Some of you may have heard of the “brain in a vat (BIV) thought experiment”. Those who haven’t, look it up on Google or AI.
Now, since I receive no phone calls nor any visitors, except the occasional Swiggy/Instamart guy once in a few days, I feel like I am a “brain in a flat”.
Slowly I am realizing that Plato’s “Cave” is actually the outer world outside my flat, and being here as a “brain in a flat” I can actually access the truth and come face to face with “the Good”.
Here in the flat, the mind goes quiet — nah, it will not as long as I keep accessing my WhatsApp regularly. Maybe I will check only once a week or so.
Once the clamour of the mind and heart dial down, then Plato’s Sun will make its appearance and acquaint me with “the Good”.
Let it not be with me like Shakespeare wrote, and let me be a Man of Action when it comes to the inaction of Summa Iru:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action.
Know Thyself 