Plato's cave
 We are all prisoners inside Plato's cave. We are chained to our
chairs and made to watch the shadows playing on the screens of the
television, desktops, laptops, tablets and androids. We only see the
images of the puppets and the echos. It is the reality for us. We accept
this as the reality and discuss and debate them and try to live by them.
Our eyes are so adjusted to the glowing screens that we cannot see
anything beyond them.
The most famous summary of Plato's philosophy is the allegory of the
Cave, found in Book VII of his Republic. There Plato wrote, "I want you
to go on to picture the enlightenment or ignorance of our human
conditions somewhat as follows. Imagine an underground chamber...."
individuals chained to a bench, movement and vision restricted. All they
could see is the wall before them upon which appears shadows cast by a
fire behind them. In between the fire and the wall walk actors carrying
puppets on sticks. That is their world, and they think it is the
Reality.
What if a prisoner is somehow released? At first he or she will
stumble in the dark, and be blinded by the fire, but then come to
realize that the shadows are copies of the puppets. The liberated
prisoner stumbles further up, all the way out from the mouth of the cave
and into the sunlight. There, when the sun-blindness goes away, the
prisoner sees the real things of which the puppets themselves are
copies. Finally, he or she is able to see the sun, by whose light the
real things are visible. "The showy environment of the cave symbolizes
for Plato the physical world of appearances. Escape into the sun-filled
setting of the cave symbolizes the transition to the real world, which
is the proper object of knowledge".
Plato tells elsewhere "the highest form of knowledge is knowing of
the essential nature of goodness......Good, then, is the end of
endeavour, the object on which every heart is set." Though Plato was
unable to explain 'The Good', he compared it to the sun. "the sun makes
the things we see visible".
What Plato saw in the cave would have been somewhat like what
pre-historic man saw in a cave, as shadows danced on the cave wall from
their fire. What Plato saw could be the 'Maya' our ancestors found in
the East. His allegory of coming out of the cave to find the Truth,
could have been influenced by the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha,
because some form of Buddha's message could have reached Greece in
Plato's time.
 Today even if we can stumble out of the cave we have built for
ourselves, we will still not be able to see the reality. Outside our
cave is only the shadows of a larger cave built by the society we live
in. We are trapped inside a world created by the mass media and chained
to a wall by the advertising mafia, so that we cannot even move our
heads. We create our caves, and the chains and we tie ourselves inside
the caves. We create the people who manipulate the puppets and keep us
imprisoned in the cave.
Aristotle described human perception as a 'bat's eye view'. The
Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang-Tzu, (369 - 286 B.C.E.) had once
dreamed that he was a butterfly. On awakening, he had asked himself, if
he was a man dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming
that he was a man. St. Augustine believed that "what was outside the
cave was the realm of the Christian God".
Among the prisoners who realized they were suffering, there had been
attempts to escape, and go outside into the sunlight. Some of them
realized the Truth and tried to go back and explain the Truth to the
others, and to try to bring them out of the cave. Not many would believe
them and sometimes would attack them as fools or lunatics. Others would
try to fight those who held the people in chains and try to liberate
them from the chains. Most of them get murdered, either by the prison
guards or by the prisoners themselves, who preferred the safety of the
cave. These great men range from Buddha, Christ and Che Guevara.
We also find Plato's cave in fiction. 'Captive Universe' by Harry
Harrison, 'Non-Stop' by Brian Aldiss and 'Orphans of the Sky' by Robert
Heinlein. Another is William Gibson's novel, 'Neuromacer', which could
have influenced the virtual reality film 'The Matrix'. In Daniel F.
Galouye film 'Simulacron' the inhabitants did not realize their world
was only a simulation. Most of these new creations based on Plato's
allegory have been motivated by quick profits by providing cheap
entertainment, which push mankind further inside the cave and strengthen
the fetters that bind them.
While Plato's cave influenced the artists and writers, it has also
influenced the thinking of scientists. Theoretical Physicist David Bohm
considered the universe as a gigantic hologram. He also wrote, "one can
feel a sense of flow in the stream of consciousness not dissimilar to
the sense of flow in the movement of matter in general. May not thought
itself thus be a part of reality as a whole? But then, what could it
mean for one part of reality to 'know' another, and to what extent would
this be possible?"
Carol P. Christ, claims that Platonic world view is rooted in
matricide and theacide (Goddess murder), caves were the womb of Mother
Earth, the place of emergence, return and transformation.
A new way to look at Plato!
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