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.He never understood what those early brainwashing fables did to him and didn'twork to overcome their negative effect.Socrates explains that the impressions immature psyches take into their minds andemotions have a tendency to become fixed beliefs and habits, difficult to eradicate orchange.A mature psyche has the capacity to distinguish truth from mere fantasy andappearance, propaganda from truth, to recognize stories as stories--and develop out ofinfantile illusions.Immaturity is the state of being asleep but presuming that you're awake;it is the inability to tell that you're NOT awake.Maturity is the capacity to distinguish truewaking from vivid dream experiences.It's this discriminating capacity that goes to sleepwhen you go to sleep intellectually and emotionally.It's precisely because we can't tell thatwe're NOT awake that dream-experience waking and sleep--has such power over us.196 The essential problem is that Americans have been lying to themselves for so manyyears now that they are completely incapable of telling the difference between therather frightening truth and their mythological view of America.The roots of theproblem go back to the 1930's, but the real problems began right after the SecondWorld War, when the American government came under the control of the group ofthugs who still run the country.There has been a carefully planned program of complete domination of all sources ofinformation through total media control, the creation of the 'think tank' system tomanufacture policy, the establishment of entrepreneurial right wing religion as amethod of political control, the use of political contributions to buy politicians, and, ifall else fails, simple violence.It is now a country where anyone who could do good ismarginalized or assassinated, and changes in government are at least as likely to occurby coup d'etat than by the operation of democracy.There is no longer even thenecessity to hide the fact that the country is run entirely for the benefit of certain largepools of capital.The essential lies that Americans tell themselves, which mainly have todo with class structure and, even at this late date, race, infect every major politicalissue in the country - crime and the incarceration industry, health care, the 'war ondrugs', education, immigration including the racist response to 9-11, the environment,poverty and the extraordinary creation of what is really a new caste system consistingof a permanent underclass (something that has happened, unnoticed, only in the lastfew years), and even American foreign policy.Each year since around the time ofSinclair's broadcast [Gordon Sinclair's famous broadcast from radio station CFRB inToronto in 1973] the situation has gotten worse, but lately the rate of deteriorationappears to be increasing rapidly.Things have gotten so bad that the government is nowfronted by a retarded (and I use that word in a technical sense) clown, who everyonetreats as if he were a real President (the worst lie to yourself is when you have topretend that the obvious idiot who leads you is entitled to do so).The lies are so deeplyingrained into American thought that the vast majority of the population apparently isincapable of seeing that there is anything wrong, meaning that there is no possibility ofchange.http://www.xymphora.blogspot.comIn Book V (476c) of the Commonwealth, Plato explains that the incapacity of theimmature mind to distinguish truth from fancy is essentially what it means to be in adream state.While dreaming we take the dream-image of a person to be a real person.Wetake something similar to be the very thing to which it appears similar.His expositionexplains how we can distinguish between the true waking state and the dream state.What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in Beautyitself and isn't able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of thisForm? Don't you think his life is a dream rather than a wakened state? Isn't thisdreaming: whether asleep or awake, to mistake resemblance for identity, to likendissimilar things, to identify the expression of the Form as the Form itself, to thinkthat a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?.197 But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of Beauty and is able todistinguish the Form from the objects which participate in the Form, neitherputting the objects in the place of the Form nor the Form in the place of the objects--is he a dreamer, or is he awake?He is wide awake.And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and thatthe mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion?Certainly.So, to become mature we must learn how to:" Distinguish resemblance from identity--for example, to distinguish between truedemocracy and the fake democracy that we now suffer under and which the cabalpuppets lie pretend to be bringing to Iraq" Avoid equating dissimilar things--for example, advancing in age is not equivalent tomaturing" Understand forms" Abstain from identifying the manifestation of the Form as the Form itself: abstainfrom identifying our present Constitution (a plutocratic document) with the Ideal ofa Commonwealth (a government of the people for the people)" Realize that a likeness is a likeness and not the thing itself that it is like: realize thatan illiterate, demented president is not a genuine American PresidentMaturity or awakeness is the capacity to stand apart from the immediacy of ourexperience and observe sensations and thoughts as they occur, reflecting on them,evaluating them, and thoughtfully choosing what our response will be.Plato assists us inattaining this kind of intellectual, emotional, and social maturity through his dialogues--butalso through myths and fables as well."Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies.To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing
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