Plato's Allegory of the Cave
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he describes a world where prisoners live chained in a cave. The puppeteers cast shadows on the wall and these shadows construct reality for the prisoners. One of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave. At first, he is blinded by the sun and apprehensive about the new world. The shadows in the cave had always seemed so real to him. After he has spent some time in this new world, he realizes that his entire existence has been controlled by others and he now knows the truth. Thousands of years later, is this allegory relevant to our lives today? Do we live in a cave where reality is constructed by someone else? Conversely, is this allegory outdated? Has the internet, public education, and improvements in transportation metaphorically killed the puppeteer? Is our world more transparent than it ever has been?
Your post should be at least 250 words. Dig into the heart of this prompt and pair specific examples with broad generalizations. This blog will by due on September 6 at 11:59 p.m.
FTHS World Humanities Blog 
In the allegory of the cave, Socrates is explaining to the student how we are blinded by what we are only allowed to see. If we were to see the truth, then we would return to tell the others, but they would not believe you.
If you put that into today, you could compare it to the conspiracy theorists. They think that the government is hiding us from the truth, and that the only way to learn is to go beyond the boundaries set by the law. If you saw the report about the Roswell (http://l.yimg.com/a/i/ww/news/2011/04/11/fbi_memo3.jpg) incident, you would see that they describe the spacecraft as circular, 50 feet in diameter, and held three bodies of human shape, three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a fine texture. I think that that proves the existence of aliens, or midgets going around in a circular spacecraft through New Mexico.
Needless to say, some people try to limit themselves from these, by not watching news, just fictional movies and cartoons. The freedom of press keeps things flowing, but some ignore that, and try to stay in the world of fantasy. Others would rather stay informed on what every celebrity is doing (TMZ) and post it on the Internet.
Then there are the people who just go with whatever happens. If something happens, react, wait until it’s over, and go back to normal.
The allegory still very well exists, and in some places, it doesn’t. People will either see too much, or too little.
Plato describes this scary like cave in Allegory of the Cave. He describes the world as if there are tons and tons of unknown things out there. From the day we were born we were told so many things whether they are true or not. We are so occupied into day’s society that we can’t see what truly is right and wrong. Today there is the media, military, government, school, work, shops , food, and so many other things that keep us occupied from the truth. We are even more hidden from the truth today than they were thousands of years ago. We the people are almost like the prisoners and the government, media or the military play the shadows and puppeteers. They control our life and how we act unless we break free and walk out of the cave. Once we break free and see the government’s truth or even more lies depending on how well they are controlling us. If we live our lives as if everything appears to be the truth were going to be locked in the cave until we die. From the day we entered this cave we were locked with chains, to be controlled by our puppeteers. Every day we grow older and see the shadows go by us. If we work together as a team, we could break free of the chains and walk into the light. Like Plato said the light is very blinding but this is because the truth is very shocking to us. We then see truth and we could eventually bury that cave and let everyone see the clear truth. In order to bury the cave of lies, we have to work together and have hope.
The allegory DOES still apply to our world today, we are held down by media, goverment, technologies, and yes even religion. Theres always someone “above” us, in authority that is, much like the military. Those people think they can fly above the rest of us, the ones they “control” or as Plato has it, the ones they keep chained. The goverment controls the military and media, that right there gives them ability to truly control our minds. The military are the shackles that hold us against the cave wall and the media are the shadows shown on the other wall. Once one of us can ever leave the shadows of the cave and finally come out to see the world as it REALLY is, thats when we reach our own elightement of our lives. When can see things for ourselves and make judgement on what is right or wrong without being told what is and isnt in this world. After so long of realizing the world of what it is you want to go back and tell everyone “HEY THIS ISNT WHATS REAL!”. Though they never want to believe it even though its whats truly outside the cave. Its like finding the truth that god never existed, that it was really just like the shadows someone else made for us to believe. You could go back and try to tell the ones left in the cave but they would choose not to believe what they werent told. Thats just one example I can think of. So yes the allegory still lives in our world today, only thing that has changed is who the pupeteer is.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates explains to his friend(I forget his name) that people are oblivious to the truth, and when one finaly see’s the truth, others would not belive this one being. In todays society, I think this relates to False Advertising. This is seen on the television, on billboards, magazines etc. People belive what they see, but when one does research, they would find out that this “Advertising” is actually a lie. Many types of companies use False Advertising. Types such as food ditributors, make-up companies and also Diet Companies. They use this to make people believe that there product is amazing, and then they profit off of there lies. Many people already know this, but many are still oblivious. There are the types of people that know this, and then the type who will sit back, belieive the commercial and buy the product. I think that these types of people relate directly to the Prisoners who just watch shadows in the cave, and thesse who research the topic relate directly to the Prisoner who was set free. The Allegory obviously still exists in our society, weather it is seen or not.
Today we’re chained to a wall, a wall called stereotypes. We believe that the stereotypes in the media are exactly the same in real life, which isn’t true. A lot of (ignorant) people believe that all Muslims are terrorists. Common stereotypes today might be: American girls are full figured airheads, Asians are REALLY smart, the Irish drink Guiness all day, Jamaicans are always high, Canadians live in igloos, all Mexicans are field workers, French are rude snail eating people, British people have really bad teeth, anyway you get the point . But the one most Americans think ok of today is that anyone from the Middle East is a Muslim terrorist or a suicide bomber. The fire behind us, aka the media, is depicting these stereotypes, and ignorance is fueling the fire.
We really need to break away from the wall (stereotypes) and get past the fire and out of the cave to see things as they really are. We need to reteach ourselves on what to believe about the different cultures and nationalities around us. We shouldn’t allow stereotypes to pull us back to the wall and stereotypical thinking. If we break free from this wall, I think we’ll be able to see people for their individual personalities instead of said stereotypes. We’ll be able to learn new knowledge.
A good example of the person who walked out of the cave to enlightenment would be the author of the book Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson. Here’s a quote from him: “If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs.” He defiantly didn’t have a problem with stereotypes considering the fact that he sold all his belongings and wrote to 580 celebrities, businessmen and other Americans to help build schools and bridges in northern Pakistan. So far he’s built about 78 schools so far.
(Sorry I wrote so much)
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates states that these humans were trapped their whole life in a cave. There was no life but the only the life that existed through their eyes, at least from our point of view. To their naked eye, puppets and intellectual nose were their only inspiring views of the universe. A man was set free to be on his own, to him this was a powerful opportunity but maybe a little too powerful. He attempted to go back to where he belonged but no one trusted him or even understood.
Now In my opinion, this Allegory does relate to life as we know it now. Why? Well, I believe that were being lied to every second of our life. We “the people” are the prisoners, amazed at our technology and knowledge but what if everything we’ve been taught doesn’t even exist. Where does our money go? Why is the military concealing the fact that they are killing many innocent life’s. Are scientists even in progress of curing the sick? Is the media holding secrets that they just won’t let go. Now what if the human race, went out of the cave for a day? Holding the future of generations and what was to become, would that person be able to undertake it or would s/he want to go back into the peaceful cave they call home. Maybe these so called “puppets” are our technology, distracting us from the truth which could be right near us. Who is controlling us, who is telling us these lies and why are they trying to keep it from us? The government can make us believe anything, for example take the swine flew. The made us believe it was a deadly flew that can kill a human being, yes maybe an infant or and elder but any flew would be certain to do that job also. My point, we believed it, before even analyzing the possibilities.
So Plato’s Allegory can be very related to our life’s now or maybe he’s using a mind trick on us, turning our trust for this world into hatred.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he describes how prisoners are chained in cave and can only see right in front of them. They have a fire burning behind them, and they see shadows of people walking by carrying odd shaped objects. These shadows were all he knew, they even seemed to be real. A prisoner breaks free and leaves the cave. When he first walked outside the cave he was blinded by the bight light, but then he realizes it was reality he was facing. He had concluded that his entire life was a lie. Staring at the shadows and hearing the voices he thought were coming from them, had now been proven a great big lie.
Yes, it is still relevant to our lives today. As life goes on, times change. Life in a “cave” has been constructed by someone else. Media has taken a huge part in putting people in a “cave”. A great example would be media making young girls/boys uncomfortable in their bodies. By using models and computer editing media can easily make girls/boys taller, thinner, look more muscular, and even increasing breast sizes. Almost everything we have heard/seen on television our entire lives have been a lie. “Reality TV” how much more fake can it get? Yes, internet, public education, and improvements in transportation have metaphorically killed the puppeteer. Maybe these “puppeteers” are our generations version of explaining our loss of self esteem, and self progress. Nobody will come clean about being insecure, embarrassed of their body, or even using make-up and intense clothing to cover up anything that you don’t want people to see. Making a fake image of yourself is not the way to show the world who the real you is. Don’t be afraid of being yourself, be the person you want to be.
Platos Allegory of the cave still applies to us today. In my own interpretation he is saying that the people in the cave were so oblivious so reality and since they were just seeing the shadows that made them think that, that was their reality. This day in society we are still blinded. Whether it be by watching t.v or magazines. We are all easily influenced. Another thing we are easily fooled by is reality TV We want to believe that it’s real but in reality we all know that it isn’t. We have producers that set everything up and most likely provoke the so called “reality stars” so that unnecessary drama can start. The internet is a major component because anyone can post anything now a days. Anyone can publish their own writing or write about all of their opinions and post them online where millions of people can see their opinions. We have full access to anything we want to know about. Celebrities and social networking sites make us go into this other world and let us sort of “escape” reality. Which can be a good thing for some people but definitely not for me. The internet can also lie. It can make up rumors and there are so many false advertisements that sometimes you don’t even know what to think. Plato was trying to say that sometimes we are just so blinded by reality and some of us don’t even know what to think or want to think a different way because we are so accustomed to our way of thinking.
The Cave, the world we only see what the puppateers want us to see, is it still true today, well with all the modern information today, we can find almost any type of information on the interenet that is said to be true (of course infinite amounts of consipracys can be made about how all things in history could be a lie) but generaly information can get around, but does modern education and technology rid of this cave allegory in our society? I think it all depends on what you think being out of the cave is, because personally there is restrictions to all types of information, is this being held in a cave, or just people protecting there privacy, overall I think truly being out of the cave and free is a impossible idea that no one could ever reach no matter how hard they tried. But I think how society is run today with our idea of democracy is about as close as we will ever be to getting out of the cave.
Plato’s allegory, I feel, is even truer day than it was back then. We today are being controlled by the media. Advertisements for one control us. Advertisements are set up to make the consumer want to buy the product. Propaganda is used everywhere and is a direct example of this allegory. The companies use celebrities, false advertising, glittering generalities, and many other techniques to brainwash people into buying these products.
These advertisements also tell people what people should and should not wear. Back in ancient times, people would wear whatever they could find. Now only certain clothes are acceptable for fear of being ridiculed by society.
Another point would be models in magazines and in other forms of media. The pictures are often edited to make the models skinnier, make the models more tan, and other illusions to who the people really are. This makes people today uncomfortable who with who they are and make them feel as if they need to look like these models, even though they are not pictures of the true person.
In modern time, people even go as far as to wear make up to mask their faces. In ancient times this was probably unheard of. The media has completely controlled how people dress and look.
We are still in this cave deeper now than ever and we are all puppets to modern society and we are waiting for that person to step out into the light and bring us out of this rut we call society.
The Allegory of the Cave is about prisoners living in a cave and being controlled by the puppeteer but one day one of the prisoners leaves the cave and discovers a world he never knew about before. He returns to the cave and tries to tell the others about this new world but they are unable to understand him. Our puppeteer is many things but what’s mostly out there is probably the media. The media is everywhere on television, magazines, books, billboards, internet and radios too. Messages in the media have an effect on everyone especially teenager and kids. Television effects the younger generation I should know, my little brother was affected by a reality TV show I was watching in my room. My mom went out to do some errands and my little brother had to stay in the same room as me. I didn’t think it would do any harm, there wasn’t even any cussing. The next day my mom got a call from the principal saying that my brother had called a girl hot. My mom was surprised and asked me how my little brother learned that kind of language.
I had to admit to my mom that he was watching one of my shows with me last night and that’s where he probably learned that accursed word. That’s one example of how media is affecting us kids and teenagers. My brother didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to say that but since he saw people on the TV say that to each other he thought that is how you expressed to someone that you have a crush on them. But in reality you don’t do that when you are in kindergarten and now he knows he can’t say that word but the media still continues to influence him and everyone else too.
In Plato’s allegory of a cave he talks about prisoners that are chained up are a forced to watch shadows on a wall of different objects and animals. The prisoners have never seen real life so there thought is only based on the shadows that they have seen. I believe that this is true in today’s society. Many people all most all of them are trapped in this cave and can not see what’s really going on. For example our government keeps a lot of secrets from us and those who don’t know those secrets are technically in the cave. Although that’s not always a bad thing. I believe that in some cases there needs to caves that people are stuck in. Going back to the governments secrets; they need to keep those secrets because if they gave those secrets to the media it would be all over TV and the internet. And if we were at war with other countries which right now we kind of are they could maybe use those secrets against us. So there are defiantly some caves in our society but we need those caves to stay safe.
I personally feel that Plato’s allegory is, for the most part, pretty relevant to the lives of society today. People’s lives today are being controlled by the advertising industries. Our lives are not only being controlled by advertisements, but magazines, the internet, and just the media in general is controlling just about everyone in modern day society. The media uses propaganda to try to get us to do what they want and to try to portray everything they are trying to sell us as being what we need in order to be cool, to fit in, or to become the most popular kid in school. These companies use celebrities, glittering generalities, false advertising, and anything else that they can think of just to make sure that we buy their products.
The media is not only telling us what we want to hear, it is also starting to brainwash people. Almost all of the magazines that are out there are all about how to become super skinny so that you can become a size zero just like the models, what to wear and not wear so that people will like you, and how to look and do things just so that we can fit into the way the media wants everyone to look like. In ancient times, no one cared how they looked or dressed like because there was not much of a variety when it came to clothing, you pretty much just wore whatever you could find, but nowadays, you have to shop at the most expensive stores and buy the most expensive things just to get peoples attention.
To be completely honest, I seriously think that we are in this cave deeper than humanity ever would have thought we could be in. We are all puppets to what to modern society, and right now, we are just sitting around waiting for someone to step out of this cave and step into the light and bring us out of this disaster that we call “modern day society.”
the allegory of the cave is a really righteous idea, but you can never really tell if you are in a cave. bieng inside a cave would mean that your not thinking about if your in the cave, because none of the “puppeteers” would tell you that you are in a cave. then again, if you werent in a cave, you still wouldnt know if you actually were in a cave, but i personally think that we are in a cave, but this cave is a lot easier to get out of.
with all of the new technology and advertising, bieng in the cave can go a lot of ways. you can be brainwashed by advertisements and just live in a cave all your life, or you can go on the internet and try and find things out about government to find a way out of the cave. and in modern society, people who exit the cave can actually contact those who are still in the cave, so the people in the cave can see the beauties, and horrors, of life outside of the cave. the only downside to all of this technology is that it is a lot easier to hide things from people even when those people are outside of the cave. what i think about the cave is, you might as well be optimistic with what you have, because it is human nature to always want more. the truth is though, we really dont need more here in ventura. if we were in a cave right now, i wouldnt be complaining at all, because this is one very nice cave.
I think that the Allegory of the Cave, is very relevant to the times today. Everywhere we look there are advertisements for virtually everything. We have commercials that have good causes like that one play outside for an hour a day thing but, we also have commercials that get people to buy things that are bad for you or commercials that even make people feel like they’re less than they are, just for them to buy their product. Not only commercial push ideas into the minds of everyday people, there’s also channels that have their own perspectives over issues in the world today, for example channels like FOX, that let the public know what they want to and how they want to. Many people believe almost anything they hear and take it in as truth. We need more people to question what they are following. The internet and tv have created the illusion to SOME people that what they see or hear is true, just because they saw it on tv or on the internet. Back to the idea of commercials that are out there, people are in a way being controlled by these people that make them. These commercials make people think what the person who made the commercial wants them to, being in a way puppeteers to humanity. The thing about human nature is that so many of us care too much about what other people think of us. Commercials take advantage of people like this and put them down even more so that they feel that they NEED to do whatever it takes to be accepted by everyone. People have to try to be themselves more even if it seems hard.
