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“Politics is downstream from culture.”—Andrew Breitbart

I want to challenge your mind for a moment. Imagine if you were imprisoned in a cave for much of your adult life without the ability to view anything outside of that cave let alone many of the details of what exists within the cave itself.  

In this cave you are chained and cannot venture outside the cave. Each morning you wake up to view several shadows moving and acting out different types of daily activities on the wall in front of you. Day after day when you awaken you look to this cave wall and wait until you see certain silhouettes of people and objects moving along and acting out, perhaps what you would interpret to be the meaning of your very existence. 

Now understand that in this scenario you have no idea of what’s going on outside of the cave, as well as many characteristics that exist inside the cave. For instance, you’re unaware that behind you there’s a fire burning to provide the light for the shadows. Likewise there’s other people between the fire and you moving and carrying puppets in order to project the shadows onto the wall in front of you to shape your reality. 

Now let’s assume that you aren’t the only prisoner inside the cave viewing the shadows, but that you are the only one who finally catches a glimpse of the fire that’s behind you. In your new discovery you realize that the shadows are fake and you even manage to break free from your chains. 

After you break free you are able to venture to the outside of the cave to see that there’s a real world so much bigger and detailed than the one you’ve become accustomed to inside of that cave you’ve lived in most of your life. Out of total excitement of your new discovery you run back inside the cave to tell the other prisoners of your discovery, but in your attempt to do so you go blind because your eyes aren’t accustomed to the sunlight of the outside world. 

Because the other prisoners see your blindness they now fear they will also be punished with blindness, or much worse for venturing outside which in turn reinforces them to stay right where they are inside the cave. 

Swallowing The Giant Pill Of Reality

That very insightful and hypothetical scenario I just painted for you was not something I came up with on my own. No, that was a scenario from the great philosopher Plato’s Allegory of The Cave. 

This is a very powerful illustration as it paints a picture of people living in a rigged system where their perceptions are shaped by others in order to keep them subdued and imprisoned inside a false reality. 

Looking at Plato’s Allegory of The Cave it’s easy to see how such a false reality can be applied to the real world particularly in our current modern day environment. After all, in modern society the fire in the cave is directly substituted with the advent of cutting edge lighting for the cameras of news organizations and TV you watch daily. 

Additionally the actors and so-called journalists take the place of the puppet masters inside the cave. Modern cameras are used to project images onto your cell phone and TV rather than shadows on a cave wall, and the cave itself can easily be replaced by the government that keeps all of its people confined to a rigged and controlled environment. 

The brilliance of Plato’s Allegory of The Cave has been used many times in pop culture to expand on storylines regarding the illusions and authoritarianism that has haunted human existence since the dawn of mankind. 

A great example of this in modern culture can be seen in the epic film The Matrix. As you’re probably already very familiar The Matrix involves a complex computer program that plugs into the minds of humans. Inside The Matrix all people experience for all intents and purposes what seems to be normal day to day life. 

However the main character of The Matrix named Neo is offered a choice prior to him stepping into his role of the hero. As the ten cent version of the story goes Neo is approached by a friend and mentor named Morpheus inside The Matrix at a point when Neo is experiencing some terrifying events in his life, or as his life would be recognized inside the false reality known as the Matrix.

Morpheus offers Neo a choice between taking a blue pill or a red pill.  Neo is told the blue pill will keep him moving along in the daily rat race of existence as he currently understands it, whereas the red pill will free his mind from the confines of life as he knows it. 

Of course Neo takes the red pill and what we come to realize is that Neo wakes up inside an alien looking pod where all of these lines and cords suddenly unplug from his physical body. After he’s rescued from this horrible reality by Morpheus, Neo learns that his real physical body has been plugged into a giant computer system where a world of Artificially Intelligent (AI) beings use human bodies as a means of energy to power their technological grid. 

To do this they keep humans plugged into the Matrix to occupy their minds which is essentially a dream-like state while these AI beings use the energy from human bodies like a flashlight uses a battery. 

Neo taking the red pill to wake up from his false reality is the parallel to Plato’s prisoner breaking free from the cave to discover the outside world. 

