REVISITING THE CINEMA OF GRAND ILLUSIONS - THE WISDOM CORRIDOR

“Welcome to the Grand Illusion

  Come on in and see what’s happening

  Pay the price, get your tickets for the show …

  But don’t be fooled by the radio

  The TV or the magazines

  They show you photographs of how your life should be

  But they’re just someone else’s fantasy.”

                                                                                   Styx

                                                                                   The Grand Illusion, 1977

“For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things to be desired are not to be compared to it.”

                                                                                    Proverbs 8:11

“They may envy your success, wealth, intelligence, looks, and status, but wisdom is a rarity.”

                                                                                  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

                                                                                  The Bed of Procrustes

For the last three years, about this time, I try to envision myself visiting what I have come to call the “Theater of Grand Illusions.” Each time I come here, I’m amazed at what has changed since my last visit.

Lest I stray too far from my previous iterations, let me provide a reminder from my teaching days. In those times, I especially enjoyed teaching Philosophy—whether at the high school or college levels—because it provided me a regular opportunity to discuss the Greek philosopher Plato’s (428-348 B.C.) famous “Allegory of the Cave.”[1] The allegory provides a unique vantage point to discuss how we as humans perceive truth and reality, and whether there is any higher truth to existence.

If ever there was a time to have this discussion it is now.

In our age, it is becoming increasing difficult to separate truth from misinformation, and media narrative manipulation from news. Today, instead of Plato’s cave wall, we watch screens—television (streaming, cable and traditional), movie, computer, smartphone, or pad screens—that shape our contemporary view of reality. Moreover, our reality is increasingly shaped by unnamed (and unelected) elites armed with a new suite of AI-assisted algorithms, often using social media platforms—without any sense of moral scruples—all of whom now manipulate the puppet figures on the “cave wall” in front of us.

They all are screaming—or streaming—that we are racing toward singularity.

The elites stoke the fires behind us. Unseen and unnamed entities. In far too many cases, we have misinterpreted their shadows for truth.

As before, at least in my mind’s eye, I envision—for the purposes of this missive—the whole process being moved out of Plato’s allegorical cave into a present-day, giant cinema complex.

Welcome to the May 2025 version of the Grand Illusion Theater!

Everything had changed in the cinema and its many corridors. The last time I was here, the marquee posters which focused on world events—the protracted war in Ukraine, Israel’s military machine rolling in the Middle East, the threatening Chinese maritime buildup across the Taiwan Strait—have been updated (although I can still see the corners of past placards peeking through) and have been relegated to theaters in other, far more remote, corridors. Newer attractions have moved into the featured screens with titles like …

Even across the corridor where theaters focused on political showings, with the decisive election victory of Donald Trump, there were new attractions …

Again, when I walked through the main theater entrance, I was forced to go through a narrow hall of mirrors. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes, almost like the maze of mirrors in the circus when I was a kid, you know the ones that made you look taller or shorter, fat or skinny and made navigation to the exit difficult. About halfway through the hall, I saw a mirror with the word TIEHSIEW with large letters etched in the glass-like surface. “What is that?” I thought to myself. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the reflection of the mirror on the opposite side with the word WEISHEIT.

As I mulled over the meaning of all this a young woman ran past me, her eyes wide in panic, pulling at her long black hair with both hands, and shrieking at the top of her lungs, “it is all about the mirrors!” Then, stopping directly in front of me, she grabbed me by both arms and looking straight into my eyes, shrieked “I’ve been deceived so long. They’ve lied to me! It’s all about the mirrors,” she screamed, and bolted away as fast as her spindly legs could carry her in the same direction that I had just entered.   

I was unnerved and confused by the young lady’s intervention in the middle of the maze of mirrors.

I tried to understand the sheer edge of panic in her voice.

I stumbled through the maze, going down one passage after another, only to find it was the wrong way and returning me—time after time—to the place where the words were. A small inner voice began to whisper that I may never get out of there. Like the time, as a boy, when I was caught in the middle of Kermit Lease’s hay mound maze and feared I may never get out and fearfully sensed the weight of hundreds of bales of hay above my narrow passageway.

Just then, when my dread was nearing fever pitch, I heard a voice. “P-s-s-s-t! Follow me.” And I turned to follow a shadowy figure that appeared out of nowhere. I followed him as he skillfully navigated his way through the maze of mirrors.

“Wait,” I called out, but he continued without pausing.

Ahead I could see lights.

Artificial lights.

Inside lights.

I heard a computer-like buzz ahead.

The last mirror pane had a prediction etched on it. It was by well-known futurist Ray Kurzweil: “Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and medicine could allow humans to achieve immortality by 2030.”

