Reading through Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was very enlightening to me. For most of my life, I thought my way of thinking was just wrong. It seemed like I saw things completely different from everyone around me, especially once I started reading more.
However, as I read through Plato’s allegory of the cave, I began to feel that perhaps those ideas that I used to think were so crazy aren’t so crazy after all. Maybe I am just seeing the world lit by a different light than the people around me.
Plato’s allegory starts with the idea that all the people are born already locked into a seat in a cave where everything they ever know is presented to them on a giant screen at the front of the cave. Since the screen is lit up from the back and the objects these people are shown pass in front of them on the other side of the screen. Everything else is completely dark so that they don’t know anything about their world other than the shadows they see on the screen.
Even if they want to, they can’t decide to look around because they are chained to their chairs and can’t move around.
Since all they ever know about the world are these shadows. This means that they can’t have any real idea of what colors are, what textures are, or any true sense of depth. This reminds me of the movie Matrix where the main character and most other humans live their lives in tanks and their minds are fed a virtual reality world through the computer that they’re hooked up to. It also made me think of the people I knew in my life who are only able to see the world from their own viewpoint without making any effort to see someone else’s point of view. I know we’re all guilty of doing this at some point or another, but some people will never even try. They just always think they’re right no matter what. But Plato suggests that this isn’t the only possibility for the future.
If someone is able to break the chain that holds them in their chair, they might escape the cave and begin to see the world in a whole new way. They are able to suddenly see the world as it really is, with color and depth and texture. However, all this new information will make this person very confused. Since they have never experienced these things before, they are naturally confused and disoriented. Their first instinct is to want to climb back into the cave where they’ll be safe. They don’t want to believe that what they’re seeing is real because they have spent their lives believing something else was real. This explains why so many people resist learning new things or trying to understand new cultures and ideas. This was shown in the movie The Matrix, too, when the main character was first pulled out of the computer network and forced to see what the real world looked like.
For me, what pulled me out of the cave was reading. I loved to read all kinds of books and they talked about new ideas, different ways of living, and different ways of seeing the world around them. Maybe because they were just books that I could put down any time I felt uncomfortable, I never felt all that threatened by the ideas they expressed, but because no one else in my family really enjoyed reading I didn’t really have anyone to talk to about these ideas and so I didn’t really realize how much my thinking was changing. In Plato’s allegory, he talks about how if people are kept from crawling back into the cave, then they have a chance at learning a higher truth as they become more familiar with the world outside the cave. As soon as they accept the new reality, they begin to see it by more natural light, which Plato uses to mean that they are getting closer to the real truth. First, they’ll get used to seeing things by the light of the moon and stars and then finally begin seeing it by the sun. In the Matrix, this is shown when the main character becomes super-adept at using his knowledge to manipulate the virtual world in order to help the rest of humanity escape from the chains that hold them in captivity. For me, it was moving from the world of my books into college, where I am learning many more new ways of thinking and meeting people with who I can share my thoughts. I want to share my ideas with my family, but they are not ready to hear them and don’t always respect my opinions. Plato predicted this might happen as people either see the enlightened person as a prophet or a crazy person. If the enlightened one is sure of himself in his new knowledge, then he is accepted, but if he is not, it is easy to believe the cave dwellers that he is crazy.
Before I read Plato’s allegory, I wasn’t sure of myself at all. I thought maybe I was learning too much and maybe a little bit crazy at the same time. Now I think I have just not learned how to see things in the daylight yet but that I don’t live in the same cave that my family lives in. They are certain in their definition of the world and they don’t mean to make me feel bad when they question what I’m learning and what I tell them. But they haven’t been able to see the colors and dimensions I have seen so far and so they can’t really understand what I’m saying.
I try to explain things to them, but since I don’t know much about it yet, I’m not very good at explaining things and I get things confused. Because of my uncertainty, they ridicule me and I would think I was crazy if I didn’t have people at school to talk to about my ideas. They also are learning the things that I am learning and starting to see dimensions where before there weren’t any. This allegory is a great way of explaining what I’m going through and reassures me that I am on the right track to a better understanding but I just need to learn more before I am able to share it with others who haven’t had a chance yet to sneak out of the cave.
Works Cited
Kreis, Steven. “Plato: The Allegory of the Cave.” 2004. The History Guide. 2009. Web.