Courage To Move Forward

If I had to guess I’m pretty sure Plato’s Allegory of The Cave was a big influence on the writers coming up with the storyline for The Matrix. However, aside from understanding that what we may recognize as our social reality is really an illusion, what is the other important element that we can take away from these two stories? 

The other takeaway I want to point out is the element of courage. Courage is what it took for the prisoner in Plato’s cave to venture outside once he caught a glimpse of the fire. The same can be said for Neo choosing to take the red pill which ultimately set him on a course to becoming the hero for humankind. 

Even though the prisoner from Plato’s cave ended up blind after he went back inside to tell the other prisoners of his discovery he still personally experienced and delivered a truth to those prisoners that they had never encountered. One could surmise that had they casted their fears aside from the worry of going blind that they would’ve stood a great chance at discovering a true level of freedom and reality that we know was shockingly so close to them, yet so far away at the same time. 

This is the current dilemma that has held back the gift of freedom with our current modern day society. This dilemma is what is known as the prisoner’s dilemma. 

You see a prisoner’s dilemma is basically what it sounds like. 

Looking at a good example of this, imagine a scenario where we have two partners who happen to be suspects accused of robbing a bank. For the sake of this discussion we’ll name the suspects Chuck and Barry. 

This scenario and others in a typical prisoner’s dilemma is a situation described in Game Theory which is an examination of economics that studies how key decisions are made during conflict and uncertainty. 

When looking at a typical prisoner’s dilemma two parties under threat have the ability to protect themselves at the expense of the other party, or individual involved in the dilemma. 

For instance, let’s say Chuck and Barry have been hauled in by authorities to be questioned about their alleged crime of bank robbery. 

In this situation let’s assume the cops have evidence on both men, but both must be questioned separately by the detectives in order to get a confirmed conviction since the evidence isn’t as strong. Because of this both Chuck and Barry are pressured by the police to spill the beans on each other. 

Now in this dilemma the cop tells Chuck that if he confesses about Barry being responsible for the robbery that he is free to go, but when the cop questions Barry he tells Barry the same thing. 

However, both men are unaware that if they both testify against each other they will both get 10 years in prison. Additionally if only one of the men testifies against the other the one that doesn’t testify will get 20 years in prison, but if BOTH men can be courageous and stick to their silence both will only get one year in prison. 

In this case both the strategic and courageous choice results in the best outcome. 

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.”--Winston Churchill

The Wrap Up

You see in this last example the best outcome, even during a challenging moment of uncertainty and threat, is achieved by the human quality of courage. Understanding this both you and I can see that the lack of this with Plato’s prisoners in the cave kept them frozen in place. 

The thing I want to communicate to you here is the power of you stepping into your courage and understanding that your perceived reality is being shaped by those in the media, Hollywood, and government. 

As a result your compliance and relenting to the wishes of those actors to participate in certain behaviors that chip away at your rights as defined in the constitution only means you’re choosing to stay inside the cave, OR that you’re choosing to swallow the blue pill. 

Now that you understand your dilemma you can choose smartly, but if you don’t at least now you understand the cost of that decision just as we understand the cost of it with Plato’s prisoners. 

I hope you enjoyed today’s article.

If so I really need your help to push this piece out to your friends, family, and coworkers.

In order for BOTH you and me to achieve the best outcome in this dilemma we must not stay idle so please make sure you hit the subscribe and share buttons here below.

Spreading messages like this one is how we influence our culture and I need your help in order to do it.

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I want to start this discussion by painting a picture for you. Imagine for a moment that you are living your life working, hitting the gym, pursuing goals, going out to dinner with family, and perhaps looking forward to driving into the city for a night out with friends. 

Maybe you were planning to take a trip and travel overseas. Perhaps you were thinking of taking a cruise down to Mexico or the Caribbean. You have been basically planning your life by grabbing freedom by the horns to break free of the chains of your desktop or laptop inside the Metaverse.

In very simple terms you just want to get out into the real world and enjoy real life experiences. 

Now for the next part I want you to focus on what I described and really absorb it because everything I just said sounds pretty normal, right? The answer is Yes. It was completely normal about two years ago, but the NEW reality is that everything I just described to you has become more and more abnormal over time. 

Now without stating the obvious, the real question I want to pose to you is why was all of this ALLOWED to be changed? 

