As a reminder for those who have heard about it, and for those who haven't, here is a short synopsis of what happens in the story.
All of the people who dwell in the cave do so constrained such that they can only see a wall opposite the opening of the cave. During the day, they can see shadows on the wall; at night, they hear activity outside the cave. Since they cannot see what is causing these shadows, they can only speculate about the causes.
One day one of the cave people breaks free from the constraint and peers outside the cave. He is blinded by the light at first, but he sees the activity that is causing the shadows when his eyes adjust to the brightness. He sees colors for the first time. It all makes sense because he now knows the sources of the shadows on the wall!
He excitedly goes back into the cave to let his fellow cave people know of his discovery. He is again blinded, but this time because of the lack of light. Despite that, he tells the other cave people what it is that is causing the shadows, and that it was nothing like what they believed!
Instead of sharing the excitement, the cave people are skeptical. They ask what exactly is causing a particular shadow. He tells them that he cannot see the shadow and why. Instead of the cave people understanding better, they become more skeptical, perhaps even a bit frightened. From their perspectives, whatever it was that he saw made it so that he could no longer see what they see. Even though he promises them greater understanding if they will immerse themselves in the light, doing so comes at the expense of never seeing life the same way they have always seen it.
Because the cost of seeing the light for themselves is sacrificing life as they know it in the group, the other cave people decide it is better to continue looking at the shadows and taking their best guesses as to what is causing them.
The Moral to the Story
Accepting the truth, or seeing the light, sometimes comes at the expense of some of our favorite prejudices.
Truth is often found by challenging wide-held beliefs that are either not logical or don't add up. If something does not make sense, and you promote the nonsense because it is what a group of people have agreed is the truth despite it not making sense, then the allegory of the cave is about you.
Don't let that bother you. It is meant to help us grow by recognizing the human nature to conform. At one time acceptance through conformity meant the difference between life in a tribe or death as an outcast.
Seeking light and changing one's opinion when presented with facts that belie our previously held beliefs is not natural. That is a principle and is actually quite unnatural. It requires us to tell our fellow cave people that we see some things differently, and, if they decide to remain united in two-dimensional color blindness, we must move on from them.
Everyone has a perspective that they can offer. Conformity removes that individual perspective in exchange for something deemed beneficial to the entire tribe. It is not the expression of one's opinion; it is an echo of someone else's opinion, or the collectively agreed upon opinion that is not the individual opinion of anyone in the group.
Why is it Important to Understand This?
I see groups forming that are associations of people who want ends, and who are willing to use any means to achieve them. Quite often, the argument for using the means is because the other side is also willing to use those means. There is a name for people who do unto to others what they abhor others doing to them: hypocrites. There is also a term for people who do unto others to teach them lessons for what they perceive is done to them: passive aggressive.
So, unless your objective is to be a passive-aggressive hypocrite, it is important to rise above the natural urge to conform to a group when the group is losing sight of what is being done and why it is being done.
If you find yourself supporting a cause, or a person, or a party, or whatever, and you cannot explain your reasons why, instead relying upon the opinions of others as if they are your own, then you should think about how the allegory of the cave applies to you. Are you the one person who sees the light, or are you part of the group that has agreed upon the facts already and doesn't want to give up the comfortable association? I would contend that not only is it virtually impossible to find ten people who fully agree upon anything, but that if one person were to begin whispering any group's agreed upon belief to another, and so on, that what the group agrees upon to the tenth person will be nothing like what the first person says is the group belief.
In order to rise above the nature to be in groups as a basic instinct, we must be willing to seek truth individually. If someone does something that our first instinct is to consider objectionable, a principled person will consider the other person's perspective if the perspective is explained. When the explanation is logical and supported, it is a valid opinion. There is the possibility of light being shed on some of the shadows we imagined were created differently.
When the opinion that is logical and supported is discounted in favor of something more beneficial to a group of people who are in competition with another group of people, then there is little light being shed. People who do this are not bright, nor are they seeking the light of truth that might explain some of the shadows. Anyone who does not share the same conclusion that the group has agreed upon is a negative influence on the group because they challenge the coveted prejudices of the group.
We Should Be Frightened by Conformity, Not Enlightenment
We can see from social media that people are using cliches and memes to put forth other people's opinions as their own. We certainly see it from uneducated people who are unable to clearly write sentences on their own. Obviously, the allegory of the cave applies to the uneducated who don't actually have opinions so much as they like cliches and sentences that can fit on bumper stickers. To them, those are the explanations of the shadows.
