You may think that I agree with Socrates, that we need to break the chains that hold us in a false reality in order to discover what’s really real. You are right to think that in the past I have broken my chains, climbed out of the cave, saw the sun, blinding and brilliant, and felt the joy of being liberated from wrong views. But, as things came into focus, the scene was eerily familiar. I looked around and realized “Oh shit, this is just another cave.”

As we navigate through the world we develop mental models of reality that, among other things: Help us to predict the way that the outside world will behave in response to various actions Shapes how we interpret sensory data we perceive from the outside world Generates our conception of self as something separate and distinct …

When I tell people that I am going on a motorcycle trip around the U.S., once they get over the conceptual hurdle of someone not spending a majority of their waking life working, it seems to make sense to them. No one has ever asked, “Why?” It seems that they are comfortable ascribing a motivation …