The Allegory of the Cave is definitely relevant to modern life, but not as much as one would think. The area where it can best be compared to today is the ‘selective reality(or so I call it)’ that surrounds so many people in first world countries, especially America. For those who are well off enough, one could really see or know any issue one wanted to, the internet and mass media have made this easier than ever, but the instant availability of all of this information and the vast amount of it seems to make people block certain things out. Perhaps it has always been this way, but with the huge amount of information, opinions, and charismatic personalities on the internet, or television, it is easier than ever before for one to surround oneself with only the facts and opinions that suits you. In a way, the American people have become their own puppeteers, and were they to be freed, it would be against their wishes, and most would invariably go back into the dark after some time. Media of course is partly responsible, but only in allowing people to do so, the media in no way forces this upon p[people, it merely gives them the opportunity to do so. But what about education today? Consider that when the Allegory of the Cave was written, higher education, even beyond what we consider Grade School was quite rare. Of course, this continues today, in certain parts of the world, but for America, many people take their education for granted. The true impact of this is that were they to truly consider what knowledge they had, and what they knew others did, they would realize that their understanding of the world is quite limited, and the knowledge they received through public education they likely cared little for is largely irrelevant in the greater scheme of things By this, I mean that people stay in the dark, and take in only the information that is given to them, or they choose to take; simply put, people are truly not that intelligent, even with a higher education, unless they want to consider the greater breadth of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Note: that second portion was largely me ranting, the first part actually matters.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Socrates describes a group of prisoners being chained to a wall watching these shadows which are really people walking behind them, making them think them to be whatever they want them to be. They do not know anything else except what they think is their own reality. Once one of the prisoners is released he realizes that what he thought was reality, was really just his own mind going on with ideas.
Is this not what our society does also? We believe in what we already know. Such as in politics. Politicians create this atmosphere so we hear what we want to hear, not necessarily the truth in the government. In politics politicians and congressmen give us a hand full of information that makes us believe or sort of manipulates us into thinking there word is true. But when in reality they are hypocritical wanting to win only for themselves and not for the good of the people. We are basically the prisoners chained to a wall of ideas that politicians are doing their job correctly to help us as the people. We see us being trapped in a cave also with “ the American Dream.” Most people do not live this American Dream lifestyle, but others perhaps may live it. But then again what is the American Dream, it’s a dream that Americans want to live. Something that can be reality but is not. Not only are we tied down into political beliefs but also the in the media. The media has created a false view on how people act or portray themselves. They advertise on how people should be just in general such as in dressing, body image, and in behavior. Many young adolescents , as myself watch this type of media tear down certain people into making themselves believe that they are like these celebrities or try to be like them, when in reality they are not. Media targets adolescents most of the time, in advertising and in magazines to make things look “cool”, but they are not. They play mind tricks with our brain that is still slowly developing, into thinking that we can do what they say. But what they say or advertise is a false view on our society.
This cave in the Allegory of the Cave, is still here in today’s society, and it will probably never go away. It is all we know about our own society and government. Making it our own, “reality,” we live in.
The allegory of the cave was about all these people in a cave being fed fake realities and in turn if they ever saw the real world then to them it would probably turn their world upside down. I believe that the allegory is still present because, I’m sure that some of the conspiracies that people talk about that the government is hiding are true so we are almost like the people in the cave being taught something much different than what is actually real. Also, to consider that for the most part our government does a pretty good job of keeping us in the loop, either that or they are just very good at hiding things from the public. So basically some people think we are the people chained up being starved of the reality and the government is the puppeteer tricking us into thinking what’s right and what’s wrong. Most people think that government is just doing its job and not tricking us. I think that it consists in other parts of our lives as well though; the marketing and advertising companies also want us to believe that their products are better or better for you. For the most part the marketing ads just use buzz words to stimulate your mind and trick it into thinking that chocolate is healthier than carrots, and trick you into buying something unhealthy instead of something that is actually healthy for you. So, yes I do believe that the allegory still exists though not quite as harsh as Socrates put it.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he portrays prisoners chained in a cave where they have lived their whole life. Shadows are casted onto a wall in front of the prisoners and they make out what the shadows are and start to believe different things. One prisoner is set free and looks outside to find out that the world that he thought was reality, was not reality at all. Today, T.V serves as entertainment to everyone. I believe that the saying “People believe what they see,” is true. Advertisements try to get as many people to believe that the product they are selling is useful. They will do whatever it takes to get people to buy their products. Some people have learned about this and ignore commercials, because they know that the product most likely does not work, but many people do believe the advertising world. Many commercials are pointed toward children, and children are naive so when they see commercials, they want that product because the companys try and make it look cool, when in reality you can not fly into the sky when you put on a pair of light up sketchers, and your barbies usually dont come to life when you pick them up. So many children are glued to the T.V presently, so that becomes their own little world that they are trapped in. In the Allegory of the cave, Plato describes the prisoners having their necks and arms chained. That is a more violent way of saying that in the world today, we are all being controlled. I do not think thta we are entirely contolled, but the main “ruler” would the Government. The Government controlls education, companys, recreational places, laws, and people. No one can be completley free in the real world today, because we have things that tell us what we can do and what we can’t do. It may not be portrayed as much as it was in The Allegory of the Cave, but I do believe that the allegory still exists in the world today and it will always take place.
in the story “Allegory of the Cave” it proprieties people who have lived there whole life chained up and could only see shadows. when the prisoners were born they were chained up and could only see shadows of people and animals that walk by on a low wall that had a fire reflect there shadow out into the cave for the prisoners to see. and then once in a blue moon a prisoner was set free and dragged out side to a new reality that he has never experienced ever in his life. the life he now posses is something he never thought was real and so at first he did not believe that it was reality at all but it was some trick. so he tried to get back to the reality he truly knew and trusted but was not allowed to and was dragged up to the top of a hill and was forced to be blinded by the sun. so after he became blinded he realized that it was a true reality that he was in and his whole life prier to the life out side of the cave was a lie and he went back to tell them. but when he did they could now here him and they lived there life thinking that there reality was the true and only reality. that is what i got from reading “Allegory of the Cave”.
In the story “Allegory of the Cave” Socrates describes a group of prisoners being chained to a wall watching these shadows which are really people walking behind them, making them think them to be whatever they want them to be. This is some what’s in real life but not really. How its in real life is people don’t really change there minds from something they known all there life’s to believe something that they never seen. For example when they describe the shadows and then saw the thing they describe outside of the cave they wouldn’t believe.
The prisoners could not move there heads because there heads where chain so they couldn’t see the people behind them. They didn’t know what they were or where the shadows where coming from all they knew was they seen them and wanted to describe on how they look to them. In our world we are being controlled by the media and we think what the media tells us to think because we don’t know the truth. I think the real world is our cave because of the media but the cave we are in is easier to get out of and also you can get out when ever you want to.
The internet is a major component because anyone can post anything now days like a book or blogs etc. Anyone can publish their own writing or write about all of their opinions and post them online where millions of people can see their opinions.
Plato, author of The Allegory of the Cave, describes experiences of slaves who only the world of darkness and the shadows that pass by. When Socrates gets out into the real world he wants to go back into the cave. But he soon learns about the goodness in the world and does not want to go back into the cave. The Allegory of the Cave is relevant to today because the media always puts beautiful people in movies and advertisement. They make you feel like you have to look like this person with tons of makeup and loads of computer touch ups or you will not be liked in the world. Or if you drink this brand or smoke this brand you will get everyone to like you. Like the beer brand Dos Equis, it shows an older gentleman getting all the girls, skydiving, doing impossible things just because he drinks that beer. The cave we live in is created by the media or even the girls/boys at school who make fun of others. The allegory is outdated but not the meaning of the story. The meaning of the story, do not let others control you, goes with the media trying to control how everyone should look and act. Sometimes the caves we live in are controlled by no one other than our parents. Our parents have the power to control what we buy, where we hang out, what time we go to bed, and even what we are allowed to watch on television.
In the story “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato describes a world where people have been kept since childhood chained to a wall and forced to look at shadows and only shadows for most of their existence. They know nothing but these shadows and truly do belief they are real. One of the prisoners finally escapes and is blinded by the light of the upper world. As he ventures through this new world his vision slowly clears and he is able to see the truth. This story applied very much to the world of Plato and still applies to the world today. People are still kept in the dark by the government, Television and the media. Most people don’t even know their are limitations to freedom of speech and press as well as many other ammendments.To be honest with you, I don’t think we will ever learn the truth. Today, Tommorow or a 100 years from now. The electronic world has become our prison, the government have become our puppeteers and the lovely shadows are the only truth we will ever see. I believe the people living under a rock have a better grasp on what reality is than we do. But in all fairness, The media does help (somewhat) in revealing the truth as well. Their are actually people out there that still publish the truth (even if it is risky). There are still people who try to keep us in the light.
Plato’s Alegory of the Cave is about prisoners chained to the inside of a cave. They have lived there since their childhood. They have a fire burning above and behind them. Above them is a long walk way that men cross to bring strange objects to the cave. Shadows of the men are potraied on the ground by the prisoners because of the fire. The prisoners do not know what the shadows are and give them names. The prisoners are being treated like puppets by the men with the strange objects. One of the prisoners escapes the cave and is blinded by the sunlight. He realizes that the life he knew before was all a lie and wants to tell his friends back at the cave. He goes to tell them that all they have known was a lie but they do not understand.
This alegory is relevent in our world today. We are all living in a cave and being treated like “puppets” with the media being the “puppeteer”. For example, today’s society potrays models, actors, and actresses as being beautiful putting pressure on the rest of us to look just as beautiful. “If the deffinition of beauty gets any thinner, no one will fit”. Magazines try to show us that thinner is better, but we are being blinded by the truth. We are all beautiful the way we are and we should not let the media get in our heads and lie to us. People should be themselves not what others tell them to be.
In Plato’s, “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates explains to his student how when we see too much of something and believe that it is reality when it is truly not. Socrates describes a group of prisoner forced to look at a wall, chained down, and without being able to see around them. Behind them was a big fire but in between the fire and them was a passage way were people from the town would walk through the cave. The prisoners would see a shadow and would name it, not knowing what it was and believing that the shadow was real. One day one of the prisoners was released and let out into the REAL world, not what he believed was the real world. He experienced many different things like the sun light that burned his eyes, as he finally got his sight back it became clear to him that what he believed was the real world was only his imagination. He finally went to his friends to try and tell them what the real was like, but their reality was no longer his reality and they could not even recognize him anymore because he was now only a shadow. I believe that the real world thinks like those prisoners. By watching TV or just by playing video games or even people that read a lot start to believe that that is their new reality when it is not. They may do that to get out of reality but soon enough if they pay more attention to their “reality” then to the outside reality. No one ever knows why we start to believe that that is our reality when it is not but I believe that humans will never change their way of thinking even if we try each person has their own way of thinking.
In Plato’s Allegory of the cave is a metaphor Socrates talks about how when you see too much of something and believe that it is reality when it is really not. This talks about how the prisoners are chained up there arms and legs and cant move there heads so they don’t know reality all they know is what they see in the cave. Behind them was a fire and in the middle of the prisoners and the fire was a walk away. They see shadows for most of there existence. Which people and animals would walk through the cave and they would call it what they thought it was. They didn’t know anything different. One day one of the prisoners was let out into the real world outside of the cave and went out and explored and found out things he thought were animals or something were really not. He explored things like the sunlight that burned his eyes. When you are playing video games or watching T.V or even on the computer you are sucked into a world that is not the real reality. There are so many kids glued to the T.V. sometimes because the commercials are calling them into a fake reality saying sweets are better then healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. Most of the time advertising is actually a lie. I believe that is fake reality of the allegory does exist today we are always seeing false things around such as on T.V. video games, the internet, magazines and advertisements you are being sucked into a world that you are forced to believe is real.
In the “Allegory of a Cave” by Plato, he wirtes about men who are slaves in a cave,and are held captive by the chains that bind to the cave itself, only able to observe the fire that flames before them. When people and animals pass by the cave, the slaves can see only the shadows of the people and animals. When finally one of the slaves breaks free of the cave and for the first time, sees and feels the sun. The slave sees that what he had once thought was the truth was all a lie, and that reality is goodness and warm. He tries to tell the others, but they cannot comprehend him and are shocked by the news.
The story is relevent to today’s everyday life, for example technology, advertisements, and family. Technology can control you and hold you back like chains, you become limited to a certian capacity of what you can do, like being allowed to look up certian things, and doing things for you. Today technology is used everyday and does everything for us like, cash registers, computers, phones, garage doors, and cars. Another factor is advertisements that are everywhere, magizines, internet, T.V., malls, radio, billboards, and newspaper. Advertisements goals are to entise you into buying their products by saying that thier product is “the best” , and that you sould only buy what they tell you to buy. The other factor is family, yes everyone should love their family and yes everynow and then you argue with them, but they can also control what you do. If you want to do something different or independent your fmaily might not agree with you and not let you do what you wnat to. They can control and tell you what to do sometimes and not let you know the truth or reality, especially when you are young. Somethings are best not to know until you are older, but a portion of it is not knowing the truth about things.
Overall, I think that “Allagory of the Cave” definatly relates to today and it is amazing that a story that was created so long ago, and yet it relates perfectly for today.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” prisoners are secluded from reality and made to believe in this world that is being portrayed to them. The story of these prisoners being chained in a cave may seem to be just another far fetched folk tale. But if we examine the society we live in today are we perhaps just as ignorant to what reality is just as they were?
I personally feel that we do have puppeteers forming shadows on our walls, they are more commonly known as the media. They feed Americans stories everyday and we usually for the most part believe them to always be true. But I strongly do feel that just as the chained prisoner walked out into the light and was blinded by the truth anyone in today’s society can choose to as well and certainly in a much less drastic way. Internet access and T.V has created more transparency in our world then ever before, from blogs to the news; reality has become much less blinding and more apparent. Anyone is capable of searching for their own little piece of enlightenment, but the question is, are they willing to?
Certainly there are plenty of individuals that will and do choose to stay in the cave and continue to watch television programs that are not realistic at all, but there are those who do choose to not live in this blissful state of ignorance and watch the news and become more politically and socially aware through it. We can all choose to accept the realities given too us and foolishly believe in the shadows created. But just as the prisoner walked into the light, all those in our society can also detest the fallacies presented to them and realize reality for what it truly is. I am not agreeing in the total opposition that the allegory does not exists and that it is always so easy to see our world for what it really is. It is hard to always see the truth when living in a society that portrays things in so many different ways that it becomes a world filled with contradictions. But our allegory is much more transparent and we are entirely capable and have the tools to become enlightened and we no longer have to be chained prisoners living in the darkness.
The Allegory of the Cave plays a major role in society today. Living in our world would be exactly like living in the cave, as Plato explained. We don’t see it but we are the slaves and the puppets being controlled by puppeteers. We have the media, the government, markets, and businesses, even us. Shadows walk around us every day as if we were to be watching a movie. For example, the government hides a bunch of their information away from their citizens. We have the right to know but until we know, we’ll be stranded in a cave inside of a cave and so forth. Nobody really knows the truth and even if we knew we wouldn’t really know if it’s the truth. Plato explained prisoners being chained up, being controlled by puppeteers, in our society, we rely on other people to make us food, to teach us, to provide us with information, and to invent new things. We are being fed with all of this but though we can’t do it ourselves. That’s what makes us slaves of life. When people start to open their eyes, it would be much harder for them to live on their own since they’ll be relying on themselves. In my point of view, the cave still exists and it getting more and more difficult to get out of. All of the transportation that we see in our society today is actually making the puppeteer stronger because they transfer us from a starting to the finish point. As much as we try to get out of the cave, we’ll end up in various caves, because these caves are really tough to get out of.
I think that Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, even today knowledge is kept from the minds of the ones that want to know. How I think about this is, the cave is a metaphor for the mind, the opening is/ are the ears or mouth, and the prisoners are the people in this world who do not have the knowledge that they are fully capable of knowing. I personally do not think that the allegory is out dated today, because it is about human nature, and human nature will go on for as long as the human race survives. Something that has changed slightly is the puppeteer, today the ‘puppeteer’ sometimes does not show themselves always, but regulates on what can be put on to the internet, TV, and books. But because of this, people are still blinded from the truth, they do not have all of the knowledge that they need to be able to participate truthfully in our society and government today. People today are able to live their lives how they want to live them to the most part. But in today’s society, it is very easily to be able to see past the shroud of false and misleading knowledge, at some points in time, but at times the people of the world are not able to see past the shroud of false and misleading knowledge. That is why we study and go to school, to learn some of the knowledge that is still enshrouded, and truthful.
I think that what the allegory of the cave is trying to say is that if one were to live their life in a world where everything was a lie and not knowing what was really there, just beyond their reach, they would seem very unintelligent to the rest of society. Then if they were to suddenly be forced to accept that everything that they had known for their entire lives had been false, even the constant darkness compared to the sun, then they would want to run back and tell everyone else who had been kept in the cave. But of course, the prisoners wouldn’t believe him. I think that this is still very prevalent in today’s world, because even though we believe more than we should off of television and the internet and online gaming, most of that information is either a rumor that is lacking in evidence, or it is something made up by someone who wants to see the reactions that it gets from other people. But there is still the possibility that our government wants us to believe that they are lying to us so that they can control us even more when we are in our search for the truth. Even though this probably isn’t true, it shouldn’t be ignored just because it is far fetched. If one likes to think about our world as a cave that is dark and void of truth, then that works. But I believe that it is more like a boiling kettle of water that we are slowly drowning ourselves in because of our inability to choose representatives that actually tell us the truth instead of the ones that lie so that they can get more money or so that they can stay in office longer.
