Philosophy for the Shallow: Plato’s Cave, baseball and subjective reality

Once upon a time there was a Greek philosopher who took a bunch of mushrooms and wandered into a cave. He must have started a fire, and in the midst of making shadow puppets on the wall and mumbling to himself he was hit by an hallucinatory bolt of lightning. He realized that he controlled everything that he could see projected on the wall. His mind then jumped to a conclusion that could only be made possible by the presence of hallucinogens—what if everything we see is someone else’s shadow puppets.

When Plato came down, he formulated his Allegory of the Cave. He “philosophized” that most humans are unenlightened because they are content to simply name the shapes and shadows that others are projecting into their reality. However, the enlightened human will eventually turn around, see the “projectionist” behind them and walk outside.

Plato makes the argument that we live in a subjective reality. He believes that everything we see, feel and hear is subject to unenlightened interpretation. A song cannot simply be a song because when we bring our own personality and insights to it, it becomes something else. For example, the song “Piano Man” by Billy Joel has a lot of sentimental value to me. It reminds me of all the times my friends and I would play poker in my grandmother’s basement in high school. However, someone else could listen to that song and think it sucks (those people are bags of douche). In this case, “Piano Man” would be one of Plato’s shadows on the wall of the cave. Someone else has introduced it into my life, but because I am unenlightened, I reinterpret what I hear to make it applicable to my life.

Plato goes on to say that once you realize that your reality is subjective, you become “enlightened” and begin to explore the objective nature of reality. If the enlightened person no longer accepts his interpretation of what he sees, then there must be some greater purpose. An enlightened person would no longer see “Piano Man” as a sentimental song that reminds them of high school, they would instead explore the “nature” of song and how to objectively define it.

I believe there is no such thing as an objective reality. To prove this, I will counter Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with my own Allegory of Baseball.

Reality has rules. Everything dies, energy cannot be created or destroyed and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. And while the “rules” may seem like an objective reality pushing into a subjective world, they actually only exist because we discovered them. Physics and math is just a more complicated way of naming shadows on a wall.

Baseball also has rules (God, does it have rules). Three strikes to an out, six outs to an inning and nine innings to a game (unless there is a tie after nine innings–my first corollary). However, within this clearly defined system there is almost infinite room for interpretation.

I’m going to start with the most basic unit of a baseball game—the strike. Without the strike, the game would be an endless series of batters swinging until they got a hit or they collapsed from exhaustion. The strike is the catalyst that makes the game go. However, what constitutes a strike can vary not only by which umpire is behind the plate, but also how he is feeling that particular day or even inning. Imagine you went on Jeopardy and getting the question right depended not only on your own knowledge but whether or not Alex felt like saying you got the answer right. This is what pitchers and batters deal with everyday. A strike is supposed to be a pitch around mid-torso to the knees, and anywhere over the plate. But as we all know from watching a game, this is never the case. At its very core, the “reality” of baseball is subject to human interpretation (See: subjective).

God? Or force of nature?

If you want to take the allegory even further imagine the pitcher as God, nature or whatever ruling force of the universe you subscribe to. I am going to use God because the actions of a pitcher are willful and not seemingly random like acts of nature. So the pitcher’s whole job is to strike you out. His job is to make you look stupid. In my subjective reality, God is a pitcher who’s trying to ruin your day. Sometimes he throws a K-Rod slider that dives across the plate and makes you look silly, and sometimes he throws a fat, hanging curve that you hit out of the park. The good news is that there is a method to the madness. The bad news is sometimes you strike out, and God laughs. Oh, does he laugh.

However, like I said earlier, reality is subjective so God isn’t always Sandy Koufax. He may seem that way, but other times he’s an annoying Greg Maddux needling away at the corners, or a Jose Mesa who begs you to hit a homerun off of him. Some days you swing the bat like Hank Aaron and others you look like a terrified A.L. pitcher during interleague play.

The point of all of this is that there are no “absolutes” in the philosophical use of the term. Science has absolutes, math has absolutes, even music has absolutes, but those absolutes only exist because we discovered them. And before you jump all over me for contradicting myself let me point to this: A home run to left-center at Dodger Stadium is 375 feet. At Minute Maid Park in Houston, a home run to left center is 362 feet. The ball stays the same, the swing stays the same, even the batter and pitcher can stay the same, but in one park you’ll get a home run and the other you won’t. The parameters of the park were left open for interpretation, and because of that interpretation you have varying results. That is a subjective reality.