The Overton Window Shift

So now I want you to also imagine going back in time two years ago and you’re living out your day to day life as I’ve explained in the opening of this article. Now with that in mind I want you to imagine that I come to you in person and tell you that in a very short period of time a series of events are going to take place that will completely transform your life and society as you know it.  

What I would tell you is that within about two years you’re going to go from enjoying your day to day life like you are to being fast tracked at looking at a global totalitarian situation. I would highlight that you would see this with every country falling under authoritarian rule over vaccine passports, warfare, famine, record high inflation, and energy costs through the roof. 

Furthermore, what if I told you in that moment that you’d also be told that you would own nothing and be happy for the rest of your life with the possibility of being reduced to renting a cubicle with the possibility of eating insect paste for your daily nutrition. If that’s not bad enough you’d also be stripped of any protections from this with the government outright violating your first and second amendment rights forcing you into this real life hell on earth. 

To make this even worse you would also witness family and friends not only willfully complying with this, but advocating for these insane authoritarian government mandates as well. 

Now if you’re intellectually honest you’d probably look at me and say that all sounds completely insane and nightmarish and you would be absolutely right, yet fast forward two years later to today and look at where we are now. 

So how did WE THE PEOPLE allow this to happen? How did we go from living our day to day lives with purpose and intention to all the sudden being thrown into the middle of a reality that resembles a Bond movie where the Bond villain manages to succeed. 

The reason this happened was because it was a coordinated effort on the part of the government politicians, the media, and the elites of major corporations in working to shift what’s known as the Overton Window of society.  

What’s the Overton Window? 

The Overton Window was named after an American policy analyst Joseph Overton. Mr. Overton stated that the viability of a certain political idea is determined by falling into the range, or window, of what he considers is politically acceptable based on the mood of society at the moment. If the idea is too extreme and falls outside the window then the idea will collapse, but if the idea is a move that only mandates a slight change then society will accept it and therefore the idea could be a success for the ruling class. 

So let’s go back to our little hypothetical situation with me warning you about the huge changes that would impact your life two years from the point I told you. Based on everything we know now all of it would be an overwhelming pill to swallow. 

This amount of news would be so insane to you that you would naturally label it as such. However, if we take the leap forward back into the real world and observe how our reactions to the pandemic played out then as we look back it’s easy to see how much WE THE PEOPLE allowed the Overton Window to shift to the point of where we are now. It has basically been a fast paced process of giving up inch by inch by inch from two years ago till now.  

The frustrating thing about this is that it was all completely avoidable if we had just been principled in the REAL science of what we have known for decades regarding health and fitness, as well as, being principled in our stance on NOT violating our constitutional rights. 

Of course I realize that’s easier said than done. However if you are reading this article and you were one of the individuals standing in the breach and not giving in to societal pressures to get jabbed, tested, or locked down without full blown non-violent civil disobedience then I’m certainly not talking to you. 

However if you did give in, or you’re reading this and still giving in to the lies you’re being told then you need to absorb the reality of what I’ve outlined here as you ARE the reason the Overton Window continues to shift at a faster and faster pace. 

The Wrap Up

I wanted to frame today’s discussion and scenario using time travel to illustrate the level and fast pace at which we’ve allowed authoritarianism to take away from our lives. In framing it the way I did here my hopes are that you would more easily understand the importance of not giving in to government mandates.  

One of the things that drives me crazy and is one of my main pet-peeves are people not understanding the definition and application of precedent. Once you give up a right then those that forced you to give it up are never just going to stop at that point. Authoritarians ALWAYS demand, scheme, and work really hard to take more. 

A precedent is extremely important and can be applied both to achieve good and bad outcomes when it comes to your health, your rights, and society at large. 

So now that you understand how the Overton Window works I say WE THE PEOPLE start setting the precedent to bring back an optimal level of liberty and health to move our lives forward. 

If you agree then please make sure you share this article with your family and friends to support the cause.

Let’s make a fast paced shift of the Overton Window for great outcomes for our liberty and health.

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Stay strong. Stay focused. Stay active.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brandonrichey.substack.com/subscribe

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brandonrichey.substack.com/subscribe