Plato's allegory of the cave

"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection." (99)

Focault talks about ideology and power in a very interesting way. His description of the panopticon is somehow similar to Plao's allegory of the cave: he describes a world where prisoners live chained in a cave.  The puppeteers cast shadows on the wall and these shadows construct reality for the prisoners.  One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave.  At first, he is blinded by the sun and apprehensive about the new world.  The shadows in the cave had always seemed so real to him.  After he has spent some time in this new world, he realizes that his entire existence has been controlled by others and he now knows the truth.

Similarly, ideologies and their power creep up on us throughout the years without us noticing how strongly they influence our lives and shape our identities. As the panopticon and the puppeteers of the cave, ideologies show us what we should see and help us make sense of 'our realities.' The problem with this is that people get too fixated on the ideologies they have adopted (consciously or unconsciously) to the point in which they get blinded by them. For example, people that strongly believe gays are condemned to hell who have been taught to believe this and consciously accepted this belief. Another example is people who grew up a certain way and unconsciously adopted a certain ideology; I found myself in this position a couple days ago: I was reading an article titled "Gendered Comments You Probably Faced At Thanksgiving" and all of them resonated with me!! I didn't go back home for thanksgiving but I remembered all those Christmas dinners we had... I certainly heard all those comments such as "Honey, that's not very lady like" or "Girls cook, guys do something manly" or "Honey, you should wear a little more makeup."

 Sure, I love my family; but the gender ideologies are so unconsciously deeply rooted in the back of their minds that they say things like this with the best intentions as if they were giving me a good piece of advice (by telling me to wear more makeup to look prettier...). What's worse, there is no way in the world I can point this out to my elder family members because "most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone that points it out" (I got this quote from the video I copied the link to, check it out!)

It is very interesting to see how very palpable ideologies are, but most of the time we aren't aware... I wonder what ideologies I have accepted unconsciously and therefore, live by without even noticing them... This scares me a little and goes back to-I don't remember the name of the theorist-who says that in order to understand ideology we have to stand outside of it...


Link to an explanation of Plato's cave allegory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA


Link to the article about gendered comments on thanksgiving:
http://theodysseyonline.com/rollins/gender-norms-thanksgiving/234116