It saddens me when I see more educated people also doing that. It doesn't really matter to me if it is a bumper sticker with something somebody else said, or an article that somebody else wrote, the logic is the same. It is fine to state an opinion and support it with something somebody else said or wrote. It is not fine to present other people's opinions as your own. In fact, it is called plagiarism when someone else's thoughts are presented as one's own thoughts.
When the thoughts of someone else begin taking hold en masse, we have the potential for huge problems. When we have two groups whose thoughts are those of other people, and the thoughts are opposing one another, a type of magnetism is formed that draws people into polar opposition. Each group is concerned about the other group, and everyone within the opposing groups is awaiting the explanation that will become their opinions, whether they personally agree or not.
People who are enlightened are the people who listen to other perspectives. They try to understand why it is that other people believe what they believe. They don't simply judge people based on the opinions of others, nor do they judge people based upon their own frame of reference. Enlightened people understand that people do what makes the most sense for them to do based upon their particular circumstances.
Most of all, enlightened people understand that natures are much more powerful than principles. They do not fear leaving the perceived safety of conformity. Instead, what enlightened people know that frightens them about conformity is that each group is comprised of people who don't know why they believe what they believe, but who back each other up.
Plato's allegory of the cave applies to everyone, and enlightened people not only understand that it applies to them, but they also embrace it. They seek the light even if it means giving up their favorite explanations for some of the shadows on the walls of the caves. They also understand that when we leave one cave, that we emerge into another cave that is simply brighter than the last one. We must always know that the allegory of the cave applies to us regardless of how enlightened we believe ourselves to be.
Enlightened people always seek the light, and they know there is always light that is brighter than the one which casts the shadows we currently see.
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Other posts you may enjoy:
Understanding Frames of Reference
Questioning the Genius of Aristotle
You Cannot See a Hole
Linear Thinking Versus Conceptual Thought
Big Bang Theory: All This From Nothing? How? What Does It Mean?
The Value of Other People's Opinions
Questioning the Genius of Aristotle
You Cannot See a Hole
Linear Thinking Versus Conceptual Thought
Big Bang Theory: All This From Nothing? How? What Does It Mean?
The Value of Other People's Opinions
When we examine Plato's Allegory of the Cave should we be ignoring the possible role that Sophism might have played in the cave's construction?
ReplyDeleteIn Plato's Protagoras, Protagoras describes Sophists this way:
“Now the art of the Sophist is, as I believe, of great antiquity; but in ancient times those who practiced it, fearing this odium, veiled and disguised themselves under various names, some under that of poets, as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, some, of hierophants and prophets, as Orpheus and Musaeus, and some, as I observe, even under the name of gymnastic‐masters, like Iccus of Tarentum, or the more recently celebrated Herodicus, now of Selymbria and formerly of Megara, who is a first‐rate Sophist. Your own Agathocles pretended to be a musician, but was really an eminent Sophist; also Pythocleides the Cean; and there were many others; and all of them, as I was saying, adopted these arts as veils or disguises because they were afraid of the odium which they would incur.”
It seems impossible not to view the Sophists as playing a significant role in maintaining the cave, so the real question is was this role large enough to have provided the inspiration for Plato's allegory? The fact that Plato employed allegory to make his point could also be viewed as a subtle allusion to the Sophists who must have relied on allegory and metaphor to maintain their disguises. (This context also puts an interesting slant on Freemasonry.)
Warren, I really appreciate your reply. You are obviously more learned about philosophy than I am. I shall do my best to answer your questions, but I do not offer these as peer-to-peer comments. Rather, I submit them as a student might to a teacher.
DeleteI believe the sophists' role in maintaining the cave is significant, but I don't know that it was as much conspiratorial as it was consequential to the pursuit for that which was treasured. Therefore, the value of that which they taught was more for sounding educated or putting on a show than it was for actually understanding how and why things work as they do. They are the cave people, though so, too, would be their students.
My post might be considered as directed to modern-day sophists. They are educated and intelligent people who share agreed-upon opinions that will supercede truth. It seems that people today want to believe that any reference to not understanding something must obviously be about other people, and not them. Those same people will agree with a series of questions that lead to a logical conclusion, and then discount the conclusion it leads to because it is not their preferred conclusion, which is generally the conclusions others have drawn for them.
Not only might Aristotle be considered a sophist for having tutored Alexander the Great, his discounting of correctly calculating the difference in the distance of stars if they are like the sun also shows a propensity toward sophism. Could he not imagine the stars to actually be suns millions of times further from us than our own sun?
Aristotle is, to me, the most significant figure in history. Some of it is certainly for his contributions, but much of it is for how badly his miscalculations affected humanity.