Considering Plato's Cave
September 2007
A theist recently challenged me:

I don't really see how the cave allegory would lead you to reject religion, since it is an allegory of how we are prisoners of the bodily world.

"Oh come on", I replied.  "Okay, go re read the cave allegory.  It's all there plain enough.  It even inspired me to write poetry about it."  I continued:

Think of it in terms of a philosopher king type of interpretation. 

1. the prisoners are kept in a deep cave (religion) and their limbs are chained from childhood, their heads are chained so that they can only look one way, at a wall of shadows.  You are unable to see the allegory of religious indoctrination here?

2. behind the prisoners there is a fire with a walkway whereupon the statues of plants and animals or what have you are paraded in front of the prisoners so that only their shadows are seen.

The prisoners are sure of their reality, it is all they know or are allowed to know, and they are trapped by their captors thinking the shadows are real and effectual (religious principle) but the reality known by even the most pedestrian reader is that they are deceived.  They probably wear chains without knowing wearing chains is a stunting experience.  (Can they recall a life without chains on?)

3. when one of the statue carriers speaks as they cross the walkway, the voice echoes off the walls and the prisoners believe the shadows are talking to them, and they become engrossed and committed to making sense of their world, ever refining the nonsense (to the enlightened reader that is) into sensical... and again, they are deceived.  The epistemological irony is huge here.  What do they really know for sure?  How can they be sure of it?  The reader witnesses the hierarchical game of sorts that is played out in naming the shapes on the wall.  It's such a limited world view, and nonsensical... Yet they do live and exist so completely sure of themselves.  No matter how sure they ever are about their perceptions in the cave, the reality is that their perceptions have been stunted when compared to the world lit up by the outside sun.  Until they see it, they cannot know to what level they are stunted.

4. then we are to suppose one prisoner is freed, and he walks out of the cave (religion) into the blinding light of day.  Why does it blind?  His eyes adjust to the scorching reality that all his life he had been duped into relying on a dark, false, game of shadows reality when look!  Here is so much more past and beyond the cave!  There are other ways to view and experience the world ... and how huge the world is outside that cave!  Instead of dealing with shadows and echoes off walls, now he engages real things of substance... plants and animals that he can actually touch and prove to himself.

Then of course you must consider the rest of the contemplations of going back into the cave in order to free the fellow prisoners not yet enlightened to the dumbed down existence they ascribe themselves to.  In order to succeed, one would have to allow their eyesight to re adjust to the darkness in the cave.  Yep, one would go temporarily blind for awhile while the eyes accustomed themselves.  Having now seen the light, the darkness is not preferred anymore... and the shadows compared to the real plants and animals are now so obviously fake.  And there is much to be said for the still chained prisoner who will not walk out of the cave, thinking the freed fellow is spinning delusional tales of an outside world... and has nothing to offer him more than he already has... after all, look at this nutcase... his having been to the outside world has clearly and obviously stunted this poor fellow for now his eyesight cannot even see our beloved shadows clearly.. why, he plays the shadow naming game so poorly now!  Tsk, tsk.. outside world indeed... no thank you, I'll stay right where I am.

It's oh so rich, my friend... and I am surprised that you cannot see it.

Noggin





Purgatory                          (Click here for more poetry)                               
9-02-06  

Undone
Free to roam
Come out of the cave

Blinded
I stagger out
Behold the splendor blooming

Pained
A former life
Forced to return

Regression
Take my wrists
Befriend the chains again

Purgatory
Free to roam
Only where they let me

Regret
I ever saw
The splendor blooming

~mrr


Perspective
April 6, 2006

some times my perspective
acting like barbed wires
fences in and protects
my muted fragility, my sacredness

often
it takes
a shattering of glass
to see
what lies beyond it

scintillating shards
jut into my fist
pulsing, ripping pain
drowned out with new perspective

observe my
death grip on the wires
running clenched hands along the sharp knobs
until the flesh is not there

and still I yank
determination masks
the pain
until the wire lets go

... I win
... freedom
... to see the splendor blooming

~mrr