Below the quote, passionately scribbled in a black magic marker were the words “but God.”

I was perplexed by the implications of the quote and wondered about the words underneath.

Ahead I paid more attention to the young man who had guided me through the maze. He was good looking, sported the scraggly beard of a teenager, wore royal robes, and carried himself like a person of high bearing.

I felt like I should know who he was.

“Jeemes, let me show you another part of the theater,” he said.

“How do you know my name?”

The teenager smiled and said nothing.

“I have so many questions,” I said as we walked down the aisle and toward a corridor which branched off the main auditorium.

But nobody followed us.

“Why was the word ‘weisheit’ in the maze?”

The teenager stopped in the middle of the aisle. “It is German. In your language it is best translated as ‘wisdom’”—

“Wisdom?”

“Yes, it is what you need most during this season of your life. That is why I have been sent here.”

He turned and started walking down the corridor.

“But wait,” I called out, “what about Kurzweil’s quote?”

He turned with a smile. “Beware of screens, mirrors and counterfeits—”

“But won’t A.I. change everything?” I asked.

“Not the most important things” he replied nonchalantly as he walked through the entrance of the corridor.

I followed him.

But not before looking back to the huge amphitheater where I noticed my comfortable chair in the middle remained vacant. The massive screen in front continued to play the latest news reels, followed by a host of commentators explaining what the viewers were watching on the massive screen in front of the amphitheater. 

As I have mentioned before, in the Grand Illusion Theater, I still have no idea who runs the projector, who decides what movies are to be shown, how long they will play, or when—or if—the intermission will come.

Everything there was beyond my control.

As before, I noticed a swarm of small drones flying down the theater aisles carrying payloads of free popcorn, sodas, and beer to the spellbound viewers. Unbeknownst to those in the audience, the food and drink was laced—according to the latest algorithm—with just the right amount of disinformation, fear and trepidation.

I could sense a spirit of fear and uncertainty hovering over the audience like a shroud.

Moreover, I could tell that almost no one in the crowd noticed the diversionary subliminal messages interspersed with the visual images and narrative on the screen. Timeworn and well-rehearsed interjections extolled the virtues of scientists and technicians who dominated the screen, interspersed with just a touch of righteous anger directed toward those political and religious naysayers sitting on the right-hand side of the theater. On the opposite side, servers scurried underneath the drones, garbed in skimpy costumes, and handed out tokens saying “anything for curing future diseases is justified.”

At that point I noticed a phenomenon I had seen in almost all the featured theaters in the cinema—virtually no one sat in the middle sections.

No matter, a subliminal message of hate was transmitted to each person in the audience, no matter where they were seated.

“Do you miss it?” my guide asked.

“I have some powerful memories of the place,” I replied. I recalled one visit to the theater, where a sinewy middle-aged man with curly hair and wrinkled skin took a seat directly behind me and whispered in my ear: “it’s all Trump and Musk’s fault you know.” My friends later told me he had not changed his tune since 2016, nevertheless, he was a fixture in every theater.

The addition of Musk was a new wrinkle.

I sensed from a different vantage point that the screen narratives swallowed all truth.

“Forget what you’ve seen in the past,” my youthful guide pleaded, “I have something fresh to show you.”

I turned my back to what was happening in the amphitheater.

My guide handed me a pair of glasses.

“What are these?”

“They will allow you to see things through a spiritual prism,” he said.

The portal entrance was protected by a thick curtain. I wondered why I had never noticed it before. As I donned the pair of glasses, I saw a multi-colored bible verse blinking brightly. I recognized it as Proverbs 4:7—Wisdom is the principal; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

“I’m not sure I fully grasp what that means,” I told my guide.

He smiled. “It is the foundational truth for everything you need. You’ll see. Follow me,” he said.

In a couple steps I noticed a brightly worded placard, with a hologram of a teenager at the top. “Who is that?” I asked.

“King Solomon. He wrote Proverbs as a young man.”

“I didn’t know that.”

As I looked further at the placard, three statements—rules—emerged. The first statement: read Proverbs as a listing of short, pithy practical tips rather than a theoretical treatise; the second rule was similar, view these verses as truisms rather than promises; and the third, the verses are general principles not methods.[2]

“Those are so interesting,” I said to the guide, “I have so many questions—”

“I know,” he said, leading me further down the corridor.

“What is the root word of wisdom?” I asked as we walked.

