Cave Of Ignorance In Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

Allegory of the cave: Cave of ignorance

“ How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” (Plato,657). We are born ignorant. Ever since we were kids, we were told by adults about the facts of life, about what is wrong and what is right and what the reality is based on what was passed down to them. Little by little, we are being molded based on someone’s idea, someone’s perception and someone’s definition about reality. As kids, we ask a lot of questions. We try to question things because we are curious, because want to understand how things work. Asking questions lead our world to where it is now. More things are discovered with questions and efforts to find the answers. We ask questions in search for the truth, but the moment we stop asking it and just take in whatever we have in front of us is the moment we allow ignorance to take over our lives. In Plato’s essay “Allegory of the cave, he represented human beings as prisoners on the cave, he explains how humans see reality based on figures projected from the fire behind them. Plato’s idea about ignorance portrays how human beings are trapped in smaller worlds defined by society government and religion.

“To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”(Plato,657) We are “educated” by school about the facts that they want to tell us. In history books, we are told who the heroes and the villains are based on the authors of the book. But do we really know if the author’s perspective is the truth? Many people will settle with the facts they are getting without any efforts to question. Even exam questions are more on the author’s point of view than the student’s perspective. Intelligent people will read another author’s perspective and compare it with each other to get a new