, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice - the time of rebirth - the great holiday of hope for all mankind - I welcome this new child - a new but old way of being.
I welcome the first signs of our great return home to a culture fit for humans - our true natural state. It may take another generation to be fulfilled but fulfilled it will be.
In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.
When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces behind Creation.
Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energies
