The Allegory of the Cave
In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes a dark underground cave where a group of people are sitting in one long row with their backs to the cave’s entrance. Bound to their chairs since childhood, all the humans can see is the distant cave wall in front of them with shadows being displayed. Their view of reality is solely based upon this limited view of moving shadows; this is what is real to them. Plato illustrates, in The Allegory of the Cave, that humanity believes aimlessly in their beliefs, prohibiting any comprehension of the truth of their existence. The "prisoners" do not realize that they are being held captive, since that existence is all they have ever known.
“One might be released, and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round, and to walk and look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he would be too dazzled to ...view middle of the document...
Plato’s idea can be described as your body is a robotic suit in which your mind controls, this robotic suit is placed into a video game where the goal is to become successful, this is your reality, and your body that is controlling it is locked up somewhere else, in a cave for instance. Now imagine that this cave isn’t so small, it’s so vast that it can hold the 7 billion human beings that inhabit the earth today. So then how do we define reality? Is it the television always available to us, or the image of how we see ourselves being. Better yet, the shadows on the wall that are being shown to us. Since the television and the media have identical concepts as the shadows on the wall, then couldn’t you say that it is what we see everyday that we call reality. As in a cave with rows of billions of people, the image that we see is also being seen by everyone else around us. It shows everyone the concept of today, the memories from the past, and of what unfolds tomorrow.
There is a greater sense of higher power in most people, it is like a splinter in the mind. It won’t go away, and one can truly never figure out what it is or where it came from. Plato’s idea on the way of life is that little metal tool one uses to rid of their splinters. People of this planet should either accept the fact of this video game lifestyle, or strive for knowledge to discover, and create. Human beings are best at one thing, discovering. As Plato says, “The world of our sight is like the habitation in prison, the firelight there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of mind...” (35). This isn’t another quote, but a way of life, it’s the connection we feel towards this planet and the feeling of discovering something genuinely new whether it be on Earth or in the Universe. That is human life, either it be digital or relative, ignorance is bliss.
