The point is to understand the effect that education or the lack of it has on human nature.
So basically in the parable, there are a few prisoners who have always lived in a cave and are chained to the walls of the cave. They have no knowledge of the outside world. The cave is dark and damp and there is absolutely no natural light. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between them is a raised walkway.
People outside the cave walk along this walkway carrying things on their head including; animals, plants, wood and stone. The cavemen get fascinated by these reflections of animals, people, and other objects. They assume that these shadows are real and that if you pay …show more content…
We as humans are like the cave dwellers. In Plato’s theory, the cave represents people who believe that knowledge comes from what we see and hear in the world – empirical evidence. The cave shows that believers of empirical knowledge are trapped in a ‘cave’ of misunderstanding. For most of our lives, we hold on to the phantoms that society, culture and traditions project on our impressionable minds to the point that we barely use our faculties to think for ourselves. We live in a society where a huge premium is paid on success. The definition of success though is not what we have generated for ourselves through the experiences that we have but it is crystallized into a few things that we have been conditioned to be enthusiastic about. Things like fame, the perfect partner, a house, a bank balance, the perfect job etc. are nothing but mere phantoms that are projected on the walls of our fragile minds. Truth tellers are often alienated and even executed for claiming to know the sun; Socrates is the case in