Reflection of The Allegory of the Cave

Tony Szymanek
English 100
Golden West College
Post #1


In this famous excerpt from Plato's The Republic, Socrates is explaining to a young follower the ideas behind his philosophy. This short story is a reflection of society's view on the best interests of people. There are people chained up in a dark cave, unable to move at all, only able to look in one direction, where they see shadows of figures behind them. Those figures are the only thing they've known their whole life. Now if they were given the opportunity to be free, would they REALLY enjoy it? If they could go outside and try to endure sunlight, they would not be able to handle it, every little detail of the outside world would become a shock to them, and they would be worse off with the freedom of the outside world than they would be in the "comfort" of the imprisoned darkness. I think this also relates to our world today, we are very quick to "help" people, trying to make their lives like ours, making them change, say in Iraq. Yes to others, maybe their way of life is unheard of, just inhuman, but to them, its their way of life, and however bad it may seem, its their comfort. What it comes down to is in life, when some people have hard things in life, according to you, and you change things for them, maybe you have "helped" them, but really have only made things worse for them.