If we have been born into a system fundamentally designed to make us lose so that others can win, recognizing fear based tactics for control and manipulation is, in my opinion, the best way to escape the cage.

I feel you man, but once you're in the rat race... escaping it is not easy. Sure, the first step is to see things as they are, but that does not change much in the real world. You still have to eat, you still have to fulfill the promises you've made,... Fear isn't necessarily irrational feeling.

What realizing that you're living in a cage, and that the system you've been born into is what it is, changes in practical day to day living?

Unless you're wealthy, I'd say not much.