In Plato's Allegory of the cave, the people inside of the cave are us. The unenlightened. They're trapped in ignorance, having no other choice but to believe that the shadows on the wall, things completely insignificant in the grand scheme of the world, are the truth. The only way they can be released from their ignorance is for someone else to physically force them into the light, as the real world, to someone used to revering shadows, is dazzling and terrifying. Their ascent into wisdom, initially, is horrifying. For us, looking deeper into our truths and realizing how insignificant we are is also horrifying. The allegory mentions how the prisoners, who knew nothing of their world but their shadows, laughed at the one who was freed. This also reveals a truth - deeper meaning to almost anything seems ridiculous when you first encounter it. You have to have the perspective yourself - have to think through whatever you're talking about and witness the truth in it - to grasp what the other person is trying to convey. For the prisoners to realize the truth in what the freed man was saying, they would have to leave the caves themselves, and walk into the light.
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| In my mind, Plato's ascent into wisdom looks like this. |
In a modern day, we know that the truth of the universe is so much inaccessibly larger than Plato's truth that he probably couldn't have dreamed of it. I feel like our "cave", therefore, is the world we're in. From what we can tell, we're miniscule compared to the enormity around us, and yet Planet Earth is all we've experienced. It's also terrifying for us to accept just how big our universe is, and our relative insignificance. Really, in the grand scheme of the uncountable light years we're surrounded by, we mean nothing. Which is awkward, considering how much impact we think we have. The gray people in the drawing are that kind of mentality. If you're stuck in thoughts of how important you think you are, it's really hard to realize the vastness around you.
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