I believe that Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” still very much applies to the world today. In this so-called “world of information” you may think this would not be the case, but take a closer look. The vast majority of this “information” has little to no relevance to the big picture. Charlie Sheen’s drug abuse? Hats at the royal wedding? Outfits to awards events? What do those have to do with anything, what impact do they have on the world? The answer is nothing. Not that all news and news media is just a wash of nothing, they should just leave trivial nonsense to other outlets. But along with the barrage of irrelevance, there comes the lies and misinformation. Not even large scale cover-ups or grand schemes to control the public, and it may not be the news media itself. But subtle lies and misinformation to steer the general public in the direction that the big companies want. Have you ever heard that vitamins could be potentially harmful to you? Chances are you probably have. This is a lie given to you from your friends, the pharmaceutical companies. Much money is to be made with a pill for every ill. But vitamins? Not so much money there. But the pharmaceutical companies know full well that vitamins do a mighty good job at fighting disease, and they are afraid of that. The National Library of Medicine is the largest medical library in the world, and yet no documentation on vitamins. This is the work of the pharmaceutical companies, with their workers in the system, they block the vitamin research and results from the records. The documentary “Food Matters” talks about this, and one of the doctors they interviewed told a story of a patient who was a mother suffering from a chronic deep depression and some suicidal thoughts. He put her on daily mega-doses on niacin, and before long she became her normal self. When the family decided to see another doctor, the other doctor decided that the niacin may be harmful to her, and gave her a prescription for an antidepressant. Within a week she was just as depressed as ever. This is just one of the certainly many other cover-ups and lies and controls set on the population by the big companies and other players to benefit from veiling the public with misinformation, and only allowing them to see the shadows.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” prisoners are kept from reality and unable to see the real world. I believe our world is like similar to allegory of the cave because we are always kept from the truth. The government covers a lot of information from us to “protect” us. I think our government should not keep things from us because we need to know the truth. They expect us to pay taxes without telling us what they are going to use the money for. Now the government can butt into our phone conversations and texts. In a way I could understand why they do that but at the same time that is an invasion of privacy. Also, on television they show us beautiful people without any imperfection or also called models. And they wonder why teens are so self conscious. They make these commercials and show us women in their 20’s with flawless skin and beautiful smiles. They lie to us because when you see the actual person, they look super different the in television. They make us believe that we have to look like then to be beautiful which makes us insecure and want to be just like them. I remember seeing a show where they show this model her pictures and she says, “I don’t even look like that”. They show us false advertisements. They also pass these commercials of people that lose weight because they took these dangerous diet pills. They show the person very happy and also the before and after pictures. They think being skinny and acne free, loaded with tons of make up is the new beautiful. We are being lied to every single day by society. I think it is almost the same thing as being locked up in a cave for all our life’s. The government tries to hide everything they can from us. We were talking in class how they tried to make an accidental death as he died fighting for his country but in reality he died from a friendly fire. But they were saying how he was such a great hero and all this other lies. That is why I think we are kept from all the truth and we should be told the truth no matter how extreme it may be.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” prisoners have been chained up in a dark cave for most of their lives and can only look at a wall. Behind them is a roadway used by travelers and behind that is a fire that casts shadows on the wall the prisoners look at. They know nothing else in life except these shadows and truly do belief they are real. When one of the prisoners is released he is blinded by the light outside the cave. His vision slowly clears as he explores the new world and he is able to see the truth, the very thing he knew wasn’t true. When the prisoner ran back to the cave to tell the other prisoners, they didn’t believe him. This story applies to the world of Plato and still applies to today’s world. People are still kept in the dark and looking at “shadows” cast by the government, television, and other media. They all show you what they want you to believe and for those who find out the truth it is hard to get it out and make others believe the same. However, we are capable of becoming enlightened and no longer have to be chained prisoners living in the darkness.
Plato’s story “allegory of the cave” tells a story about prisoners in a cave chained up and forced to stair at a wall in the cave as people take a path behind them through the cave. The shadows cast by a fire that is behind them and the pedestrians creates an imaginative world an altered reality, for them. When one of the prisoners gets released he is shown the real world. But because of seeing the shadows for so long it takes a while for him to finally see the world and the truth. He decides to return back to the cave to tell his former prisoner friends what he saw but they cannot hear him and all they see is a shadow moving behind them. This story has a different meaning than the story tells. The cave in the story could represent real life, and the prisoners represent the normal people. The shadows passing by are their only perception of what goes on and one day the prisoner gets released which could represent a philosopher or just a normal person. they are shown the light of the real world. but at first they resist because they still believe the lies that were told to them. but then they see what is the truth. the person returns back to the people and try’s to tell that about the true world but the people cant hear him and all they see is a shadow. They are brainwashed into believing the lies and do not accept the truth that he is trying to tell them.
In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, Plato’s brother Glaucon doesn’t believe that getting an education would help him in life. Plato’s teacher Socrates thinks otherwise, so Socrates has a long conversation with Glaucon about why an education is important. He creates a story about prisoners trapped in a cave in which people show them shadow puppet shows. These shows had become reality to the prisoners, but there was one prisoner who had escaped the fake realities and had experienced the real world. He sees the real world for the first time in years and he runs back to the other prisoners to tell them of his discovery, but when he tells them about it they didn’t believe him. He pleads to his brothers to let go of this false reality, but they believe that the shadow puppets are the only reality. The man leaves his friends behind and sets off to start a new life in the new reality. With this story, Socrates was trying to prove to Glaucon that having an education is very important in life because it gives you the sense to tell you right from wrong like the prisoner who escaped.
These false realities exist in our present society. For example, video games. There are people in this world who think that video games like World of Warcraft are the true reality. These people believe that all the video games they play are reality, but for some video games it is reality. Though StarCraft and Warcraft may not be real, Call of Duty, Battlefield and most other war video games are. Call of duty modern warfare 2 and 3 reflect the war in Iraq. Some of the people who realize that these video games are not reality try to help those that do, but these people think otherwise and stay in their dark filthy rooms playing their false reality.
This allegory is still relevant, and it has become even more so in recent years. What we watch and listen to is controlled by other people to a point where we cannot even sure if it is true or not. News companies frequently omit information to change a listener’s opinions about it. The results of a “viewer’s vote” can be adulterated. Situations in dating and reality shows are mostly set up by the producers. Many, if not most, viewers and listeners are suckered in to believing that what is shown on the screen or heard on the airwaves is the reality around them. Yet despite all of the change Americans ask for, these kinds of situations have become more common. The invention and widespread acceptation of the internet has weakened the situation, but the problem still exits. The internet’s communication abilities can cause a rumor to become news, due to the number of reposts on various websites.
The media is the cave that we all live in and very few get to leave it and see the reality behind it. The internet has started a second fire, producing another dimension of the shadows. If the sources of the information are traced back, they come from a small selection of companies. With technology like shortwave radio, the echoes of foreign caves can be heard. With the similar problem of propaganda broadcasts, the listener is only seeing the shadow of a shadow, yet they believe they are seeing outside of the cave.
The Allegory of the Cave does relate today because there are people living in the dark so to say. The people chained up to me symbolizes ignorance, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that because they only see people as shadows and when a passer by talks they think its the shadow so its like they are judging who that person is. The fire to me symbolizes the media, like the fire giving the prisoners a false sense of reality the media does that to us. The media can cause prejudice and ignorance from the truth of the real world. The media can make us prejudice by only feeding us one side of a story making the other side look like monsters. The man who got released from the cave I think symbolizes a person breaking away from their civilizations prejudice and at first not wanting to understand the way people are. However as the man learns to handle the sunlight he begins to understand that he might be able to help his friends chained up back in the cave. He stands at the path and yells at his friends about how the world is his friends do not understand what he is saying and judges him as just another shadow. The prisoners not understanding what the man is saying represents the ignorance of the prisoners not being able to understand a world greater than what they can only see in front of them. I also believe that with ignorance lies prejudice and I also believe every one of us is somewhat prejudice and that makes us all somewhat ignorant.
“The Allegory of the Cave” is a story about how Socrates (Plato’s teacher) is trying to teach Glaucon, Plato’s brother the value of education. He teaches Glaucon by telling him a story about human beings that have lived in a cave since childhood where they barely see any light and are chained up where a fire blazes at a distance. This story might sound like it’s just a bunch of B.S., but the truth is that we think that fantasy is just as real as reality as well. In my opinion our life is controlled just like a puppet show. These puppets that I’m talking about are the media. What they say, what they show, what they advertise, gets turned into reality, even it is a bunch of B.S most of the time. The internet and T.V. is where B.S. is mostly shown. Some people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. But, people that have been their since childhood like the ones that were chained in a cave and restricted from light can not tell the difference between fantasy and reality. For example, “Shake Weight” some people think that the, “Shake Weight” actually works. But, it really doesn’t. The captives in the cave are in the same predicament they can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. It’s either heads or tails. I’m not saying that I think that this story is B.S.; I’m saying that it has to be proven that there were human beings in a cave, who were chained from the arms, legs and neck and restricted from the light since childhood. It is hard to believe something that you have not seen with your own two eyes. Times have changed, the world has advanced and we don’t have to live in the darkness anymore.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” plato describes three prissoners chained up in a cave with nothing to look at except the cave wall and the shadows of the people crossing the bridge directly behind them. Plato is an ingenious writer making it possible to percieve this work many many different ways. The way that I had seen it is that the darkness was ignorance and the light was knowledge. when one of the prisoners had been released into the real world after seeing nothing but a cave wall for the whole of his life was such a wonderful experience for him but when he had rushed back to tell his former inmates he was dissapointed to realize that they could not hear him because of the caves structure distorting what he was saying. So in a nut shell what Plato is saying is that you have to go out and experience life to actually be happy and intelligent and when you arent out experiencing the world you will stay at the same level of ingnorance from birth until death. Another aspect of that is when you were previously ignorant to somthing you would never want to go back to your previous stupidity on any given topic at any given time.
I believe that it was about how people only see the shadow of things. Shadow has in not looking at things directly and believing that it is real. And because you grow so use to it everything that is different for it isn’t acceptable. That’s why beliefs and political views always clash because no one wants to except that other people have different ideas of the world around them. Also this snippet of writing shows how hard it is to adapt to change and not fall back into old habits. Personal I see it as if you’re trying to pull out someone who hates change. Once they see the reality they don’t always like what they see and wish to go back were everything went their way and the shadows that you tried to pull them away from consumes them again. Or something like that.
Allegory of the Cave was written a long time ago, but in many ways it is still relevant to what is going on today. In the allegory, a cave is described that holds prisoners who are oblivious to the fact that the way they are living is not realistic at all. In the same way, people who are living today are given messages by the media and others around them, and are often tricked into thinking that those things are the truth. For example, the media often portrays men and women who have the seemingly perfect life. They are famous, incredibly attractive, and can have anything and anybody they want. The media tries to make others believe that they should want to be like these people, because they have everything and therefore, must be happy. The truth is, they often have harder lives than any “average” person. The shadows that were cast on the walls of the cave in the allegory are like the lies that are spread to humans. Be perfect, be beautiful. They are just shadows. Today, everyone is living in that cave, chained up and unable to see the truth. Whether it is the media, government, or others opinions, every single person is seeing shadows about something. The reality is definitely out there, just like it was for the prisoners in the cave. The only difference between us and those prisoners is that they were unable to go out and see for themselves that they were living in denial. We are more like the one prisoner who escaped, we have the opportunity to see the truth! The hard part is convincing others that what you tell them is real. So yes, the message of Allegory of the Cave is very relevant to our world today.
In the story “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato describes a world of people have been kept since a childhood chained up to a wall and they are forced to look at shadows and only to the shadows for most of their existences. They don’t know anything but only these shadows on the wall and they truly believe they are real. One of the prisoners finally escapes from the chained wall and blinded him by the light outside because he hasn’t been in the light for so long. As he was in the brightness through a new world his vision slowly started to clear and he is able to see the truth because he started to get use to the brightness. This story applied very much to the world of Plato and it still applies to the world today. People today are still kept in the dark by the government, and television and the media. Most of the people today don’t know there are limitations to a freedom of speech. To be the true with you, I don’t think we will ever learn the truth today or anytime. The electronic has become our prison, the government has become our puppeteers and the shadows are they only truth we will ever see. I believe the people living under a rock have a better life what reality is than we do. But it all fairness, because the media does help in revealing the truth as well and to find things. There are actually people out in the word are still publishing the truth even if they are risky. There are still people who are trying to keep us in the light.
In plato’s allegory of the cave he describes how people are trapped in lies but they strongly believe that they are the truth. This poem relates to the world today because of the media and how so many people are caught up in the lies of those who flaunt that they have it all. If a person has it all then they are happy, or not. Not very many people know that “stuff” doesn’t bring a person happiness it could actually make things worse for that person. When “stuff” is recognized it could be to have that perfect “beach body” or the perfect hair style, the clothes a person wears and how much they need to spend on one outfit to fit in, the way a person talks to make themselves sound cool, for example a good amount of people use profanity because they think it will make them sound cooler but would never say those types of things in front of their parents. Our generation is constantly being lied to by the media and is tricked into thinking that this is reality. It most definitely is not, naturally people are not happy alone, money or material possessions will not make a person happy. If a person goes to try and tell others that the media isn’t a good thing to follow a lot of people would disagree, but that shows how dense this generation really is. So in all yes this allegory is still relevant in our lives today and this world is the most transparent it has ever been.
Are we still trapped in the cave or have we escaped it? Some people are still stuck in that cave, some people believe we are stuck in the cave, but I believe that we all have the opportunity to leave the cave or choose to stay in it. In the past, people believed everything they were told by the media and everything they read in the newspaper and wouldn’t question it. With all the methods of communication we have in today’s society and the easy access to internet, we now have the ability to share information world wide instantly and we have the ability to research information that is not available to us within our country. Now we are more informed and if we have question we find a way to find the answer. An example of this is the way the Westerners obtained updated information during the civil wars that were taking place in the Middle East. Much of the information was being shared by the inhabitants of the towns that were being affected and they were providing live feed of the what was happening. The people who are still stuck in the cave may never come out because they still believe everything they hear and everything they see and choose not leave the cave. Do you choose to open you eyes and leave the cave or stay ignorant and remain in the cave?
In Platos allegory of a cave he explains how people are chained to the wall of a cave with a fire behind them and people walking by with animals and objects that cast a shadow on the wall in front of them. He talks about how these people never see the real world and how the only thing that they know is the shadows that are on the wall. I believe that this is true in society today, becuase of the media’s advertisment and lies that they jam down peoples throats. Lots of people are in this cave becuase they thrive on the media. They try to be just like the perfect person that the media shows people and how you need this expensive car or this outfit that will help you fit in. The world today is so caught up in computers and phones and video games that we are almost all in a cave.
I believe that socrates allegory of the cave is very relevant to todays society. It describes how many people live in darkness and have no idea of how the real world affects us. I believe I have figured out what his allegory symbolizes in my eyes. The men in chains represent people that are unaware and have no feeling or understanding. Thechains are the things of this world having their grip on us whether it is the internet, science, technology, writing, or our friends. The cave is the fake world in which most of us live unaware what there really is to live. The shadows represent the things that drive and influence us to feel certain ways. The puppeteirs are those that cause us to feel the way we do about things. When the prisoner breaks free and goes outside it is a sign of him getting curious and forming his own ideas. His eyes are hurt by the sun which symbolizes him not being used to thinking for himself or creating his own ideas. After a while his eyes adjust to the light which means he gets used to standing up for his own ideas. Then after a while he gets tired of the outside world and goes back into the cave. Meaning he eventually fell back into his bad habbits. The story symbolizes the need for us all to stand out and fight for our beliefs. Don’t give into doing what everyone else does take the path less traveled by.
i believe that the allegory of the cave is not out of date, even with the internet and all the media around us, if anything it is MORE relevant now. with all the media spreading false information, we are even more blinded than the people in the story. in today’s times, the media and the internet is the so called puppeteer, the media and internet shows us false information, about movie start, politics, everything. just because the technology of today is much much more advanced, the only difference is that the puppeteer is now more advanced too. today’s puppeteer is even more powerful now than then, this so called puppeteer is even more easily accessible than it was then, the shroud of lifestyle is more evident now than ever. the allegory of the cave is even more truthful now than it was then
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there are three prisoner’s chained up and they have been there sense their childhood. They are forced to look at shadow’s of people from above because that is the only thing they can see is the wall right in front of them. These prisoner’s are oblivious to the right way of living, they do not know anything but the shadow’s that pass. But saying that it is the exact same way today, People are controlled by the media and they don’t even know it because all they worry about is looking nice or doing what everyone else is doing. For fact, the media is making more men and women think the way to live is having the style clothing and being rich. But actually all they are doing is trying to make people want that, they want people to try and be like them. The media is just like the “Allegory of the Cave” It seems as If that is real life and that is what you are supposed to be doing but in reality you not. Today everyone is chained looking at shadow’s. They really don’t know what reality is. The deference in the slaves and us though is that we can look at ourselves and change who we are, but they can’t they cannot change there are stuck there looking at shadow’s on a wall just waiting to get out.
