Modern Day Version of Plato's Cave Allegory-
Recently,
I've been reading a lot of philosophy and worldview resources for
school. As I was reading Plato's Cave Allegory, it hit me that this
is confusing stuff. No wonder most people don't want to study
philosophy, it's hard to understand! When I first read this allegory
a few years ago, I had no idea what I had just read. After reading it
for a second time, I feel like I grasp it a little better. So I
decided to write a modern day version just in case there are some
other confused people out there.
Imagine
you're in a cave and you're all chained up and all you can see is
this wall.
And
the jerks who chained you up are using a fire to create shadow
puppets on the wall, just to mess
with
your mind. After a while of being chained up and looking at this
wall, you get used to how the shadow puppets perform, and you form
your understanding of reality on these shadows. These shadow puppets
are all you've ever known, so you don't know that there is an
entirely different world out there.
So
eventually someone comes along and unchains and takes you out into
the real world and you're super confused. At first you can't see
anything; the sun is blinding you. Then you realize that actually you
couldn't see anything if there wasn't a sun! Then you see a tree,
except you don't know its a tree, because you've only ever seen a
shadow of a tree, so you ask the person who unchained you what it is.
When he tells you it’s a tree, you laugh and tell him it's not a
tree, you know what a tree looks like, and this ain’t it...
Finally
after a while you'd realize that nothing you saw on the wall was
real...it was only a shadow of what was real. So you run back to the
cave to tell the others who are still chained up. 'Cept when you get
back and start explaining stuff to them, they all think you're
stupid. You describing what a tree looks like. You'd tell them a
tree is green and brown. They look with empty eyes and ask
“Dude...what’s green? What’s brown?” They point to the wall
and say, “That's a tree.” You look at the wall, but now you can't
see at all because the sun has been messing with your eyes. So they
all laugh at you and call you stupid, and won’t leave the wall.
This
is what Philosophy is like, according to Plato. The soul ascends and
apprehends the forms and the idea that “the idea of good” gives
light to everything else. Then the philosopher has to go back to the
world of forms – the wall – and try to explain to people what
'the good' is...but these idiots don't even know what 'brown' is so
they don't understand something as complex as ' the good'.
Plato's
point is
that 'the good' is out there, and everyone has to find it for
themselves. You can't force knowledge on an idiot...he has to
find it on his own.
“True
knowledge must be obtained the hard way, and some people just don't
want to see the light”
