"Who am I? Why am I here?" said Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale, a truly great American whose record as a prisoner of war in Vietnam must make Senator John McCain feel regret and shame. Stockdale was set up to fail by Ross Perot the night he spoke those words in that debate, but that is another tale.
So did Paul Gauguin name his masterpiece now on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts “D'où venons nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?” (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?)
Francis Galton was a brilliant polymath who developed (among many other things) the concept of correlation in statistics and the scientific classification of fingerprints, which allowed them to be used in a court of law; he coined the term “eugenics” and floated the concept of “nature versus nurture” (he tended to favor nature); he introduced the use questionnaires and surveys to study human populations; this great traveler founded the science of psychometrics to measure mental ability. How useful he was to the reigning powers! He also asked these questions and answered so:
“Individuals appear to me as finite detachments from an infinite ocean of being, temporarily endowed with executive powers. This is the only answer I can give to myself in reply to the perpetually recurring questions of 'Why? Whence? And whither?' The immediate ‘whither?’ does not seem wholly dark, as some little information may be gleaned concerning the direction in which Nature, so far as we know of it, is now moving: namely towards the evolution of mind, body, and character in increasing energy and co-adaptation.”
–Francis Galton, 1905 essay, “Probability, The Foundation of Eugenics”
In other words, he suggested that the best of us may end up as intelligent, able, and as useful to the establishment as Galton himself.
But these basic questions impel and motivate free human beings. If we do not ask ourselves these questions, we will fall under the sway of those who do ask them. Rulers through history have known this and tried to insure that most people have neither the time nor the energy to contemplate such existential issues. Plato knew that wise rulers must keep the common people in the allegorical cave, taking the illusion of shadows for reality and given as little information as required to perform the tasks allotted to them.
Plato, The Allegory of the Cave:
"And now, I said, “let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: Behold! Human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”
“I see.”
“And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
“You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?”
“True,” he said; “how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”
“And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?”
“Yes,” he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?”
“Very true.”
“And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?”
“No question,” he replied.
“To them,” I said, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
Plato, a true proponent of the elitist rational if there ever was one, goes on to state that these miserable humans, ultimately at home in their shadow reality, would reject the truth of the greater world as too painful, bizarre and unbelievable. The few who have dominated man through history are absolutely certain that the average man is not only unworthy of the truth but, by now, has become incapable of handling the truth. Despite the popularity of Jack Nicholson's famous scene as Col. Nathan R. Jessup in “A Few Good Men” only a few good viewers actually “got it” and most happily applauded this megalomaniac character as if he truly fought for their interests as opposed to their masters' interests. The masses who cheered this monster were getting the truth thrown in their face.
