#3 - Plato's Cave Allegory

Although most of the philosophy I am drawing from is from the early modern era in order to understand where THOSE philosophers drew their ideas from you will have to understand Plato.

Plato was a Greek philosopher who lived in the Athens Classical Period. Many of his ideas in philosophy are still in use today but the one I want to talk about is his cave allegory.

Plato’s Cave Allegory is as follows: At the first phase of life, you are part of a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a dark cave, facing a blank wall. You watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent a fragment of reality perceived through your senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can perceive through reason. The point of life is to participate in philosophy at the state of a prisoner and free yourself from the cave by coming to understand that the shadows on the wall are not reality at all. Finding knowledge for yourself and learning to think for yourself is the point of life. Break free from the cave and become enlightened.

This is a beautiful allegory that I chose to be the founding narrative of my utopia. If we are always aware of how to break free of propaganda I believe we will thrive. If we always are aware of how important it is to seek out and retain knowledge for yourself I believe it could lead to a more habitable society.