The Reader Travels

So another of my favorite tales from philosophaster school was the allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic.  Similar to the fat guy story, and as its name suggests, this one also happens in a cave. 

It goes something like this: you’ve spent your life chained to a cave wall.  People pass by outside the cave, and they talk and carry on, but from your vantage point, you can’t actually see them.  You can, however, see the shadows they cast on the cave wall, and all your life, you think the shadows are doing the talking and causing all the commotion. And that’s fine for you.

Except one day, you’re set free, and you see that there are actual three-dimensional people making all that racket.  Maybe you go insane with this new information, or maybe you were ready to see the truth, and you can then become a productive member of the shadow-casting crowd.

It’s an allegory for the lies told to us by our leaders.  They keep us in the dark watching shadows because it’s all we can understand. 

“It’s a free country,” they say.  But baby, freedom’s just a shadow on the wall.

That’s okay, though. It’s a beautiful illusion.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 8:02 pm and is filed under meanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.