The allegory of the cave definitely has relevance to our world today. The cave represents school. The teachers are obligated to teach only what’s on the curriculum and not what goes on in the real world. I guess now you can say they do teach a little bit about the real world because everything’s on the media and students have questions. That’s not how it used to be. The teachers aren’t allowed to represent their party (republican or democrat) to their students. They are only allowed to teach ABOUT it. An easy way to say it is they can’t give their opinions on politics. When you step out in to the real world, you have to choose these things. Dem. or republican? Obama or McCain? That’s the real world. When you’re in the cave you find your comfort zone. You have friends and like to party and have CERTAIN info spoon fed to you buy your teachers. Once you hit that real world, you can call it graduation, you want to go back. Have you ever heard your parents say, “I wish I was still a kid”? They say that because they’re scared of the real world, they want to go back to that comfort zone with their peers. In the Allegory of the Cave, the man was blinded and ran back inside the cave to tell his friends you have not yet been let out. It’s like your parents trying to describe politics and trying to make you understand and you sit there like, “huh?” The cave is your comfort zone inside school and the real world is, well, the real world. BTW Mrs. Houlahan, YOU NEED TO WATCH SPONGEBOB!!!!
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is still relevant in our lives today. Many things act like the puppeteers who constructed reality for the prisoners. The media and our peers provide us with false truths which seem so real, yet are deceiving. The media gives us misleading shadows which we believe as reality. The worst part is that they follow you home. Every time someone turns on the TV, goes on a computer, or opens a magazine, they are subjected to the media. Even though practically everything is photosopped, people are vulnerable and are so easily swayed by a lie that is staring them in the face. The media is corrupt and that’s what causes us to be corrupt. Many believe all the actions, appearances, and attitudes of characters in TV shows are how “normal” people should act and look. It isn’t. The characters actors portray aren’t “normal” people – they don’t even exist in real life! Peers also influence others to believe “truths”. School can be a place for learning, but it can also act as the cave, chaining students, so that peers can illustrate “shadows”, making them ever more vivid and ingrained into reality, so that you will be quickly deceived. There is no place to escape when you are at school. Peers are influenced by the media and others, and they also influence you. They may say something mean about you or someone else just because you or that person don’t look like the models on TV. They may praise you new outfit because it’s fashionable, when really the fashion is ridiculous and would have been “ugly” and “weird” a year ago. Peers are like little mini robots. They are programmed by the media and themselves to be conformists, yet individuals at the same time. There are still prisoners chained in the cave, today. Maybe once people grow older, focus more on their family or their life ahead, and start being comfortable with who they are as a person, they’ll stop believing in the shadows and break free from the cave for good. Only time will tell…
I think that like the prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” we are influenced by the media and that society has truly influenced the way we perceive day to day life. For instance, someone in a country ruled by a dictator may not see someone being executed for speaking against the government wrong. Compared to another person who has lived in a free country his/her life, and seeing someone being executed because of their government, would seem very immoral or unjust. The way someone might perceive the prisoners in “Allegory of the Cave” would be that the prisoners are looking into darkness which could represent the “wool” that the government throws over the populations eyes in order to make them think that everything is suppose to be a certain way. The light in the cave could represent the freedom or the truth that the prisoners are being kept from seeing. The shadows represented in Plato’s story could also represent what the people in an unjust government are seeing and what they are being taught that is never really there, or if it is there it is only apart of what could actually be seen, or if the shadows would show what they are shadowing. I personally think that the main moral of Plato’s story is that with a government that controls everyone’s life’s, we are no more than the people in the cave.
in an allegory of a cave plato is explaining how people are wicked and that they need to be trapped in a cave there whole life but once they get out of the cave they have seen too much and will never willingly go back into the cave only to rest that the people trapped inside the cave are like the americans and the people making the shadows on the walls are the british mulipulating us with taxes on tea and other goods back when we wrote the declaration of independece but today in the world the relevence would be that computers have us trapped in a cave and living like the omish would be getting out of the cave and seeing the world not on a stupid screen but in real life it would also be like telivision has us trapped in a cave namely our housess and being out of the cave would be like going outside and exploring weather its hiking biking skateing anything. if ur sitting around its like being trapped in a cave no matter where you are being trapped in a cave would be any addiction you have and any thing you have done your thoughts have you trapped in a cave sometines you just always have to remember there is always a way out of the cave no matter if you can see the light or not.
Can it be said that we live in a cave today? I think so, and I’ll tell you why. The pharmaceutical companies have warped people into thinking that they need certain medications, but these medications are very expensive. Take, for example, many third world countries. People may be dying because they need certain medications, but they are way too expensive for let alone people here in the U.S., so how could they afford them? These people would be better served with clean water and food, than vaccinations and medications. When you think about it though, if people knew about what can be in these medications, they might choose not to take them. For some reason, these pharmaceutical companies can put certain elements in medications, such a mercury and aluminum, which are fatal in certain doses and forms, and they don’t have to tell the general public. Side affects of aluminum poisoning will affect your nervous system and mercury poisoning can cause damage to the brain, kidney and lungs. Many vaccinations contain these harmful alloys without people knowing what is in them. Thimerosal is a preservative that is used in countless vaccines. It contains mercury, and although they say it isn’t fatal, could we really trust that this deadly chemical alloy is not fatal when injected into our body? Of course, one needs to do extensive research to find what is really in the medicines and vaccines, which at least half of the stuff on the Internet isn’t true. It seems as if someone, maybe who just so happens to be these pharmaceutical companies, hides information from the general public to 1) make themselves look like heroes and 2) keep everybody in a cave so there is no controversy? It is a fact that cancer is the most expensive disease, so that obviously gives the pharmaceutical companies quite a bit of revenue. Is it so wrong of me to believe that these companies even have the cure for cancer, but they realize that they get so much money from the treatments for it instead that do not share their knowledge. Ms. Houlahan, you know that I think people can’t be trusted in general because they are selfish. Is this not just one more example of why I think that?
In Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, he describes a cave, in which there are prisoners that have never really stepped foot into reality, and have been shackled facing the wall of the cave forced to stare at flickering shadows created by the fire behind them since child birth. This could relate to today. Most of us are chained away from the truth, being hidden from reality. For example, the media. The media has a way of making us think and feel like we need to act, look and be a certain way. According to the media, all girls have to be underweight and extremely tall with a fake tan to be beautiful and guys have to be at least 6’1 with enormous muscles to be attractive. But in reality, no one looks like that unless you’re photo shopped and have a make up crew constantly fallowing you around that can cover up any flaw. We are hidden from the truth that no one truly is perfect in that way, but they are in their own way. There’s also stereotypes. We think we have to act the way we look, either it being race or a certain style. All people who wear black are categorized as “emo” or all Asians are good at math. No one really takes the time to step out of the cave, even though they have the option to. People don’t take the time to find things out for themselves and let their judgmental minds get to the better of them. Some people might be even be too afraid because that’s all they’ve ever known. So, yes, The Allegory of The Cave does still apply to today’s society.
In Plato’s time the people were in fact being controlled by a more powerful force. This happened because the main groups of citizens were uneducated and could easily be kept from learning the truth in this way. In our current generation many of us have the opportunity to create our own reality based on what we observe in our lives everyday. In the United States of America everyone has the opportunity to become educated and learn about their world. Because we are educated we do not give anyone a chance to create a false reality.
Public schooling isn’t our only source of knowledge either. We have everyday access to hundreds of other information sources. Newspapers tell us about events close to us. The internet brings us a seemingly endless vault of information. We can experience the entire world from the comfort of our own homes with the aid of the World Wide Web. If we want instant communication we simply pull out our cell phone and we can talk to someone we cannot even see. Simply by pressing a series of buttons we are able to talk to someone halfway around the world or a mile down the road.
In Plato’s time it would take you days to travel fifty miles. You would need to bring food, water, and other supplies for the trip. Now, thousands of years later traveling halfway around the world takes less than a day, and fifty miles can be done on a bicycle in a matter of hours. Modern transportation has given people a different view of the world. With todays technology and education it is virtually impossible to withhold someone from the truth.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it is told that there are three prisoners who are chained up and can only see what in front of them, which are just shadows, letting their imaginations run free. One day, one of the prisoners gets to leave and he is blinded from the light because he has only been known to the darkness. He then realizes that he let others teach him that there is only the cave and the other prisoners, that there is no life outside of the cave. I do believe that this is relevant to modern day because we mistake a lot of things for what they really are, and we are also caught up in other things, we do not see realty. For example, watching a realty show like Jersey Shore, people think its ok to drink, have sex with whomever, and party all night, and get in fights without thinking of the consequences. We let them teach us what realty really is and led us to believe it’s ok, that nothing will happen. Once someone steps out of that cave or false realty people see the true life and get blinded. If someone were to do that in realty you can, get arrested, get STD’s, and be in critical condition. We then try to tell other’s that there is “life” outside the cave or TV, like the prisoner who got out. He tried to tell the other prisoners about the outside world, but they could not comprehend.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there is a prisoner that has been kept in a cave for his entire life, once he escapes he dicovers a new world. At first he is frightened, but then his eyes are opened and he realizes that this new world is reality and what he had thought to be real for so long was merely a lie. I believe that this allegory is no longer true. I feel that the media or the government may be hiding some major things from us, but I seriously doubt it. I think that we are for the most part able to know everything that is occuring in the world. Even though some of us may choose to block out the rest of the world and to believe only what they want to believe. Though what we are lead to know may be constructed by others, for example a news team only giving out certain parts of a report, we would be able to find out practically what ever we would like to know using the internet or a number of other things. To tell the truth I do believe that to an extent this allegory is outdated. We are blessed with all of the resources that we would possibly need to use to find out any information about the world that we would like to know. We have a unlimited amount of resources at out disposal. I feel that our world is more transparent then it has ever been, but people will believe what they want to.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” shows us the meaning of life these days. It is about prisoners in a cave hidden from the outside world, a new world. A prisoner is let out to a new world and is desperate to tell all the other prisoners. This in my opinion is still going on in modern day. We are in the media world these days. The government and some other things are hiding other things in a new world while we are chained to the media listening to all they say. But when a couple of people find out about the new hidden world we keep getting chained and chained. I think this will still be happening in future times. People can do whatever they want, but most are going to be followers and will keep getting chained up.
In the Allegory of the Cave Plato has his teacher and his brother are talking about prisoners in a cave who only see the shadows on the wall. This allegory is relevant to our lives today because of the media and our peers as well. Another reason is because of ourselves. Each person is chained one way or another. Be it mentally of physically. When I say physically I mean by the media or family, even friends. Mentally is yourself. You can keep yourself in the dark about some things because you don’t want to believe it or you don’t want to move forward. The TV shows are an example of a cave. You may see someting on the show that you think is okay to do, but at the same time you know that it is not okay to do.
Though at the same time this allegory is outdated. Not everyone is in a cave. The internet has helped because we can find the information that we need if we just ask. Not many things are hidden form us. Not everyone looks at things the same and not everyone has the ideals. So with this there will always something new found out.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave “, Socrates describes prisoners chained up to a wall since childhood inside of a cave. Behind these men are a bridge and a fire. Along this bridge is where people and animals walk and cast shadows on the cave walls in front of the prisoners. For their entire lives these men have only known the reality of what is inside the cave. They are influenced only by what they see. The prisoners trust in what they have always known to be true. One day one of the prisoners breaks free and leaves the cave. In the real world, the man is blinded by the sun and confused as to where he was standing. This man is suddenly facing a new and different world. He wants to return to the cave and tell the others, but this is his new reality.
This allegory is relevant to everyday life in modern society. I believe that we live in a society that is too easily influenced and controlled by technology and the media. Today so much attention is paid to what appears on television, what is written about and advertised in magazines and newspapers and the influences of social media. Each time I turn on the computer there are several new advertisements or messages from companies advertising their products. Advertisements attempt to tell members of society what they need instead of allowing people to make decisions on their own. Much of the information contained in advertisements is false and designed to make consumers believe that they would benefit from purchasing certain products. People have to figure out what is truthful and real. Celebrities are used as puppeteers to influence people to buy the products that they endorse.
In my opinion although Plato’s allegory was written long ago it still represents what is relevant in everyday life in modern society. Members of society continue to be influenced and controlled by others to see things a certain way, but not to the same extent as represented in the story. It is up to each member of society to change the influences by escaping from the cave and not believing everything we are told is the truth.
When I was about 5 I kept having repeating dreams about how I was in a book that somebody else was reading, and when that book ended I ended. The dreams eventually stopped, but came back once again when I was about 11. At this age I rethought the concept of being in a book, than thought if I were in a book how would I even know. This now leads in to an even harder question to ask. Do we in today’s society live in a cave? In some ways yes, the government only tells what they want us to know but who really knows? If we were in a cave per say, wouldn’t we think that this is what life is? The answer is nobody knows, at this very second somebody could be tapping into my spinal cord and telling my brain to tell me to write this. We could just be somebody’s sick twisted experiment, somebody could be looking at me, or all of use saying “hmm interesting” and jotting down some notes on a piece of paper. What if we were just a lab experiment? The truth is we will never know, and to be honest I’m fine with that. I’ll I know is where playing a game we called Life and I’m going to give it everything I’ve got, and enjoy it while it last. I would suggest you to do the same. You know what “they” say (who ever they is), “You only live once”.
In the allegory of the cave Socrates explains to Plato’s brother about some prisoners chained up inside of a cave. One of the prisoners escapes and is blinded by the light outside of the cave. He later goes back to the cave to try and tell all of his cell mates about his new discoveries, but they cannot hear him and continue to stare at the shadows they have known for their entire life. The allegory still has relevance in our world today, namely in our education system. Teachers are like the puppeteer players who choose what to show them (teach them) and the light at the back of the cave is graduation. When someone leaves the cave they usually are frightened by what they see and want to head back to the way things used to be inside the cave. When parent’s say “I wish I was still a kid” it’s because they want to go back to the way things were where everything was easy and they didn’t have to make any decisions for themselves and face the cruelty of the world.
In the “Allegory of the Cave” it tells of a group of people who are forced from birth to watch these moving shadows across a wall in a dark cave. They are unknowingly being controlled by other people who have kept the prisoners from experiencing the real world.
I do not believe this is still relevant to life today. In the story these people are chained and cannot move. Even if they doubted the reality of their world they couldn’t seek the truth even if they tried. That is not true today. If we doubt what’s going on in the news nothing can stop us from finding the truth. We have connections. we are able to take out our phones or open our lap tops and do a quick google search to find answers. People form all around the world have access to the internet. You can easily get information from the perspective of different people form all walks of life. There’s no boundaries unlike in the Cave. But alas, if the usage of the internet proves to be too cumbersome and time consuming you can always pick up a book or go down to your neighborhood elder and have them spin you a yarn.
The people in the cave were naive. No one put effort into explaining anything to them and they could only come up with their own explanations for life. There was no education, unlike today. Compared to the cave people, we’re walking encyclopedias! we’er given up to 12 years of pure schooling (not counting college). That’s pretty much our whole childhood and then some being spent learning, just absorbing knowledge and expanding our way of thinking. In the Cave there was no learning. No one could even comprehend a new idea like life outside the Cave. The people nowadays are open to so many controversial ideas like aliens, ghosts, and such. We are always looking for a way to discover what’s being hidden from us.
Now let’s just stop debunking the Cave theory for a moment and say that we are in a “cave” right now. Is being in that cave really so bad? I personally enjoy life, I enjoy the “cave”. I’m happy being able to play Dance Dance Revolution, eat Cracker Jacks, throw water balloons, watch American Idol, and enjoy the tiny aspects of life. Ignorance is bliss, they say. If I found out that in reality I came from a giant synthetic baby farm and I’m covered in tubes living in a pod full of red gunk just lying dormant waiting to be harvested and used as robot batteries, and that my whole world was just the Matrix, I would not be a happy camper. Basically what i’m asking Is discovering the truth really better? What if you found out you’ve been living a lie, would the real world really be the better way of living? Honestly, if it were me, I’d take the blue pill.
In allegory and the cave Socrates along with many other prisoners are chained up to a wall. Behind them is a fire and walking behind that there are people with numerous objects that create shadows and illusions on the wall. These illusions and shadows are all they know and once Socrates is relived to the new world it’s all so different and not the same anymore and he wanted to be back in the cave. I definitely think this relates to our lives a lot because. These shadows on the wall are our television video games, and computers these are all our shadows. They are not really there, sometimes in our minds it turns to reality but in actually in the real world we are basically looking at shadows. This is happening to everyone, and this is a problem for many reasons. One it is taking away, what we would really do in a real life situation. Some people still think that they are in that video game in real. That is definitely a problem because if something bad happens to you in real life you don’t have a restart button or anything like that. You’re stuck with whatever you get yourself into. Also if you just stare into a television your whole life you are going to hear a lot of false information. Which means you may think something works out different than the way that you thought, and it could end up hurting you. I definitely think that the world is more transparent that it’s ever been.
In Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave, Socrates explains to Glaucon this idea of people being chained up in a cave for their whole life and seeing only the shadows of men and animals. This is what the men have known their entire lives and it is what they think is real. He then tells him what it would be like if a man escaped from the cave and saw the real world and how people really look. Socrates says the man would be confused after being exposed to the real world and would want to go back and tell all of the other prisoners about the world. This scenario is relevant to modern day life because a lot of people are not exposed to the real world and what it is like because they are hooked on their phones and computers and reality TV shows, that is what they have grown accustomed to. People can’t see past their technology and get a taste of the world; they hide behind their technology without really knowing it. All of this technology is not a bad thing though. We use technology to learn and figure things out to help us in the real world. Technology can be the chains holding you down in a cave or it can be the key to unlock your chains, it just depends on how you use it. You can use it to cloud your vision on the real world or you can use it to expand your knowledge and see the real world.
Yes this allegory is relevant to our lives today in so many different ways things are not as they may seem, for example many Of us grew up being told that Santa was real and most of us have found out that Santa is not really the one who leaves the presents under the tree. Yes in some ways I do think we live in a cave, at least until we actually go out and find some awnsers for ourselves. No this allegory is most certainly not outdated and never will be in my opinion there will always be things you could relate to the allegory. An the Internet may have cut a few strings away from the puppeter makeing information easy in all states to obtain but will never fully detach the puppeteer from it’s puppets. Our world is probally more transparent then it has ever been before but in someways it’s not, for example much information out in the world is false, makeing us into more caves.
The way Plato describes the allegory of the cave makes it seem that we are all trapped and stuck in a false reality. The allegory of the cave is sewn into our lives because we are being trapped on what we want to believe. Our lives are being controlled by the media, the news, our family, and our friends. What they have to say is what we usually believe and if someone says otherwise we believe them. The allegory of the cave will always without fail could be tied into our lives. In the past; if you were a witch you were evil and needed to die, now; if you’re Asian you’re smarter than other people. Our family the way they raise us is what we tend to believe is true until we see someone else’s opinion. Shockingly enough the internet and public education has not killed the puppeteer. In fact the internet and public education has become the puppeteer to us. I think our world is more opaque than transparent. There are two truths and two lies to every side of people’s beliefs. It’s like seeing the word green in orange letters is it green or is it orange? One person could say its green another can say its orange but in reality it says green but is orange. A great way that people still even acknowledge that this still exists is by reading “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. How can anybody tell what is actually the truth when all we do is believe in the lies to make us feel safe?
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” prisoners are chained to a wall and forced to watch shadows pass by. These shadows are what they think is reality, but they are unknowingly controlled by other people who have kept them from experiencing reality their entire lives.
I believe that this is still relevant to today. There are many things that seem like the shackles that keep us chained to the wall, like technology or religion. Technology can control people and keep them from reaching their potential. The shadows on the wall could easily be portrayed as the media. People watch TV and they believe that everything they see is real. When people watch advertisements, they automatically believe that everything it says is real. The puppeteers could be described as the government. They have a say in most of the things we do in life. They control education, laws, companies, and realistically speaking, anything it wants to. People trap themselves in it because they believe in a governing system for social order. The puppeteers in the “Allegory of the Cave” tricked the prisoners into thinking that that the shadows were real. Is this not what the government does today? People will believe anything the government tells us, and we have no reason to believe otherwise. We couldn’t possibly know if they were, because there’s no way of finding out. All in all, we live in a very shielded world. Everyone is in shackles, and there’s no way of telling what’s real or what’s fake, because we believe all the lies we’ve been told.
This goes both ways. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave still applies today in the sense that there are still people who control our lives. The American government has secrets that could change the course of human existence as we know it. But they would rather be asking each other about their progress in Minecraft. Some of them are so afraid of change that they’d petition to eliminate all evidence and witnesses to stop it from coming back. However, as hard as they try to control the live of their public places like WikiLeaks and Facebook prevent them from keeping the public “safe”. This is where the allegory is untrue. With social networking sites like Facebook and Google+ around we will know if something important happens, in theory. It wouldn’t surprise me if the government started screening these sites like they did with the radio in the Vietnam War. But the government isn’t the only thing that blinds people. Most American men (stereotypically) would rather talk about last night’s game than who was in charge of the country, or how many people were killed in the pointless ten years of war the country was engaged in. The density of the human mind is sometimes funny. Like for instance the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast. It freaked people out; people thought the planet was actually under attack by Martians. They were blind to the fact that it was just a story. You can see the same thing today too. People have made money by getting idiots to donate for, “This animal that doesn’t actually exist but is going extinct anyway!” Scams only work because people are too blind to see though the deceptive cloud to the logic and reason concealed behind it.
The allegory of the cave is writing is still relevant today. The people often are confused by real life because it is not how they think it is. In the allegory of the cave the prisoners look at shadows and think they are real life however it is only shadows. This stands true today many of the people of the world are held captive by deception. All over the world these people don’t know what is really happening around them. This happens all over in information suppressed countries to your own street. There are people who don’t see the world as it truly is. In many countries around the world people have their right to spread information by their leaders this is done so that the citizens do not know what the outside world is like so that their leader can stay in charge.
The second have has to do with the fact that some become enlightened. There are lots of people who have seen the light. Just like the prisoner there are people who learn about the world and what it is truly like. The biggest test for these people is to try to help others reach this enlightenment. However like in the allergy this is a difficult task. There is one thing that is not explained in the allergy. The fact that sometimes ignorance is bliss there are things in life that people cannot handle knowing about these thing must be hidden from people for their own safety as well as sanity.
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is definitely still relevant. There is so much the government does and says and we don’t hear the half of it. In Taiji, Japan 23,000 dolphins are brutally slaughtered. People from dolphin showing industries come and select the good looking dolphins for places like Sea World or aquariums. The other dolphins that are rejected are killed by fisherman. The government allows all this as long as its hidden so no one knows. Most people in Japan don’t even know about it, the only way it was revealed was through hidden cameras on a documentary. Who knows was else the government is hiding from us. People don’t even consider that we could be in a cave because since the time we were born that’s all we’ve known. Another incident in which the government tried to keep us in the cave was involving a man named Pat Tillman. Pat Tillman was an NFL player that left football to serve our country after September 11, 2001. Pat Tillman got killed as a result of friendly fire. The army tried to cover this up saying he died in enemy fire and awarded him a silver star to make him look like a hero. His family knew he hadn’t died in enemy fire, and the knew they were hiding something from them because they kept changing their stories. Then in a documentary multiple men that saw him died said that it was from friendly fire. The army didn’t want people knowing about it so they kept the truth from everyone and made up lies to cover it. If the government and the army work so hard to cover up an accident, what else could they be hiding that we don’t have a clue about? I think most people don’t care enough to unravel the stories that are fed to us or to see beyond what they want to see. Good news is advertised way more than the bad news that needs to be exposed or helped out. Nowadays there will be a news story for two days about a hurricane that killed people, but a 5 day long news story about how a cat saved a person and is now getting a movie made about it. That isn’t literal, but the point is that because of stuff like that people forget about the people that need help or what is really important. So yes, I think Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is definitely still very relevant to society today.
platos alegory of the cave does have relevance in our world today. In this allegory it talks about these men who are prisoners chained up so they can’t move and they can only see what is in front of them with a fire behind them and a walkway where people walk by with numerous objects. As they walk by they make a shadow on the wall in front of them and what they see on the wall is reality to them because they know anything other than these shadows. then one prisoner escapes and finds out what is actually real and tries to tell all the other prisoners but they still think the shadows are actual reality. This is relivent to the world today because people often get lost in false realities. One example is people who watch to much tv and start to think that the way life is in the shows is how it actualy is. This example also aplies to video games books etc people get lost in what they belive to be reality but that just isnt true. What you feel touch smell taste and seeis reality not something someone else says. In the allegory of the cave its a little diffrent the prisoners didn’t have another option but to look at the wall since their childhood those shadows were all they knew anything other then that was foreign to them and they wouldnt believe it was real.
In the “Allegory of the Cave”, Plato describes people as being chained up to the walls and people controlling them called the “Puppet Handlers”. These are the people that are controlling the realities of the people who are chained up, and thus they believe everything they see in front of them. So the question was “Do we live in a cave where reality is constructed by someone else?” and the answer to that is yes. Most of the people will believe everything the government tells them, wether is true or not. Why ?, Because they are the superior ones, they are the “Puppeteers” of us so we do what they want and we see what they want us to see. The other question was “Has the internet, public education, and improvements in transportation metaphorically killed the puppeteer?”, the answer for that question would be that for the most part yes it has. The internet is one of the many things that has actually showed us the truth and answered our questionings towards others, The public education I guess it has as-well since it tells us the history. But what if the people who wrote it didn’t know what they were talking about of course this is just a guess not a stated fact. Also what if we found out the truths about many “big” things that people think are conspiracies how would they react ?. Would they be scared,surprised,offended or what would their feelings be ?. I think that most, if not all, of the information we get from the media/government is a shadow of the truth. One of the reasons our country functions so well is because Americans don’t know the whole truth behind things. In a lot of cases, we are better off not knowing exactly what’s going on as long as the U.S. is able to continue functioning successfully. It’s not necessary to worry citizens with things that they have no control over and that would do nothing but create panic throughout our country. Let’s suppose the government could’ve stopped 9/11 from occurring. Would finding that out now do Americans any good? No, it would just cause more pain and suffering than has already been caused. In a case like this, perhaps being presented with just a shadow of the truth is better for our society’s well-being.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, prisoners have been shackled deep inside of a cave for so long, they think that the shadows they see on a wall are actually reality. This is still relevant to today’s world. Many things on the internet are untrue, or biased to the writers opinion. Conspiracy theories, stories of the upcoming end of the world, and stories of the imprudent acts of the government fill the internet. Just because it’s on Wikipedia, or is the top search item in Google does not mean that it is true. We can read this and take it for the absolute truth, just as the prisoners thought the shadows were real.
We are also blinded by the monstrous hands of the government. Media we view could possibly have been censored by the government, so we are actually viewing what the government wants us to see, not the original article or film.
One of the biggest shadows before us many years ago were ads for smoking. It was said that smoking was cool, would make you independent and sophisticated, and would easily get you a date to homecoming in no time. But in reality smoking damages your lungs, yellows your teeth, and prematurely ages your entire body. On top of that, it is a huge waste of money.
Propaganda also distorts the reality of a situation. Hitler used propaganda to mislead almost the entire population of Germany that people with blond hair and blue eyes were the superior race. Although that statement is not true, Hitler rallied the population against the Jewish religion, and millions were killed.
In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato explains that when people are taught a certain way, that they will never want to change their beliefs. He says that when a person actually learns the correct way and tries to explain that to other people, the others ignore him and never want to change their ways. I believe that this applies to modern day society, because people lie and they will make it sound like the truth. One example of this could be the news. Some people may prefer to watch a certain news channel over another, and will never want to watch another one because they think that everything they put on there is wrong, when it may be more correct than the another one. Also, some news channels will stretch the truth to fit with their beliefs. Another example could be political parties. Say there are two people running, one republican, one democrat, and one of them comes up with a great idea, the opposite person of that party will completely reject that idea only because they are the opposing party, even if it was a great idea. Another example of the Allegory today is false advertising. Companies will promise that a certain product will help you or a certain food will help you lose weight, but some of them do not work. All of these examples show that the Allegory pertains to today’s age, and how some people will make you believe one thing when another is correct.
1. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the auther explains prisoners chained in a cave where they have lived for their whole life.The showdows of people animals and pupateers are shown on the wall in front of the prisoners.They all believe this is reality. One prisoner is set free and explorse outside to find out that the world that he thought was reality, was not reality at all.Todays modernization has something calles entertainment,Most of out entertainment has to do with digital life.When people see advertizments and commercials They believe it, and some some buy it. The tv shows and reality tv today is all fake and directed. People watch this constantly and their minds begin to belive that the telivision world is real and believe the tv over the information they receive in the real world. Plato describes the prisoners having their necks and arms chained.This is his way of saying we are controlled by the Artificial world. Other then tv, as americans we have rules and guidelines that are controlled by our government. The government is their to help us.But sometimes it seems like their doing the opposite.In the world today we do have pupateers but at a minor level. I believe plato connected all his words about the cave to the real world. Soo alhough we do all have chains we are greatful we are able to have some room to move in them.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is still relevant to our lives today. Today, we see shadows, like the ones seen by the prisoners in the cave. Although, our shadows are not literal shadows, they are seen in television, magazines, the internet, and almost anywhere you look. These ‘shadows’ are false realities, they are created by people advertising. When you see advertisements, the people behind those advertisements are trying to get you to either buy something, vote for what they think is right, or to mould to their idea of society. When they are trying to sell you something, they will make it appear better than it actually is, they do this, for example with food, they will spray paint it to make it look more appetizing, and they will edit the picture of it, making it look better than it actually does. When people try to get you to vote for what they advocate for, they will exaggerate the opposing vote to be unreasonable, or a bad idea, so that you will want to agree with them and vote for what they want you to vote for. This is like the shadows on the wall of the cave in Allegory of the Cave. When advertisements try to mould you into their idea of what’s right, they will do it by showing photoshopped pictures of models, who had been airbrushed and made to look skinnier, making us think that the result of their editing is really what the model actually looks like, when in reality, the model looks almost like a different person, then making people think they should look like this edited picture. This all is exactly like the shadows on the cave in Plato’s allegory, the advertisements are not reality, but what advertisers want you to believe is reality.
The allegory of the cave does apply to life today. The common people are held down by the government, media, technology, and sometimes religion. Often times there is something “above” us in the world. The government is the one chaining us up (like the prisoners) and the media is the shadow we see on the wall. If one of the prisoners ever gets to go outside and see the light, the light being what’s really happening in the world, they would not believe what they were seeing. That person would need to get used to seeing the world in a new light. It would take awhile to get used to the new ideas and new beliefs. But once that person finally sees that the real world is reality, and the shadows were just a ruse. That person could go back into the cave and try and tell everybody what’s really going on in the world, but they wouldn’t believe that one person. They would continue believing that the shadows were reality and live their life not knowing what’s truly happening in their world. So yes, the allegory of the cave does relate to real life in the modern day. The common people are the prisoners, forced to watch the shadows on the wall and believe that those shadows are reality. They are tied down by the chains of the government, and cannot see what is true reality.
The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato, does have some relevance to today’s society. In the allegory, prisoners are trapped in a cave, chained and pinned in one position, left only to believe what they can see from the shadows in front of them. They have been trapped like that for their entire lives and have nothing to compare the shadows too. In our lives today, we are flooded with rumors and lies that we believe to be true. Coming from television, the internet, friends, and sometimes even parents, we are told things that may or may not be true. We have nothing to compare the lies too, and so like the prisoners, we trust that what we see and hear is what is real. In the allegory, once a prisoner got free and saw the truth, he didn’t believe it. He had never seen anything like it or had any reason to believe that it was true. He had always thought that what he had seen since childhood was the truth and now what he saw had to be the lie. As humans, we often make that same mistake. We are raised in lies and once we see the truth, it is hard for us to comprehend, because it is so different from what we are used to. And as humans, we falter and go back to our mistakes. We see the truth, don’t like it, and choose to go back to what we see as reality, even though all it is is lies. The Allegory of the Cave tells us a lot about human nature and why we tend to act the way we do, so now that we have read it and comprehend it, we need to work on seeing the truth and sticking with it, not seeing the lies.
In the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave he describes what happens when you still inside a world for a long period of time and then once you see the real world it is strange to you. Exactly what happened in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is what is exactly what is happening and what always had happened in our time. Every person has there own different cave. Some people have video games. Other people have internet and media. And some other ones have political groups or government that tell something that is not important and hide the important stuff. This allegory is still true and might always be true until some people notice and help educate other people of the real life that is happening and not just and not always listen to what the little box in front of them is saying.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is relevant to our live today. If this were to be real, we would be the prisoners with the fire and the puppeteers behind us. We don’t know what those shadows are or what’s going on behind us. The media provides us with false things. The shadows would, in this case be, the false truths that the media provides us with, which the, we the prisoners, think or take it as reality. But if we unchain ourselves and get up and get out that cave that we’ve been in for like ever, then we will see that not everything is the way we think it is. We will see the truth and understand that all we’ve been told or taught have been nothing but lies. But if we weren’t to do get out of this cave, then all these shadows will just deceive us and we won’t know what’s really going on behind or above us, and instead of getting a happy ending and letting ourselves free we will be forever prisoners, and be ruled by the shadows.
I believe that there is no true answer to “are we still in the cave today?” If you’re in the cave, how would you know? The only way one would know is if he is on the outside looking in. As illustrated in in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners of the cave are chained and forced to look at life in one way and one way only. All these people know is the shadows they see everyday. They’ve never been out of the cave and all they know is this. They might believe that life is the same for everyone else and have no idea that their in a cave. I don’t think anyone knows weather we, today, are in a cave or not. And if we are, so what! Those people in the cave didn’t suffer any loss, they weren’t unhappy, because that’s all they had known. I think that there are all different types and sizes of caves. Everyone is in there own cave in different ways. Reality is what we precieve it to be, and we can only see and understand certain things with certain tools. There are many more things we can’t interpret because we don’t have the tools to allow us to do so. For example if you see something, you process that in your brain and create a mental image of it. All reality goes on in our heads.
