A few weeks ago we discussed Plato's "Republic" and his Allegory of the Cave. In Plato's metaphor, he described individuals who were imprisoned in a remote cave for their whole lives. Since birth, these people had not seen anything other than the wall that they were chained in front of; they never saw the light of day...literally. The only things the prisoners ever saw were the shadows of objects and animals cast on the cave wall, as they (the animals) walked past them. Eventually, a prisoner was released into the outside world. Upon reaching the outside world, the prisoner was astounded, and returned to the cave to tell the other prisoners the incredible things he had seen. Yet, the prisoners only saw the man's shadow on the wall; they had no idea who he was or what he was saying. Their whole lives, the prisoners only knew the darkness, the wall, and the shadows. To them, this was reality, not the outside world.
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| Plato's Allegory of the Cave http://www.lewi.be/MultiVarAnalPage/Fig-MDA-Plato.jpg |
Now why did Plato's cave remind me of Big Brother? Well, in the book, the citizens of Oceania don't question their place in society or why things had to be a certain way. They simply accepted the norm, as this was their reality; this is all they had known their whole lives, just like the prisoners in the Cave.
So what am I getting at? Am I saying that we need to all become that woman in the commercial and revolt against our Big Brother government? Not at all. Personally, this topic made me think about what reality truly is. How do we know what reality actually is? It's incredibly subjective and varies from person to person. How do we know that all of us aren't in another dimension right now? How do I know that I'm not just dreaming as I write this?
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| Or maybe a dream within a dream, within a dream, within a dream...? http://drupal.org/files/images/0715-INCEPTION-movie-review_full_600.jpg |
Now, I'm sure you're sick of the amount of times I've actually written the word 'reality,' but I leave you with this: the concept of reality is incredibly subjective, and who are we to tell others what "should be the norm." I believe that every person needs to search for their own reality, whether that be through exploring foreign countries, starting a whole knew career, or even sailing the world in a bathtub. Otherwise, we will never escape the Cave that is society today.
Joshua,
ReplyDeleteYour comparison of Plato's Cave to 1984 is a bit of a stretch, in the sense that there is much more to the concept of 1984 and how they do in fact want to question and discover what is a reality and they do eventually attempt to rebel against the authority of "Big Brother". The idea of the Cave is more along the lines of inception, I would say... With a bit of a twist. I think it is indeed difficult to put a label on what is "reality" because it is completely subjective. The idea that comes to mind for me when discussing this topic is that of different cultures, religions and customs. People all have different ideas and values of right and wrong, etc. but can we go to the extent of saying that some things are universally right and universally wrong? This concept of what we would classify into those categories completely depends on what we ourselves value and what we would classify as fitting into each of those categories. You make great points, in your post, but I don't think that the claim of society today being a cave. It may be more appropriate to say that we all live in our own caves, catered and shaped to reflect our own values and morals.
Hi Joshua, first of all, let me say that I think that this was a good post and that I liked the fact that you chose something outside the norm of most of the blog posts, which made the material much more interesting. I think that you make a really good claim about reality being subjective to every individual person. I also agree with Rebecca though that I think it may have been a little bit of a stretch to compare it to 1984. The way you compared the Cave to 1984 was accurate, but as a whole, I think the two are pretty different. On the other hand, the information that you pulled from that book, as well as the story about Stamatis Moraitis, really help support your argument. You did a really good job of making your claim clear, supporting it with details, and going outside the box to look for information to use in this post. As much as I enjoy reading the blog posts with great information, it is great to finally come across one with really original thoughts on an outside the box type topic.
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