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“Cage” - Inspired by the quote “Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.” - Alejandro Jodorowski.

A philosophical metaphor about how environment, conditioning, and limited experience shape a person’s view of normality. The birdcage theory is a metaphor that is used to describe the limitations and restrictions that hold us back from reaching our full and true potential in life.

Core Meanings & Themes
• The Shape of Normality: If a creature or person only ever knows confinement (a cage, a rigid belief system, a repressive culture, or a toxic environment), that confinement becomes their entire baseline for reality.
• Fear of Freedom: Because true freedom or self-actualization (“flying”) has never been experienced, it looks alien, terrifying, or broken rather than liberating.
• Conditioning vs. Truth: The quote highlights how societal or mental conditioning can make people reject ambition, innovation, or independence, sometimes even judging those who break free as reckless, lost, or “sick”
• Psychological Parallel: It mirrors concepts like learned helplessness or group conformity-where people internalize the limits of the system they grew up in and police themselves or others against stepping outside of it.

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