I think that these days we are still hidden in this “cave” but we are not as restricted. We don’t know everything but we do know a lot. The government and military are hiding things from us that are top secret and that we are unable to find out but there still is a lot we can find out using a computer. There are some cases though that the media can be lying to us or not telling us the whole truth. Have not you ever thought about that? We listen and pay attention to the media so much that they can be the ones directing us to these lies. Maybe it to throw us off, I don’t know but we do depend on these people to tell us the truth when in reality they might not be truthful at all. As for the government they have secrets that we don’t know about. They have people and the authority to keep things from us. You can say “it is for our own good” or “it is for our own protection” but think about it. Is not knowing our own dangers really protecting us? Some can say, “just move away to a government you’re happy with”, but let’s be realistic. Are you really going to leave your home, leave your life, and drop everything to move away because you are not happy with the government? No you are not. Living in this cave is something some care about and some don’t. Personally I don’t but to those who do care. Get over it. There are secrets we don’t know and secrets we just have to live with not knowing.
In Allegory of the cave , is pretty relevant to our lives today. In my way as we grow up we see things , and by seeing them we learn . But once something changes like that guy getting free (forgot the name) He was so amazed and shocked at what life was, and couldn’t believe that the whole time while he was chained up , that the shadows were not really talking to him. There were just people walking on by the bridge. And we don’t literally live in a cave where reality is constructed by someone else, but it is very much like that , for example the media. The media tells us what is going on with the celebrities , but they don’t even know the truth. They just guess or hear bits and pieces from people and assume it. But if you actually knew the truth , you would have the same reaction as the prison did when he was free and saw that the shadows weren’t really talking to them. As teenagers it relates to us a lot, like stupid rumors going around about someone, and everybody just believes it, without even giving the guy or girl a chance to explain his or herself. The allegory is outdated but not the moral of the story. The only difference between us and those prisoners is that they were unable to go out and see for themselves that they were living in denial. And I think our world is not transparent than it has ever been . Not at all .
No one would ever imagine that were are just being control by someone else to believe in what we seem in our daily life, in which seems so real to us and could never believe anything more superior than what we know. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it is relevant and has some relevance with our world of today. Plato, a famous Greek philosopher, known for his famous books and for criticized society the way threat the people in Ancient Greek. He talks with his student Glaucon, and tells a dialogue of how prisoners are in a cave chained and are force to see a blank wall. The prisoners watch shadows projecting on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them. Plato describes how these shadows are as close as the prisoners see reality, then Plato describes how one prisoner is set free and goes out of the cave, once he is out he sees life the way it is, and he probably believe that the shadows of the wall are more realistic than what he sees. But after seeing the real world out of the cave, he now wants to tell everyone inside the cave, the real world that is out of the cave, but his friends might not believe him. This relates to our world today, there are many puppeteers in our world known as media, magazines, TV news, newspapers, and government. We are being told to believe what THEY believe it is true; one big example is the government, a “democracy” in which the press has the right to tells us what’s happening in our country. The press has the obligation to tell us what the government does to our country. But the true is that the press chains our minds and eyes to only believe in what in front of us and never look sideways. Few people are set free and have the privilege to see the real world behind the cave name government. They have seen what the government is doing behind our backs, I’m very sure they want to tell us what’s happening out of the cave, but we do not want to believe something different as we have seen our entire life. Our world is more transparent than ever has been, if we could just listen to other people who has different opinions from our knowledge, then we could have an idea or at least think about it. Schools has also tells us the history of our nation, so we could know or understand how things really happen, and leave it as our opinion. In my opinion, I could recommended to listen to other people who is trying to tells us what they think or how they see the world in their eyes, and it will be up to us to listen or to stay chain and see shadows in a blank wall projected from the fire for the rest of our lives.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he explains a world where people are chained and are forced to only know this one world. Can we relate to this world he created, in our time? To some people the answer is no because they say we have the internet, and can look things up. And in other peoples eyes the answer is yes because the government doesn’t tell us everything. There is no certain answer because if we were these people that were made to think only what others wanted us to think, then how would we know we were in the “cave”. And also it is impossible to be out of the cave. The only true way to be out of it is to know everything, and if we did know everything what would be the point of living? There would be nothing to do, no way to progress, no danger, no fear, no nothing. Humans would pretty much be computers or robots. So embrace the cave its not a bad thing.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave exposed a whole different way I see the world. Now I can not help to think if I am in a “cave” and my thoughts of reality is not real. We live in a place or cave where money and the government controls most of our lives like jobs. The world has change in a thousand years but humans has not changed. We have learn only things that we are taught and when we are not taught something then we will become the man who came out of the cave and got taught about something very strange to him but it was the reality. Just like a subject in our school were you do not understand at first but over time you will start to understand. In my world, a town live style were their are food, technology, and shelter made for us. Most of these people would not know what to do when their in the mother nature. Where you have to hunt for food, make your own shelter and make your own tools from things you find in the outdoors. These cave men would not know how to survive in nature because they only had to survive in the city and not in the nature but they can adapt. The puppeteer lives on because even if the internet has a vast media information some of it can be false and their are several distraction in the internet like games and music. Public education is good but their is always peer pressure from other kids and most students take education for granted. Seeing false advertisements on television and tricking people and controlling them just like a puppet. I just wonder if were in a “cave” and everything we learned was wrong and have to start a new beginning.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, there are prisoners who are chained to a wall and all they ever see their whole life is these “shadows” and they believe that they know what these shadows are, but one day one of the prisoners is set free. The prisoner soon realizes that everything he believed in was a lie and that the people who keep him chained to the wall were in some way “puppeteers” who keep them from knowing what is actually real, and what is actually false. In many ways this still happens in modern society with things such as, The Media, The Government and the internet. For example in many other countries the thought of having an democracy was absurd and unheard of, because many people were used to having kings and queens being their puppeteers and telling them what they should believe in and once people found of that people use democracy as a form of government, their world was turned upside down and they did not know what to believe in anymore, and they did not want to believe in what everyone was calling “Reality”, because they did not want to accept that everything they believed in was a lie. The Media also makes believe that we need to have the newest and hottest fall fashion line, or we need to buy acne medicine and they completely brain was us into thinking we need to be skinny or have the coolest clothes just to fit into society and be “cool” and they use all these tactics and brain was us to get us to buy all of the major company’s products, but in reality we are all of their puppets. Only a few wise people are aware of the real world and, they know how things actually work.
The Allegory of the Cave is a whole new way of looking at things in our world. Who knows what our world truly is, are we in a world that is not a reality? Are we being controlled by other people? I think in away yes we are in a world controlled by others people. I think the Allegory of the Cave could relate to our today because of all the TV, internet, and ads that are all around us. i think that the way they make the TV shows these days are to make it seem like that is the way life should be even though it is not even real, and the internet is made for us to be able to search what ever we need but is the stuff we search true or is it all a lie and really just people controlling us and the way we think. I think that the way we see things these days is very vague because we do not look at many things with detail anymore witch means that we could be being controlled and not even know it because we do not look to see what is out of the ordinary or not. In today’s society i think that we are being controlled in what we think is real and what we think is fake but we may never know if we are being controlled like puppets or not.
In my opinion this allegory is still very true compared to how it is relevant to our lives. We as people, are so consumed by the media and so influenced by the media, that it can lead us down the wrong path of decision making, if we believe either side. They even have different news channels for democratic sides. On tv shows, even if they say it’s a reality show, it’s all fake. They choose people that they know will fight and hate each other, because they know it’ll bring in the viewers. At anytime in the tv show the producers can say, “Oh we want to see more fighting between them” and the shows changed from that point onward. This allegory is not outdated one bit. with all of our sources today, being the internet, tv, and radio, all of them seem to have control over us somehow. The internet can be full of lies, posted by people that can trick us into believing something else if they dont tell the full truth on their blog or post. With radio stations, they can pick and choose which commercials they want to play. I feel that our government has a lot to play in this role. As government they are supposed to watch over us and protect us, but instead they are hiding stuff from us and sort of leaving us stranded in a sense. they have control over the media, telling them what to air and what not to, instead they should just show it as it is, because i feel that as citizens of the country we have the right to know what is going on in our country.
in the allegory , everything is symbolic . the cave is symbolic to ignorance and the light is symbolic for wisdom . the chains are symbolic for all the things that could hold you back . family can hold you back as long as media , & then there is the biggest thing that holds you back , YOURSELF . you hold yourself back many ways , by having to high expectations for yourself you can spend all your time on that one thing instead of living your life to the fullest wich could ultimatley take you the side of wisdom . another way you hold yourself back , is by your memories . a past experiance can keep you scared of things that could help you for the better like if you got hurt by a scooter so you never want to ride one again . but what if scooters could change your life and make you wise , you’d never know because your memories of getting hurt keept you from riding again . thats a example of how memories can keep you in the ” cave ” . many other things keep us in the cave but to fully understand you must read the allegory of the cave .
In the story “Allegory of the Cave” Socrates talks about a group of prisoners being chained to a wall, while watching these shadows which are really people walking behind them, to make them think whatever they want to be. This is something that is not in real life. It’s not in real life because people don’t really change there minds from something they known all there life’s to believe something that they have never seen before. For example when the prisoners talk about the shadows and the things they try to describe outside of the cave, that they wouldn’t believe.
The prisoners were not able to move, they could not move their heads because their heads where chained, so they don’t see the people behind them. They didn’t know what they were or where the shadows were coming from, all they knew was what they have seen, and they have seen them and wanted to describe how they looked to them. In our society today, they control us by the media and they make us think what the media tells us to think because we don’t know the truth. I think the real world is our cave because of the media, but the cave we are in or the “world” is easier to get out of, than the prison Socrates describes in the “Allegory of the cave” and also, you can get out when ever you want to.
The internet is one of our weapons these days, because anyone can post anything like a book or blogs etc. Anyone can publish their own writing or write about all of their opinions and post them online where millions of people can see their opinions, and none will find out who the person was.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,as Americans are definetly in our own cave. We are being shown what the government and the rest of the media want us to see, yet we know nothing about the real truth behind it all. The government and media is our own personal puppeteer putting on a show for us to believe, and we become easily manipulated and we believe every word. Not just the government controls us, other things can as well. We hear things from teachers in school, friends, and even family. Many people can put thoughts into our heads and we choose to believe them. We are the prisoners chained up against the wall. We have our hands and feet chained to the wall so all we can move are our heads, and all that we see are the shadows being portrayed. The government and media will do whatever it can to make sure that we don’t find out about anything they are doing, and they keeped us chained because of it. Although, in the story, one of the prisoners escapes from the cave and learns about what life is really like. What if we were that escaped slave and what would we think? Is this really what life is like and is everything I have been shown a lie? What is the real truth? Also, when the prisoner returns to the cave, the other people in the cave try to kill him. What is the consequence if we leave our OWN personal cave and discover something that is meant to be hidden? We are always so focused on our T.V.’S and our computers that we don’t realize that many people are watching and monitoring us constantly. We deserve to have our own say in what happens in our lives and we have every right to know what is going on.
This allegory does have relevance in our world today. We as humans are constantly told only what our mentors want us to know and learn. This relates to the allegory of the cave when the man grows up in this cave and he only knows what the people that enslaved him want him to know, But as we grow older we might find out things that disprove from what we grew up learning. Like in the allegory the man is realeased and find this world that is tottaly different from what he was told was the real world. our lives today weither we want to believe it or not are held down by the media, government, literature, etc. The world we are told to believe is mostly lies. Find and belive in your own world not the world others want you to believe.
My heart likes to believe that we live in a society where we aren’t controlled by others. But there’s always that reassuring doubt at the back of our minds, which believes we are controlled, like little puppets if you will. If you really think about it, most of the information that the government finds out, they don’t tell us. They have to keep it to themselves instead of announcing it to the public for everyone to know. Why? Maybe it’s to protect us. If we don’t know about it, then we won’t know any better. Just like in “The Allegory of the Cave”, how their whole lives, these people knew nothing outside of the cave life and being chained up, to them it was normal.
In today’s modern age with technology there is a ton of information to look up and read about. We aren’t exactly being sheltered from the world and everything around us. Although with all the media, false advertisements and unclear, false news, we get lied to, a lot. Pretty soon we aren’t going to know what the truth is anymore. But that acquisition could be completely wrong on how I interpret things. Things could be very much as they appear to be. There is a lot of discussion and debate on this hot topic on whether or not “The Allegory of the Cave” is relevant to our lives today. I think we have broken down the wall, and cut off the strings of being in closed and controlled.
In Plato’s Allegory of a Cave these prisoners do not get to live reality all they get are shadows. Shadows just are outlines of people they have no detail. They are away from humanity, and enclosed from adventure, experience, happiness. These people don’t get all the experiences we get everyday. We get to eat several times a day, we get technology, music, a good life in general. But this world is no cave. We get everything we need, when we need it. But we en-cave ourselves with all this technology and wealth. So in general this world is open and free. But we ourselves? We tend to bring all these unimportant things to our lives and make them so important and forget about the important things. Like water, we drink soda, energy drinks, fake juices, and all these drinks when all our body really needs is water. We need food in general so there is pretty much nothing i could say about it. There are many people that stay with the basic, and don’t advance with the technology which can get bad, because what if there is an emergency and they don’t know how to contact the police, etc.? So the question “does the Allegory relate to our lives today?” i say that it depends on the person not the world.
When I think about the “Allegory of the Cave,” by Plato, I come to realize that this story has so much to do with life today. In the story Plato shares the life of prisoners who can only see shadows projected on the cave wall. Our life as fifteen and sixteen year olds is so controlled. We get up go to school do our homework and play any kind of sports we have. Though there is so much in the world we are unaware of. This is the only life we know, just like the prisoners only know about their life in the cave. There is so much in the world today that I for one am unaware of. There are so many problems in the world and maybe if everyone were willing to take a step out of their cave there would be a way to help. Also maybe if people were more exposed to the outside word they would be more adventurous. I believe that the prisoners only get a glimpse of what life is outside the cave or there comfort area of what they are used to, through the shadows. Just like now, I only get a glimpse of what life is out side of my home, through the news and Internet. But honestly, that’s only what we are allowed to see. There is so much more out there to see and experience. So I guess now the only question is are you willing to undo the chains and experience life for what it can become?
I think that Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is still relevant to us today. To me the puppets could be the government only showing us, the prisoners’, parts of what they want us to see and of course we believe it because if we can’t trust our own government to tell us things that our happening in our world, who else are we supposed to get our information from. The government probably thinks that by not telling us what’s really going on in our world they’re protecting us because they know it will be hard to take in. Just like how that one prisoner finally gets out of the cave and finally gets to see the light, but at first he’s blinded by the light. The internet hasn’t helped to educate us on what’s going on, mostly because most people just don’t want to hear the truth because they’re afraid of it. I think the internet has actually helped cover the truth since mostly everyone has internet they’re more focused on social sites and games. Plus when people go on the internet they don’t want to go and spend their time looking for things they don’t know exists. When and if the government tells us all their secrets most people can’t or even won’t believe it, like when the freed prisoner went to tell his friends about what he found, but they couldn’t understand him. In some ways I feel that Plato was telling us that we can’t trust the things we can’t see.
These questions made me think, while reading through “The Allegory of the Cave” with my English class one of these same questions was running through my mind. ‘Do we live in a cave where reality is constructed by someone else?’ After thinking it over I do have to say I believe that it is because we are influenced by media the government and many, many other things. They could block our view to what is generally good and not dark and evil as the cave is described. One way we will find what is the light when we reach the outside of the cave or maybe even we could reach the darkness and not remember the light.
The Allegory can be related to modern day this is, how i see it. We can’t see past all the lies that we are being told about us as humans for example, in the media we are being told lies about everything now. The way we look the things we do and even the thoughts in our heads are telling us that we are wrong and this {whatever they want you to think} is right. Media, government, technologies, , Newspapers , Music, TV, Online and yes even religion. These things surround us every day and are becoming harder and harder to escape, they are with us all the time. Overall, Yes I would have to say we are definitely an influence to the story Allegory of the cave and face it every day.
The Allagory of the Cave is relevent to today’s world in the way that we only understand what is in the media, magazines, and what we are told. A lot of people don’t go out of the way to find things out on their own nowadays and therefore are kind of ignorant to what’s going on around them. Of course they don’t feel that way because they think they are being told everything by others. Also, the government hides things from the country; keeping us in a “cave” almost. We’re in the dark to what they are hiding. Another thing; people don’t even need to figure things out on their own anymore. With the internet and phones and such easy ways to get information; people aren’t using their brains as much. I think peple should rely less on the media and technology to give them answers (the shadows in the cave) and go out and find the answers (leave the cave and go into the real world). The line between what we are told and what is the truth is pretty fine these days and it’s our responsibility to get out there and not sucked into false impressions of the media and such. It’s everyone’s responsibility to “break free from the chains” instead of relying on others to do it for them. To go out beyond the cave and experience life for real. If everyone did that, then the puppeteers would perish. It’s people’s choice’s, not others.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, it tells of these prisoners that are chained up and are forced to watch these shadows of figures and hear strange sounds and the prisoners believe this is what life is, what living means. Once a prisoner escapes and is blinded by the sun-the sun being the harsh burn of the truth, he sees a whole new world, a reality that is incomprehensible, He is amazed on what is outside of the life he knew before. This ties into today because the world is the cave, and we don’t know what lies outside of the cave due to the media and our mind. The media-being the shadows, has us believing that that’s what is real. That’s how life is. But the human race-being the prisoners, we aren’t prisoners, we aren’t chained, we could leave the cave and see the world outside, but we’re afraid of what lies outside, so we watch the shadows and get caught up in them. An example of the “shadows” being the “reality T.V” like, Jersey Shore, the Real World, it’s just the same thing, people doing dumb things without having consequences. We can escape into the real world, we just have to make the choice.
