- The Allegory of the Cave
by Plato, you've heard
this one probably--
- I have.
- Yeah, so for the listeners
who may or may not be familiar
with The Allegory of the
Cave, the illustration
that Plato put together
was this illustration
of these prisoners who were born in a cave
and from their first
awareness, they were chained
in the cave facing a wall
and behind them was a fire.
People would pass by the fire with shapes
of different animals and representations
and it would cast a shadow
on the face of the wall
that the prisoners were facing.
And so the prisoners would
interpret the shadows
and name the shadows and to them,
those shadows were their
reality until one day,
one of the prisoners freed themselves,
made his way out of the cave.
The light was overwhelming to begin with.
He had great difficulty being able to see
and someone came along and said to him,
"What you're seeing is reality."
And after a period of
time struggling with this,
his eyes adjusted and he
started to see things in focus
and he started to not
only see the actual items,
but he also would see the
shadows and the reflections.
He went back into the cave
and shared the insight
that he'd gained outside of the cave.
But on telling them of
this newfound reality,
the prisoners in the cave rejected it.
They thought that he was stupid
because of the journey or
quest that he'd been on
and so they rejected
it, in fact, so much so
that they were violently
opposed to him attempting
to free them, to show
them this new reality
and in this allegory, in
this illustration that Plato
so adeptly crafted, there's
so much truth in it,
like we are born in circumstances
that we have no control over.
No matter now it is that
we have arrived here,
there needs to be an
awareness that we have been
indoctrinated by
individuals whose beliefs,
their attitudes, their
behaviors, their values
have been projected on us.
With all of the well-being
that they may have done so,
but with the limitation
of their awareness.
Our reality is oftentimes filled
with these representations
that are shadows cast upon
a wall that aren't reality.
(gentle electronic music)
