Not Just a Cultural Decline

I think we need to start taking the prospect of a new renaissance very seriously. In this video, I want to answer a few objections and to also clarify what my concept of the new renaissance is, whom it is for, and how it's actually possible. So, since I've been talking about the prospect of a new renaissance since October last year, several other YouTube channels and Substacks have taken up the idea, mostly in support of the movement. Some of them I agree with, and I'm really grateful to have their voices joining the chorus here.

Others are, I think, talking about something completely different or casting the possibility of a Renaissance as something else entirely. So, in this first video essay on my project, the new Renaissance, I'm going to introduce my idea of a Renaissance moment, which is the key concept for the argument. So, let's begin. Of all the well-known stories of philosophy, there is one that I wish had ended differently, and that's Plato's allegory of the cave from book seven of his Republic.

Maybe you've heard the story before. It begins with a group of prisoners chained inside a deep, dark cave. Their bodies are fixed in such a way that they can only see straight ahead of them at a cave wall. Behind them, a fire burns and casts shadows of objects that pass in front of the flame and project onto the wall.

And these silhouettes flicker across the wall in front of the prisoners. They have no other visual reference. Having spent their whole lives within this cave, they've grown accustomed to this limited view. The shadows are their only reality.

Awards are given to those who can most accurately identify the shadows that pass by and interpret them, and others repeat these interpretations and just reinforce the illusion. The cave is a closed system. No new data arrive from outside this system. Real objects never come into view.

The same light from the same fire shines and the same shadows repeat in an endless loop upon the cave wall. The prisoner's world is confined by this perpetual rehearsal of shadow interpretation. But somehow one prisoner breaks free. And after slipping off his bonds, he he walks around the cave's interior.

He turns around and he sees for the first time the fire, the source of light, and real three-dimensional objects ...