Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Quotes
240.  Today we have another quote by Plato.
Okay and we have done a couple by him
before. But let's take a look at the
quote today. We can easily forgive a
child who is afraid of the dark.
"The real tragedy of life is when men are
afraid of the light. " Okay. Let's take a
look at the note here. Tthe first part of
the quote seems to be obvious and easy
to understand. If a child is afraid of
the dark
he can easily be forgiven because he's
just a child
and he is still naive  To really
understand the quote one one must
question what does Plato mean by the
light ? So he's talking about men are
afraid of the light. 
What does he mean by light here ? There
are several ideas you know,  there are
people that could still be debating
exactly what does he mean by light. So
here are several ideas. First light could
refer to exposure of evil or bad deeds. 
This of course could lead to great guilt
or hold one back from one's potential
out of fear of exposure. So if somebody did
some bad things in their life and they
they fear that one day this could come
out and you know,  they may be thought of
in a different way. It may ruin their
reputation or whatever and it can hold
them back from you know from reaching
their full potential. So this in itself
could be a tragedy that they got to
carry this around with them for the rest
of their life. So this is one way that it
could refer to light.  Let's look at the
second one here. The second possibility
is light represents truth and knowledge
of the world. Okay. Perhaps a particular
man may prefer the comfort of ignorance
rather than search out and face or deal
with the truth. Yes. He may be unable to
face ugly truth. So maybe there's some
truths out there. That's not like he
imagined  could ever possibly be.
He may be afraid to even think about it
or deal with it. He won't dare to
consider that something may not be real
or true from what he thought before. Yeah.
You , you might think about this like with
today with fake news in our modern
times or you know,  news that we hear
directly from either government or you
know that we read in the books. Sometimes
we find out if we search deeper that not
all this is really is the way that we've
been told and the way it's been written
in the books. So if you if you look deeper, 
you may find there some truths beyond
that and you know basically if you're
afraid of finding out some of these
truths,  if you're afraid of searching and
looking for these answers,  this Plato
might also think is a tragedy in many
ways. Or and the third possibility. The
third possibility is light may represent
proper and moral behavior of life. Okay.
The tragedy here is once a man admits
this. Once he  admits this .  Once you figure out well
this is the moral way. This is the right
way,  so you should follow it. You should
do it. So the  proper or moral way ... the tragedy
here is once a man admits this to himself,
he should follow it,  but may be unwilling
to sacrifice some comforts or he may
prefer to justify his bad behavior with
excuses rather than make an effort to
change. And this in itself could also be
a tragedy. So these are all three
possibilities of what Plato might mean
by this quote but either way it's a very
interesting quote. It's an interesting
quote to dwell on or to think about.
Anyway,  I hope you got it.  I hope it was
food for thought. Thank you for your time.
Bye bye.