“In Hebrew it is hakam, actually the word to describe the special ability and insight that God gave to those building the tabernacle in the wilderness and later the temples of David and Solomon on the Holy Mount—”

“But what differentiates wisdom from other related concepts like knowledge or understanding?” I asked. “They are in Proverbs as well, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” my guide said, pointing to words etched into the stone walls of the corridor.

The first word, bordered in a bright silver frame, was KNOWLEDGE.

“What can you tell me about knowledge?” I asked.

“It appears 39 times in Solomon’s Book of Proverbs,” he said, “it refers to a human’s accumulation of information,” he continued.

“But in our world, we are awash with information. There is so much data available to everybody.” As I spoke, I recalled my time in the intelligence community where we were overwhelmed with so much information from so many sources it was like drinking from a firehose.

“Yes, I know,” my guide said knowingly.

We walked further into the bowels of the corridor.

On the wall was a gold frame around the word UNDERSTANDING.

“What can you tell me about understanding?” I asked.

“The word appears 35 times in Proverbs and can be seen as the human interpretation of information.”

“That is in short supply today,” I laughed.

“Indeed.”

We moved deeper inside.

I saw another word inside a bright flashing platinum-looking frame. It was WISDOM.

This was what I was waiting for.

“The word is used 51 times in the book,” my guide began, “it is the human application of information.”

I tried to parse the differences between the three words and plant it deep into my spiritual DNA.

“I know time is short,” the guide said, but I need to show you one more thing.” He led me to a side alcove carved into the stone walls of the corridor.

“I know you love the study of Chinese characters dating back to your military service years as an Air Force Chinese linguist during the Vietnam era,” he said.

Two characters were emblazed on the wall 智慧

“I don’t recognize the characters,” I admitted.

“They are the two parts of the Chinese character for wisdom—a very difficult concept to grasp in Chinese as well as Western languages. The first character is zhi the ability to tell the difference between things, and hui the ability to see a larger pattern to things.”[3]

“Wow, that is rich!” I exclaimed. “Wisdom is the God-granted human ability to perceive differences at every decisional level—the difference between doorways—to sense the difference between paths that will lead to destruction from paths that leads to God’s assignment in our lives.”

The guide nodded.

He could see my brow furrowed with a thought.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Wisdom is an innate human decisional ability. It is one aspect of our reflection of God’s image. But we live in a spiritual world as well as a physical one. There is an ongoing battle for our minds. What if dark spiritual entities begin to intervene in this decisional process, to the point they are overwhelming our reasoning capabilities?”

My guide smiled.

“The Holy Spirit’s gift of DISCERNMENT is designed to equip believers to cope with that situation and level the spiritual playing field.”

With that, the guide led me to the corridor’s exit which, in turn, dumped into the hallway directly across from a small, ordinary-looking theater. Very few people shuffling by in the cinema mall entered through the doors. The marque’s coming attraction flashed in bright neon lights: “Jesus Christ Is Coming Soon.” But almost everybody passed by the theater as though it didn’t exist. I noticed that thick spiritual scales covered their eyes which, in turn, rendered them lifeless, listless, and hopeless. Each of them carried a cellphone or pod device—all blasting the noise of this world and echoing the sounds coming from the other theaters—which prevented them from seeing and hearing the message on the marque.

“You know,” my guide said, “there is no fear-tainted popcorn or drinks allowed in that theater and all subliminal screen messages are forbidden. Admission to the theater is free of charge. In contrast to the glitzy distractions and worldly narratives featured in the other theaters, the screen portrays only one simple message: Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

I said goodbye to the guide and entered the doors of the theater: inside was the only message I wanted to see and hear, the only coming attraction that would really satisfy me.

The embodiment of wisdom.  

The true end of the grand illusions.

[1] In my previous missives on this topic, I included this brief introduction. Plato’s allegory is taken from his work Republic and appears in the form of a dialogue between Plato’s brother (Glaucon) and Plato’s mentor Socrates. The allegory portrays a group of people chained to the interior of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. Every waking moment, they watch shadows projected on the wall—puppet-like figures passing in front of a fire behind them. The shadows constitute the chained observers’ respective reality; they even give names to the shadows. Even if one of their number would somehow escape and experience a completely different reality outside the cave wall and would return to tell them, they won’t accept the new truth.

[2] Many of these ideas concerning my walk through the wisdom corridor were generated by a message of Pastor Gary Hamrick at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia. Pastor Hamrick is one of my favorite Bible teachers and his messages are available at cornerstonechapel.net.

[3] See Huang Xin, “Wisdom Deciphered Through the Chinese Character [for Wisdom]: Are We Truly Grasping Its Profound Meaning and Worth,” LinkedIn, Aug. 11, 2023.