The mystery made into reality, shapes the way these people live, then that mystery is broke and suddenly they are overwhelmed and don’t know what to make of it. The allegory of the cave is based off of the idea behind human nature where as what we live is what we understand. Before the internet many if not nearly all Europeans new there was no north America, Antarctica, Australia and some may have not know what Africa and Asia were; today we know all of those.
With the introduction of technology and the wide application of it allows anyone able to reach able to know 90% of the world’s knowledge. While some people, i most likely could not point them out with ease before I hear them speak, would say that our lives are not molded for us, however that is 100% false. Since the time you were an infant your parents were making choices for you. Think about all the girls that wanted to be singers and then their parents turned them away, if they were mean, moreover we still have our life’s molded by our parents. Sometimes people will be molded than others and if you are still a blob of potential you mold yourself but your parents still made the first dent into your clay life.
Improvements in transportation have improved the spread f knowledge but most of them have never been their. For example: Rome was a massive influence to our society and to the world as a whole. That is a true statement, but I have never even left North America. The down side is it could all be a lie. We don’t know if the pyramids are really there unless I go to Egypt.
In the “Allegory of the Cave”, Socrates explains to his student how everyone is blinded, how everyone only gets to see what they want to see or what they are allowed to see. In my own opinion I believe our world relates perfectly with “Allegory of Cave”. The prisoners in allegory of the cave are kept locked up from the outside world only seeing and knowing what has passed by, but they are not truly acknowledged with anything, they see and think what was already taught to them, and so do the kids today. We see and think what the government has told us. Girls see magazines with beautiful models that are photo- shopped, but even knowing that the girls are photo- shopped doesn’t change the fact that we can see the picture, so what girls do is try to copy the fashion, try to get the figure the model has, girls want to be them. We are kept from the truth by everyone friends, family, media, and the government. In the “Allegory of the Cave” the only way the man found the truth of the outside world was by experiencing what goes on. We just as the man do not, cannot learn the truth until we experience it.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave a world of metaphoric hopelessness and despair is brought to life by four prisoners chained to a wall where shadows are cast in front of them. The only thing they can see is the blurred outline of what could be anything. Today’s society is amidst a change where information is released to the public and light shines down on what was once a figment of darkness. Although, truths are still hidden, shadows are cast releasing hints amongst us but never allowing anything more than a fuzzy outline. Cover-ups by the government and conspiracy theories that are shut down, these are all signs that our beliefs are still in control by a higher power. Reality itself cannot and is not changed by anyone. What physically happens weather or not it is hidden or disbelieved, still actually happened. What can be changed is the view that is taken on by the people who did not experience an even first hand, and is some cases the first hand viewers are silenced by any means necessary. Humanities attempts to bring myths and thoughts to a final resting place were improved with the internet/media and a better understanding through education. Sadly false information is fed the the general public every day, the internet is only trustworthy to a point, and education is limited by the knowledge of the educators. Like Allegory of the Cave when one prisoner sees the truth and the curtain is lifted, the others pay no attention and make him appear as a madman. This is evident in modern society which makes me believe that the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is still relevant. The closer we come to the truth the farther we are taken from the reality we live in. The ball and chain have yet to be cut loose.
A world with prisoners chained together in a cave. Puppeteers control the shadows cast on the wall before them. One brave prisoner breaks free and ventures out of the cave and into the light of the real world. He was instantly blinded by the sun. The only thing he ever knew was the shadows in the cave. After spending time in the new world, he recognized the harsh reality that his whole life he had been controlled by the puppeteers. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” thousands of years later is in a sense still relevant to our lives today. Our puppeteers would be the government and religion constantly controlling us and shackling our minds. How do we really know that the world we live in is the cave? If we do in fact live in it, we don’t know anything different from the false reality that’s been created. The comparison between the allegory and our world today is weak, but it’s clearly out dated. If there are things being hidden from us, obviously the puppeteers are doing a great job at it. The internet however pretty much eliminates any puppeteers. Today we can find out almost anything we want if we search for it on the web. I do personally think the world is more transparent than it ever has been.
I think society today is somewhat like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is about people trying to understand and take on a new concept in life. In today’s society many people don’t want to accept new ideas or concepts because of beliefs like with the man in who was released and allowed out of the cave he sees the sun and right away and takes on a new concept he was denied in the cave. Today there are few people who would take on a new concept that they had no knowledge about, in today’s time people need to be shown a reason to belief that a new concept is better than the concept they have on that opinion or fact of life. Accepting a new concept or idea isn’t easy especially because religion and beliefs play a big role in people’s life and everyone’s religion and beliefs differ and it normally leads to an argument. Beliefs and religions differ just like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and today’s society on certain things and thoughts about life.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Plato speaks with Socrates’ brother about how a prisoner spends his whole life inside of a cave and only has thoughts of strange disfigured shadows that are caste upon the wall that lies in front of him. when the prisoner is finally released from the cave, he is instantly blinded by the powerful rays of light that are made by the sun. The prisoner then realizes that there is more to know than just strange disfigured shadows against a wall, so he rushes back inside the cave and tries to tell the other prisoners, but all they see is just a strange disfigured shadow against a wall. Plato’s allegory comes to play today because computers, television, and the news act as a cave to society and as technology keeps smothering Americans, the people today live in what is a called a “cave.”
In the nineteenth century our civilization is sheltered from certain things the government, as teenagers our parents, and others wish to hide from us. I believe they hide things from us in some cases to protect us, but in others to gain control over another. In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato expresses his beliefs on how mankind likes to have power or authority over other humans. Plato states, “like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the putters,” I believe Plato is metaphorically saying that humans whom believe they need to gain authority, or in this case the marionette players, are attempting to control every aspect of what another human does, the puppets symbolize the sheltered humans.
Although Plato wrote “The Allegory of the Cave” a very long time before the nineteenth century, it has applied to life in every century before, and probably after our time. Plato says “I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner,” I believe he is saying that there is no worse suffering than those of false notions or lies. This exert can relate to my generations life because we are constantly being closed away from the bad things in life from those whom care about us and do not wish us to see that which may hurt us, but as we grow older we are slowly being oriented to things which were too harsh for us to handle before.
In conclusion I believe that Plato can really relate to the lives of us humans today. Even though we are constantly being bombarded with false notions and the acts of others whom wish for us not to see “the light” as Plato calls it, in some cases we are slowly but surely able to overcome our fears and sheltered lives and branch out into the world.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave he tells about a man who had been trapped in a cave all his life and then one day escapes, and sees the world for what it really is not shadows for what he has always seen and trusted. I think this allegory is relevant to today’s time; many of us are blinded by the REAL world. Whether it is from your parents trying to protect you from reality, to really just not to see the bad of the world and keeping it from yourself. In some ways we do live in a world that is a cave of reality is made for us. Like when you watch the news when you watch the news, many stories could be false and we just listen to them. We are also in a cave constructed by people that don’t want us to see the bad in the world, only the good. I do not think this allegory is outdated, because really it’s all the same like if you talk to someone on the internet and then meet them in the real world you may see there is a huge difference. I think the new devices and world we live in has added to a mask, what’s electronic and what’s real? I think our world is transparent while on Facebook and Google but when you go outside of the box it all seems real.
In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, Socrates reveals to his student, Glaucon, through a series of questions that knowledge is locked inside, and the only way to obtain it is through experiences. Socrates uses the cave, and the people inside, as analogy to help express his point. In the dark cave, the only thing the prisoners see are the shadows of creatures behind them. In life, people often only see what is right in front of them, and never take the chance to see events in an alternitive view, so they are unable to learn from their adventures in life, because they have not had any. In the cave analogy, one of the prisoners is finally released into the world, to see what he/she could see. Translation for life: someone actual does take the leap of faith into the unknown, allowing that person to soak up the world and all its riches, gaining knowledge along the way. When the prisoner returned to the cave to tell the tales of the world, none of the prisoners could, or would, understand him/her. Some people are so stuck in their ways that they refuse to acknoledge the possibity of another way of thinking, to open the gates to their mind and allow those who try to assist them to share the knowledge they gained, so that the ignorant can come to a similar conclusion without the difficulty of trial and error, to skip all of the hard parts and still have the knowledge of the difficult times. I feel that people like that really are prisoners of their mind, in fact we are all prisoners to some extent or another, but when you do get to that point where your chains go taunt, and can go no further, its weather you remove the chains or not that really defines a person.
With today’s fast resources and instant information it seems to many that the idea of having false information or being “in the dark” seems unrealistic. “The Allegory of the Cave” is a story of prisoners who are kept from the truth of the world, but are we really that far off? In this story Socrates is of the opinion that one must put in effort to really know the truth. That is still true today. We’ve all at some point changed the channel when those commercials with the starving children come on, or even switched off the news as an international crisis comes on the screen that can be quite depressing. Turning away from knowledge and not wanting to face the truth head on can be worse than not knowing the information in the first place. It’s just like coming out of the cave into the light and crawling back into the cave instead of bearing the first pain of the sun. This story can be interpreted in innumerable ways but it seems that a main theme is the acceptance of truth once given to you and what you choose to do with it. If we, for example, learn of the struggles in a far off country many Americans may choose to turn away and ignore the problem. It may feel less close to home and therefor unimportant. Although pushing out information does not make it any less real, realizing this may be the most difficult step. If there is one thing to take away from this story, it is we as human beings have a responsibility not only choose to see the light but refuse to go back into darkness.
Platos Allegory of a Cave, perhaps one of the master pieces of its time, but does it still apply to the world today? I have an abstract view that is not entirely black or white so bear with me it will not take me long and will be easy to follow. In todays world people are more connected, more educated, and just entirely more aware of the world surrounding them like the prompt mentioned. So are we all just creatures of the dark blind to a GREAT truth? No we are not, but there are occasions when Platos allegory still rings true. The most modern example of this I can bring to mind is the war in Iraq. Were there secret nuclear weapons that Saddam Hussein was planning on using to end the world as we know it? No. Were we told that this was the reason we were going in? Yes. Of course, the Bush administration could say that of course we were also going in because Saddams’ government was harboring terrorists, but frankly that was no reason to invade a country; of course, that is another essay for another day. In truth yes there are still some things we don’t know but honestly any educated person with access to more than one source of information will only be in the dark if they choose to be in the dark.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” talks about how prisoners are locked up in a cage and have nothing to stare at but the wall in front of them in which are flickering shadows created by the fire behind them. The shadows also make noises making the prisoners believe that the shadows is reality. One day, one of the prisoners gets to leave and he is blinded from the light because he has only been known to the darkness. He then realizes that he let others teach him that there is only the cave, and the other prisoners, that there is no life outside of the cave. I do believe that this is relevant to modern day because we mistake a lot of things for what they really are, and we are also caught up in other things, we do not see realty.
Yes, i do believe that the Media has taken a huge part in putting people in a “cave”. An example on how the media has taken a huge part in this is by making young girls/boys uncomfortable in their bodies. By using models and computer editing media can easily make girls/boys taller and thinner. Media targets adolescents most of the time, in advertising and in magazines to make things look “cool”, but they are not. They play mind tricks with our brain that is still slowly developing, into thinking that we can do what they say. But what they say or advertise is a false view on our society.The internet is a major component because anyone can post anything now a days. Anyone can publish their own writing or write about all of their opinions and post them online where millions of people can see their opinions.This cave in the Allegory of the Cave, is still here in today’s society, and it will probably never go away. Almost everything we have heard and seen on television our entire lives have been a lie.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a very strange work. This allegory is extremely relevant to our lives today because like Plato said, these people shown only shadows. They never knew the real thing that lied just outside their grasp until one of the people broke free of the chains that were holding him down. Just like today, our world is controlled by other people. People who have power. We do live in a cave that reality is constructed by someone else. Everywhere we look, we see what others want us to see and never what is truly there. The government keeps secrets from us so we don’t know what really goes on. They have all the power. Sure, we have some say in what goes on but never complete control.
I do not believe that this allegory is outdated. There will always be people who have power over us and show us what they want us to see. The internet, public education, and improvments in transportaion have killed the puppeteer to a certain point. We do know more things that go on in our lives than we would have without these things. But, do we know everything? No. People will always keep secrets. The government, the media, even friends and family put on a show. Our world is more transparent than it will ever be because of all of the junk that the media feeds us. They show us pictures of beautiful people, food, and luxury items. We are hardly ever shown the truth about what is going on in the world in other places. We aren’t aware of the bad things because we are forced to look at the luxurious things in life. Almost every ad we see has been modified somehow in order to make what they’re selling look good. We don’t see the truth behind the lies. It will be like this for our century and all of the centuries to come.
In the Allegory of the Cave Socrates speaks of prisoners chained to the wall being controlled by a group if people, when one of them breaks free and ventures into the unknown he discovers that there is more to the world than he ever could have imagined. So when he comes back to tell his friends what he has seen they naturally don’t believe it because in there mind the only world that they know is the cave so to them that is there only world. Plato’s story is still true today. If someone came out and said that everything we know is a lie, the person would have been locked away and been deemed crazy. The world is shaped by the media. If they hadn’t reported on the middle eastern uprising chances are to us they might as well never have happened. Information can be fabricated. If someone wanted to renew the was with north Korea and say that they had nuclear weapons all they would need to do is show images of SCUD launchers and nuclear explosion and just like that they would have nuclear weapons. its kinda like the who “if a tree falls in the woods but if no one is around to here it done it make a sound” thing. If you don’t know it happened, then chances are it never “happened”.
In Platos Allegory of the cave, he describes a cave that hides the truth from the prisoners. This allegory is still very true today. One of the big reasons we are in the cave is public education. It teaches us to believe what we hear, so when we get out of school we believe everything that the media and government tell us. Also, the media is a big factor. They are our main source of finding information, so if they tell us some lies just because it sells, it is just putting us further into the cave. The internet is doing both helping us leave the cave while pushing us back in. It’s a quicker way to spread lies, but it’s also a place to spread the truth. If someone is trying to find out more about the government and the happenings around the world they can just go on the internet and search it. The problem with that is a lot of the stuff you read on the internet is probably not true. You have to be the judge and decide what you think is true, and if you’re wrong you’re just walking into the cave even more. There’s another point that has to be made about this cave. Being in this cave, might not be an entirely bad thing to be in. There might be truths that the public would not want to know. It could be to much to take in at once. As they say, ignorance is bliss.
Plato’s Allegory of The Cave paints a clear picture of a personal reality chosen by others. In modern American society, citizens often allow social media and opinions of their peers control their own personal reality. Who are these media sources to tell us what our certainty of realism is? In the allegory, the chains holding the prisoners to the wall prevent them from seeing the reality of the world both around them and beyond the cave. Are media sources such as People Magazine, TMZ, Access Hollywood, Us Weekly and Seventeen chains, holding us to a wall that shields us from the actuality of a world around us? Mass media proves to exploit an unrealistic image of physical appearance, lavish lifestyles, actions lacking in negative consequences and idolization of such behaviors. These bases serving as the puppeteer, do not force us to be held in chains, rather we allow them to become chains; blurring our image of what is genuine. Where should we draw the line? Our reality of the surrounding world should be governed by individual thoughts and actions to follow. Teens of America must rely on themselves to sort through the truths and deceits of our society. Surely a parent can protect a child from the ways of today’s society but that shield cannot stand forever. Just as the prisoners in the allegory chose not to heed their friend’s words of the outside world, each individual’s reality will inevitably become a personal choice. As well, we as adolescents must hold responsibility in educating ourselves of worldly existence. Teachers, parents, older siblings, counselors, youth group leaders, etc. can only apply so much effort into our knowledge of the truthful realities that do surround us. Certainly we must take some part in the process. Denying, ignoring, and avoiding the factuality of these situations only further constrain ourselves to these caves of ignorance. I will choose to be an advacote for my personal reality.
