What makes a cage a cage?
What are the dimensions? The length and width and height of the container that makes you a prisoner? How high does it need to be, how big, until you think that it’s not a cage anymore, just life? Is there even a cage? Are we free?
I was rewatching Godzilla vs Kong the other day and I was so in love with all the scenes of Kong chilling in the wilderness, on soft grass and under cool water cascading down the mountains in a sheet of brilliant, silvery mist. I was captivated by the beauty of the trees and the sky and the river. It was fulfilling—watching the giant gorilla bathe in the warm sunlight, listening to chirping birds and hooting owls and laughing monkeys, but was any of it real?
As soon as he hurls a makeshift weapon into the sky, as soon as the wood connects with a wall of metal with a false sky painted so realistically over it, the dynamic images flitting across it in a poor attempt at consoling and comforting, something changes. We realise something. We realise that it is a cage, and it will always be a cage, no matter how real the artificial sky looks and no matter how sweet the water tastes.
It is a cage because it is an illusion of freedom, a falsehood, a fake attempt to recreate something that’s actual counterpart is withheld out of reach.
But what makes a cage a cage? How do you measure it? How do you define it? What is the limit of restriction that you can get away with—under whatever reason you want to use to justify it—before the safe and the secure and the home becomes a prison?
How far can I walk before I stop, turn around and reach the other end? A hollow cave of illusions tucked inside invisible bars, like ribs keeping a beating heart inside. How long can this rope stretch before it stops being called a leash?
Are We In A Cage?
And then: Are we in a cage? Would we even know if we were? How long until we can be fooled, like Kong? How long before we hurl a pointed piece of wood at the boundaries and realise that, yes, there they are. The boundaries. The walls.
Can we ever really know that we’re in a cage unless something, someone comes from outside and makes us realise.
A Metaphorical Cage
Are we ever out of a cage? Maybe it’s impossible. Maybe it’s a human construct- the idea of limitation as something to be broken out of. After all, aren’t we all caged inside this planet? But then again, in the most literal sense of the word, aren’t we always in a cage? Isn’t this planet also a cage? We couldn’t go out until very recently, and even now, going outside the protective shield of atmosphere and into the unknown beyond is kind of infeasible. It’s possible, yes, but to a very limited extend. For most it’s improbable, if not impossible.
And yet we do not call this a cage. We call it home. Something that keeps us alive.
What are the distinctions, the line that separates the two?
So maybe we need to assign a less literal sense to the word. Maybe it’s not so much physical barriers as metaphorical ones. Maybe the most dangerous kind of cages are the ones that aren’t visible. We can’t see them, but they’re there all the same, transparent walls pressing in from all sides.
What Is Your Cage?
Are you caged by your fears? Are you caged by society? By what others think. By what you cannot see. Are you stuck inside your own head, a fantasy that can never be true because of the very fact that it is a fantasy? We all have something limiting us. We all are bound to something—may it be comfort or fear of change or a love of the old and familiar. We all have invisible bars blocking our paths, and some may be easier to break than others, but it is often hard to even figure out what they are.
Can You Get Out Of This Cage
Maybe. Maybe not. I like to think that we can, but the sad truth is that some people don’t. Some people spend their lives trying to get out of the labyrinth. Some people never even figure out that there is a labyrinth.
But I like to think that we can. At the very least, we can try.
Read in detail about free will or the lack thereof in this post: Why We Do What We Do: Decisions and Determinism
