It may be familiar to you, The Allegory of the Cave, or Plato’s Cave. Even if you haven’t read this before, I am sure you will have an understanding of it from your own lives. It comes from Plato’s “The Republic”…
Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.(source from Wiki)
From my relatively short time in this industry, it is becoming clearer to me every day that this parable can be used to describe the current situation we find in the relationship between the Real Estate industry and the internet.
Picture, if you will, the group of people chained to the wall as the vast majority of Australia’s Real Estate agents, facing a blank wall on which they are fed a limited view of the wider web outside the cave. At this point in time the prisoners, although not satisfied, have a degree of complacency with the projection of the real web they are being presented with.
The presentation of course is controlled. The presentation is a limited version of what is outside the cave, based on the minimum the presenters need to control, in order that the agents, chained to the wall, can feel this is all they need. Their ignorance is bliss, but comes under a heavy price structure.
What the agents may not understand is that the presentation is only a fraction, a shadow of what is outside the cave. What is outside the cave is infinite and it’s free. What is outside the cave is the future and possibilities are boundless, any direction can be taken and one day the cave could collapse leaving them suffocating in toxic fumes while the presenters scramble out, possibly to find another cave and another set of chained prisoners.
A recent comment in Business2 on the subject of breaking free of the current internet models that are presented to the real estate industry i.e.; the shadows on the wall, mentioned “It would be like coming off a five year gig on crack cocaine”
The crack cocaine in this instance is a great metaphor as well. Inflated prices because of control, a condensed and highly provocative version of reality, but once you have had a taste you are under the control of the experience and know nothing else that could be better. Into the cave you go, shadows projected by the drug, the real life in the sun becomes unreal and scary.
Maybe those chains aren’t really there at all. Maybe because of it being a competitive industry, those who venture forth up the stairs, out of the cave and into the light really don’t care about the others stuck in the cave watching the shadows.
But for the paradigm to change, more agents need to release themselves from the chains and see the reality. I will leave you too speculate on who are presenting the shadows…