For those who are not familiar with Plato, the Allegory of the Cave is a comparison of the effect of philosophy and the lack of it in our lives. It describes people stuck in a cave who experience a different reality than those who have lived their lives outside of this cave, for example.
In the work presented below made by Natasha Tonini Cabernite (´16), the scenery and details of the idea are carefully described in comic-strip form, followed by a comprehensive personal view of the idea, along with connections to our real world, that perfectly describe how it can easily be applied to our reality nowadays, and what we can do, in her opinion, to change this.
This take on the Cave is most certainly worth your next 10 minutes of attention!
by Kevin Dasilva (´15)
Philosophy
Mr. Skvirsky
The imprisoned people have never seen anything besides the cave walls.
They were chained.That was their reality, but all changed when there was a fire in the cave and the free people ran out from the passageway.
Now, their reality was the shadows they saw. To escape the fire they were freed and saw the world for the first time.
For the guy that escaped nothing outside was real, for during his whole life the shadows cast on the cave walls were his only reality.
The turning around from the cave and seeing reality outside is Education (Plato said).
Centuries later, in 2014 ....
We, human beings have developed new types of technology, new ways of living, new social orders. We, ourselves have created our own cave, and we haven´t turned around to education yet. When we do, (I don´t know if we ever will) I hope we can adapt to the new reality and live past the old one.
We live in violent constant war, envy, injustice, sadness. Few have trust, real compassive Love and no evil inside. Nowadays, it takes some bad for satisfaction.
You can´t trust in strangers and all is about money. Basically, you can pay for friendships
(not real ones, but you may think they are) for love, sex, success, everything. Money has become the
key for living and supposedly happiness, which is actually contempt…
Brothers killing brothers, sons killing fathers… All for greed. No matter how many generations come, they are born inside this cave of evil and are taught to adapt to that reality instead of fighting against it.
Young people are starting to rebel, but young people are not all good.
If we are born in a world like this, taught to be like this, to adapt to this: How can we change? The right question actually is: If we do change, will we be able to adapt? To really change? What if suddenly we were thrown out of this cave into the superior world and all was good? Would we be able to educate ourselves, and really turn around? Always be good, trust everyone, have no envy or evil intentions… Would we be able to?
We have to have the right questions before we have the right answers. To change the world we have to change ourselves.
Think about it…
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
 |