Print.The Allegory of the Cave is probably Plato’s most famous metaphorical story in all of his works and is certainly the most memorable moment in his Republic. Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace Publishers, 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Discover Publishers, 1992. The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues. Plato argues that it is the intellect that can understand the realities of the world, not the senses. The whole idea of education is about pointing the student in the right direction to acquire knowledge by relying on the strength of his or her mental capabilities. However, Plato argues that we should not be quick to pass judgment on such a disoriented person before we discern the exact cause of the disillusionment (Dova 67). His former society begins to take note and you hear comments to the effect that he dropped his cultural orientation and his people’s way of life and exchanged it with the ways of foreigners. Walking in the cave is difficult – he falters and even steps on people’s toes trying to walk. In other words, if the prisoner leaves the bright light of the sun and goes back to the cave, he will find it too dark for him to see his way around. The prisoner begins to scorn at his/her own former culture which he found difficult to shed off. The most interesting part of the whole cycle is a reverse culture shock. After the prisoner has made enough observations, he begins to get used to the culture and actually begins to love it. In the honeymoon phase, the practices in the new environment are amusing, and a person links them romantically to his/her own culture. With time, however, the culture shock waves of honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment and mastery phases. The prisoner who leaves the cave rather absorbs a little of the changes at a time than takes in everything in one swoop. This is applicable to the intellectual eye as well. If it is too little, the human being will not see clearly and end up with an optical illusion. If it is too bright, especially when one has just moved from darkness, the eye experiences too much pain to bear and would either close or the person would turn around to avoid looking at the source. The light must, however, be of medium intensity. According to Fullerton, “the eye is unusual among the sense organs in that it needs a medium, namely light, in order to operate” (56). This is a move to greater levels of intellectual capability where one can distinguish between objects of reality and fiction with utmost clarity. Things are much worse when the prisoner is actually taken out of the cave to sunlight. Their reality is the shadows and nothing else. If they are shown the objects that cast the shadows, they would believe the objects are a fictional creations of some very great mind. They will find most of the practices and beliefs of their fellow human beings from other socializations too strange and unacceptable (Benjamin, 67). The prisoners who are set free to explore the world will find themselves in a culture shock. This is a herculean task because their path is constrained by the fire behind them, the wall all around the cave and the chain to their limbs. The only way a prisoner can get out of the cave is through an emancipation of the mind from such mental slavery. This is what creates the “shadow people” who cannot move their head around and appreciate the outside world in totality (Plato 90). Therefore, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get out of such conditioning and adopt a broad mind that can appreciate other dynamics of life. The cave idea is born of the fact that we go through cultural assimilations, and our characters are shaped by the environment we live in. They would rather live in illusions than face the truth, which is too much to bear. The analogy of the cave explains why many humans find the world of fantasy too comfortable for them to contemplate leaving it. After observing the shadows keenly for a while, they get used to the pattern of movement, and whoever correctly predicts the shape that will pass next is applauded as being knowledgeable (Plato 90). The more they become accustomed to this world of illusion, the more it gets difficult to dissuade them to see what reality actually is. With time, the prisoners begin to interpret the images and sounds they see and hear as constituting reality. Since they are not able to see who is speaking, they are convinced that the echoed voices are from shadows they see ahead of them. Occasionally, the carriers of the objects speak to one another, but their voices reach the prisoners in form of echoes from the wall ahead of them. The bottom line is that movement is very limited in this cave. Furthermore, ahead of them, there is a wall that blocks their path. There is a distant fire above and behind them, so they cannot move up or backwards.
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