Reading The Allegory in the Cave shows why people are not ready to conquer their fears or move on with their lives. Plato's philosophy plays a more important and meaningful role than materialism in our modern society. He believes that the world discovered by our senses is not the real world but only an imitation of true reality.
The cave represents the system or government. In this cave live prisoners chained like animals to the wall with no mobility and deprived of light. This allegory shows why the truth is so hard to accept and why once the prisoners are shown the truth, they refuse to accept it and revert to there old ways. A quote from the reading, "The glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence."�
Detail of The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio...
Plato azul de IKEA
PLATO_June_29_2005Plato believed that the prisoners might never be able to leave the darkness. The only truths they have ever know, is the truth they can never escape. In a way I can relate this to myself. I have the opportunity to go onto an out of state college, but fear of moving is the only reason stopping me. I compare our society to Plato's allegory because we too are living in a shadow that is created by the actions and beliefs of people today. Except for Christ, Gandhi and maybe even Socrates, no one is really enlightened, or has seen what life is all about. The remainder of the Earth's people see what we think is reality when actually it is the...