Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave.”

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he compares humans as to prisoners of something he calls the physical world. He explains how the physical world is a mere illusions and shackles that do not represent reality. The sun is represented by the fire in Plato’s cave and the shadows that cast on the wall represent the physical world of the prisoners. As to humans, we only know what we have been conditioned to see over the course of “time” by our physical world and our in which our education does not equal our wisdom. As Plato beautifully states in Plato: Allegory of the Cave, P Shorey trans. from Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed. Hamilton and Cairns Random House 1963, Book VII, section 518, “But a sensible man, I said, would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same things happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision.” By this Plato is saying that one must not look down on anyone else for lack of understanding something in which might be unfamiliar to their reality. He says don’t laugh at these persons but simply share in the light of wisdom and clarity. In conclusion to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave he believes a divine world is one run by those who know the blessings from a higher understanding of the soul and body. (295)

I believe there is a parallel between Plato’s prisoners and the spectators in a cinema because just as the prisoners have only ever known these shadows and sounds as reality, us as a society, have ever known these false ideals portrayed in movies as our realities. However I believe that the prisoners in Plato’s cave did not have (58) any knowledge of these shadows and sounds being of false reality while I think us as humans have a general knowledge that these ideals portrayed to us can in fact be false realities. However, I think a lot of people do mistake movies for reality. For example, some comedies and documentaries portray other countries besides the United States as very poor and unstructured. We see movies like Slumdog Millionaire and might make the assumption that India’s citizens are robbers and cheats. In the (141) movie it shows a lot of young kids begging and stealing from the tourist. One might assume this is their primary source of income for most citizens if you have never seen any other movie set in India or about India. However, India is known for a lot of things besides the beggars and thieves and I think a lot of people assume these are realities when in fact India is very rich in culture and a number of other (220) things. I think our society does mistake the physical world for reality. We consume ourselves in technologies and unnatural interactions so much that we lost a bit of true reality along the way. Some things we mistake in the physical world for reality is dating online. Online dating is extremely popular. You get to vet your potential partners without ever meeting, seeing, or speaking to them face to face. People who entered into a cyber relationship are completely disconnected from true reality because it is not ones true self. You are providing false realities that you think will attack a partner. Even though you may say you love volleyball and have cats and that all may be true but entering a spiritually and emotional bond with someone cannot be a virtual reality. A virtual reality is not a reality at all. True reality comes from a higher understanding of the soul, mind, and body by accepting the shift of knowledge and complexity of the our souls.

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