In platos Allegory of the Caves it ‘s a story about how prisoners are locked up in a dark cave and theres only a fire in the back of them witch cast shadows on the wall. There are completely isolated from the rest of the world and are controlled by the people who run the caves, also there not tolled the truth and cant find any information of whats going on. In the world today its not like Allegory of the Caves because we are not isolated from the world and we are not locked up and have people tell us lies of the world. For example if we wanted to find out whats really going on in the world you could just go online and find out. Also we are not controlled by people because even though we have a government and they try to hid secret information you can find whats really going on either on the news because someone found out or they just passed the word. Also many people post interesting information on google or yahoo so it shouldn’t be a problem. Lastly I think that the world is more advanced and people are way more updated and involved in the world then when Allegory of the Caves took place, were not still in the caves. We have lots of advanced technology devices that we could look up anything we want or find something fascinating about a country or place on the other side of the world in just a few seconds.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he talks about how three people were chained up all their lives. They self educated themselves on the things in life by the shadows they see. After one of the prisoners escaped from the cave, the prisoner was exposed to the truth. The prisoner then realized that the truth has been blind for so many years and it has and still is blinded from the other prisoners as well. When the truth is told to the others, they do not believe the free prisoner. So they all go on with their lives believing the shadows by the puppeteer, except one. I do believe that people today are blinded by the truth and reality. We are blinded because of things like magazines, gossip, false information from the news, or propaganda, advertisements, besides the ones on TV, and commercials using celebrities, and, sometimes, the government. Commercials do sell lies to the people by using celebrities. They celebrities sell the product like it is the one everyone should use. For example, dieting commercials, and acne commercials both use celebrities to make sure their product gets sold. People then are used like tested animals for some product they are told that will change their look or skin. Another big way people are shackled by the truth is propaganda, or false information given to us by the news. They tell us things like what is going on involving the government. They also can tell us something about a celebrity, but it may not be true because the words can be twisted. So I do think the people today are blinded by the truth for many reasons.
In Plato’s allegory of a cave he talks about how people are stuck in a cave and there only comprehension of life is shadows on the opposite wall of the cave. I believe that this story definitely applies to society today. A main part of society that keeps us in a cave is the media. They try to make you think that you have to look a certain way or act a certain way in order to fit in. The media uses lies and propaganda in order to control us and make us do what they want. They try to sell you things promising that they will make you look younger or look cooler. I believe that the world today is run by the media. With television, magazines, phones, and the internet the media is everywhere, and you can’t escape it. Another factor that proves that Plato’s Allegory of a cave is real in today’s life is the education system. I am learning to become a pilot and the ground school of it is very difficult and boring, however the actual flying part is fun and exciting. The ground school relates to Plato’s allegory of a cave because learning the ground school is pulling me out of the cave and teaching me something new like the physics of flying. After I get done with ground school hopefully I’ll be accustomed to the “light”. Another aspect of the cave is how social media like Facebook traps us and makes us think we have 573 friends when really we have only met in person 15 of them. The flicking shadows in this case are the illusions that we have relationships with people that we don’t.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there is a prisoner that has been kept in a cave for his entire life, once he escapes he dicovers a new world. At first he is startled, but then his eyes are opened and he realizes that this new world is reality and what he had thought to be real for so long was merely a lie. I believe that in the modern world today, we are out of the cave. With the advancing technology we have, it’s like we have stepped out of the cave and realized our true potential for the first time. Other countries that are third world are metaphorically in the cave still and have not realized the reality around them because they simply can’t. Poor countries in which people have to walk 5 miles in order to just get water are still stuck in the cave and see a different reality than us when we can simply walk up to our fridge with a cup and get as much water as we please. Even though we have potential, I believe that we have stepped too far from the cave and are ruining our hopes for this country such as the economy and how much debt we are in. Only time can tell us when we might be thrown back into the cave or if the real reality is too much for us and we breakdown
In the story “Allegory of the Cave” Plato explains that humans are living in a cave were they are being held prisoners and how the prisoners are being shown shadows by puppeteers. He also tells about how one of the prisoners escapes from the cave and into the light. The cave that plato is talking about represents society and how it is imprisoning people and how people in society are only being shown what the people with higher power want them to see. The prisoner who escapes from the cave and into the light represents one of the people that were controlled and lied to by society braking free and realizing the truth. I believe that society today has come a long way and people today are not exactly being held prisoners in the cave of lies but I also believe that we are not fully in the light. For example freedom of the press helps people know about the truth but society constantly tries to keep things from us even though they know we have a right to know about the truth. Society still finds ways to keep the truth from us and they are constantly trying to sell us lies for example diet pills, hair growing products, and much more. I believe that humans today are half inside the cave and half out in the light. We have come a long way and we’ve been shown more of the truth then we have ever before seen but I also believe it is not enough and that we still have a long way to go because although we are seeing the truth its not the complete truth and although the truth can be at times hard to handle it is better to know the truth then to be living in ignorance and lies.
Plato, in his allegory of the cave, explains to a student how prisoners were kept in a cave with a fire burning behind them and they could only see the warped shadows created by the fire of those that pass by. When one prisoner breaks free and sees the light, he is blinded and apprehensive of this new world, which is the true world, uncorrupted by the fire that warped the shadows of the truth. When he attempts to spread the word of this enlightenment to his once fellow prisoners, they are unable to understand him because the fire contorts his shape and the echo of the cave walls distorts his voice.
This is much to relevant to today’s world and I feel, after reading the allegory of the cave, similar to that of the escaped prisoner who saw the light of truth. The government is our shadows and the media our fire which, paired with the shadows, distorts our image of reality. The public education approved by the government is one main reason we are unable to see the truth. We are told only one a particle of each historical story, the particle that the winners approve which makes them sound better. Most people have never, and will never, leave the cave, unfortunately. My generation is so deep within the cave yet we still have a chance of escaping. The few of the previous generation who escaped are the ones who will break us free. Yet, many people don’t want to be set free. They are content in the cave, believing whatever they are allowed to believe in the safety of the darkness. However, just as many fight the chains that bind them every single day and want to be enlightened, only after to be dragged back into the darkness by society.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates is explaining to his friend, how oblivious we all are. He talks about prisoners, being chained to a wall in a cave. One of the prisoners escapes and sees the real world instead of the shadows he has seen his entire life. If that same man went back and told the other prisoners what he had seen, they wouldn’t beleive him. They would only beleive it if they had seen or experienced it for themselfs. So, yes I think the Allegory of the cane has relevance in our world today. We usually beleive most things we hear. So if we are given false information we might think it’s true.Both the media and the internet are keeping us in the cave. Both of those give out a lot of false infomation, and we don’t know how to seperate the truth from the lies. That is the problem. Some of the information we get is probaley actually true, but we don’t know how to tell what is true and what is not.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” there is a prisoner that has been kept in a cave for his entire life, once he is released he then realizes that their is more to life than just shadows on the wall he seas what is reality. I truthfully believe that Americans are lied to and overwhelmed by media today. Most teenagers believe that they are expected to look a certain way because they see men and women in magazines, commercials every day. Teens are blinded by what is not reality. Magazine industries modify their pictures so that they are more appealing to the audience. What we Americans cant seem to understand is that most people do not look like what we believe is real beauty. Once someone is introduced to knowledge as in letting them out of the darkness of the cave, they will know that the media lies a lot. Most Americans are going to stay in the cave not knowing the reality, like in the “Allegory of the Cave” one is let out while the rest stay in the darkness. If we do not help our prisoners (Teenagers) escape they will never see the reality outside of the cave(Media).
Everybody has an opinion but I think that everybody would agree that Plato was a very smart man. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was a great conversation between Plato and a young man, the conversation was explaining how people were chained up to walls around their neck and feet and were facing a wall and seeing creatures walking by. The chained people knew people were walking by because there was a sharp glowing fire right behind them. Plato explained to the young man that a person chained up got free and was out of the cave and into the light. I think that this can relate to todays world because when growing up our parents always keep us on lock down. We always have to be on their schedule and we are never truly free until we turn 18 of course. This boy got away and got to see the light which is of couse freedom. Im not sure what exactly freedom is or how this person feels but I know its got to be great. Everybody has different view but this is just my view of how the cave is reflected in todays world.
In Allegory of the Cave, Plato is describing how blinded society is. He tells the story using the wise Socrates and a young pupil learning under him. The story at this time, would have described how society is blinded by ignorance and the monarchs. The monarchs only allowed the people what they knew they would be able to control. When society comes into the light, then people realize the true opportunities and paths that are available to them; such as democracy. This story would’ve related to democracy at that time, but there is no doubt in my mind that there is still a relevance to this allegory in the present. It is known that humans will never be perfect, or know everything, so therefore society is always in the dark about something. I would make the arguement currently that there are a few things that block our ability to function individually and intelligently. For instance, the media and advertising can take society and make us believe anything they say. We should be thinking for ourselves, as independent citizens, but instead we are allowing our minds to be brainwashed by big, corporate companies and several new stations and political channels. In addition to advertising, there is another chain that binds society to the darkness; technology. Technology can be used in many good ways and has several uses that benefit the needs of billions of humans around the world. However, as great and useful as technology can seem, it is also a burden that current day society will have to carry. Imagine yourself without technology; how would you function? Chances are you wouldn’t be able to handle it. That is because society has grown too dependent on technology and therefore it is keeping us from seeing the truth. Human beings are intelligent, creative, and thriving creatures always looking to change the world, but to be honest, the world and the human race were better off in some instances without technological gadgets. I’m not saying that technology shouldn’t be used. What I’m saying is that humans should limit the amount of time they spend watching television, texting, playing video games, and being on the computer. Humans were made so that we could survive in the natural world. There is no doubt that we could come into contact with that world once again, as long as we put technology lower down on our list of priorities. If we were to go outside more, exercise, use our minds fully, and socialize we people in person like the old days, then as a society we would be more adept; and being more adept makes you a better survivor. Charles Darwin believed in survival of the fittest, and even though we may seem fine now, we don’t yet knbow the lasting effects and damages technology can have on us. I end this piece by saying yes, we will always be in the dark somewhere at sometime, but that doesn’t mean that we should allow ourselves to stay there. We need to pursue excellence and makes this world a better place. The only way we can do that, is if we keep reaching towards the light.
In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato talks about prisoners that live chained in a cave for their entire life. The Puppeteers (which represent today’s government.) control the shadows, and when the shadows come by the prisoners are just so amazed. One of the prisoner’s escapes, and at first he’s blinded by the new world and he soon finds out that the “Government” had been keeping secrets from the prisoners. He tried to come back and tell the others, but the others didn’t recognize him, and the puppeteers wanted to kill him. This applies to our world today, because for all we know, we could be in the cave, the government could be hiding things from us, but we don’t know. In fact it’s impossible for us to know, if we’re in a cave or not.
Plato’s Allegory of The Cave is relevant to today’s world. this very old story has lasted the the test of time but with the ignorant s of today these wise words have been blown off. today modern media is giving us a blinded truth we take in information that is given and only take that as truth. there are many different views on same topic like from wars to presidents, to fit everyone need on how they can take the information that the “fire” wants you to see. the dawn of the internet has brought a wealth of new ideas and information but most people can not or will not take it as truth but lies and slander because it does not match there perfect world of darkness. the massive amount of knowledge that’s out there now blinds many people that cant handle this. public education is the worst cause of this false truth by teaching children advance concepts in math,sciences,and English putting children’s minds in to a illusion that they understand the world when in there study’s they were taught compliance and any other ideas the “fire” wanted. unfortunately Plato’s Allegory of The Cave is relevant in today’s world.
In the Allegory of the cave, Plato is describing how ignorant society was. How there was the puppeteers that were keeping the people which were shackled up prisoners out of the light, which was knowledge of the outside world. The knowledge of the outside world was how to live on your own, that you could make choices on your own. The fact that you do not need others to influence your choices, and or to make them for you. I believe this still applies for today, we are controlled and heavily influenced by everything around us, media, people, etc. Our lives are not controlled, but are lead into certain directions depending what you choose to let influence you and what you choose to go through you like air. People these days are less to ask questions, and want to lead things, and more to follow and obey orders. The modern day puppeteers would be the media and or the other influences in our life like parents or even your own peers. It’s not necessarily the medias fault, the people can choose whether to believe any of they hear or see, it is just a lot harder for most people than others. People can choose to stay in the cave, shackled up, not ask questions and be in the dark. Or they can be curious, try new things, form their own opinions and possibly step out of the cave and into the light. These are the type of people the world needs, and the type of people that learned the truth in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
I think that the allegory of the cave is relevant to today because it we live in a society where we are “kept in the dark” or not knowledgeable of the corruption around us. Sometimes we are aware of it but like seeing distorted figures, we cannot do anything about it or are too distant and unknowing of the subject to have a solid opinion of our own. We are not necessarily living in a cave constructed by someone else but we are very influenced by others and the media. We cannot believe things that we hold true to ourselves sometimes because of peer pressure to change and reject other ideas. There is also the influence of “coolness” or what’s popular to everyone around you so in some answer to the question, we have a partly constructed world by the world of media and influence. Personally I do not think this is an outdated allegory but others might because of the fact of absolutism way back then. Improvements in our world have in a sense killed the puppeteer because he is no longer able to constrict our ability to learn and discover. He has no power over what we can or cannot do with our lives. However, we as people have the responsibility to stay in school and try hard, research subjects and discover the world around us. We must take on the power of far can our potential reach. Finally I believe we live in a cave close to the sense Socrates put it. We are controlled by many things around us but it is up to our own personal selves, to be the best we can and step into the light to find our own Enlightenment.
I think this allegory is still relevant to our current society because we do not know the real truth; we are blinded by news and the media. Basically, we are the men chained in the cave seeing the shadows on the wall and the reality is fake. This allegory is definitely not outdated. I believe that the internet and public education have not killed the puppeteer, but the improvements in transportation have. The internet and public education carry on the lies while the transportation doesn’t. Our world is very transparent, so transparent that we run into it like a screen door. One thing I do not believe is that it is more transparent than it has ever been. We have no way to prove that society one thousand years ago was not clearer than our more current society. Also, I believe that it is not the worst it’s ever been. Many years ago they did not have news or public education or the transportation we have today. They weren’t able able to know what was happening unless they lived where something was happening. That’s why I believe it’s not the worst it’s ever been. My theory is that if the media didn’t lie to us, society would be clearer. Our Country wouldn’t have some of its problems, such as too much debt. We as voters would be informed, instead of being misled by the media and by the president and other elected officials lying and making false promises. I think we could have a better, stronger society.
In the Allegory Of The Cave Plato talks about these prisoners whose arms and legs are chained to the wall and are forced to look at these shadows and they think that the shadows are there reality. After thousands of year that fictional story has become a reality. People nowadays are so blinded by the media (internet, TV, video games, ETC.) and they think that those things are there reality. When someone sees some big star wearing something like a watch, shoes, a shirt then the person has to have it and now that this big star is wearing it the item then shoots up in price but the person wont care they will get it only because that one big star is wearing it and then it will turn into a new fashion craze an if you are not wearing this certain clothing item or style then your not cool. Also when people watch reality TV and see these big party that the people throw in the show we start to think that’s the lifestyle we all need to be living and if your not living like that then you’re a nobody. People also think that the way people act on these shows is how we need to act. I honestly think when Plato wrote The Allegory Of The Cave he was predicting the future because our reality is almost exactly like that story and we don’t seem to care about it either and yes all these things have metaphorically killed the puppeteer.
I believe that the allegory is outdated because it would have made since before technology when the only way you could know about things happening outside of the city is if you traveled there or if someone who had been there told you about or the king would make up lie to make it seem like the life you have is far greater. Through technology we have news stations, radios, internet and school to tell us what is happening outside our “cave”. Also we have advanced in transportation so now we can go to other places in trains, planes and automobiles so we don’t have to just look at the shadows that the internet tell us, websites don’t always tell the truth, we are able to go outside for ourselves. So the allegory may also still exist because sometimes websites on the internet may not always be the truth and some news anchors who get information from outside sources may not always tell 100% of the whole truth. If you want to be a prisoner in a cave and to only see the shadows that other people are project to you, you can and can not escape to see what is on the outside for yourself or you can escape to see outside the cave and adventure even if its once you know that it really does exist.
In “Allegory of the Cave”, Pluto uses the cave and prisoners as a metaphor to describe how the public and possibly the world is being treated by their superiors. In the story, Pluto describes the prisoners as being chained up in a cave, who are forced to watch shadows of which crawl along a wall. The prisoners represent man as we are in question about so many things in life, and the light of the cave is what we believe to be the answers. Such as “Is there a god?” or “Why are we who we are?”, but when they finally reach the light, they only discover what they need to know about the world. While by dicipher is different from most, I think it to be a more logical explanation of what Pluto was trying to say. Since their are questions that we will never learn about, like the ones stated above, and we want to learn them even though we barely know whats around us. The freed prisoner thought he knew the outside world, but he was wrong and so he realised that he will have to understand what is around him before continuing. We can relate “Allegory of the Cave” to the government as they hide stuff. It is also related to everyday questions like the sun, god, and life. Pluto wanted people to know that they should live in the present and not think about the future, or questions about the past. I believe it is a way that we should live by not questioning things that are beyond our understanding.
Allegory of the Cave…one of the most controversial stories to date, one might state the story of the prisoners facing the wall watching the shadows that others make is a cruel punishment. That they should deserve to see what is really going on in the world. They should know what it feels like to love, to know what it feels like to accomplish something you have worked hard for, and to know what it feels like to live a life where you are surrounded by friends and family who love you. But the world is not all sunshine and rainbows. With love comes heartbreak, no matter how hard someone works they might not achieve their goals, loved ones die. Maybe the prisoners just as society should be left in the dark. Maybe, just maybe this “puppeteer” is saving the prisoners from the darkness that the world has to offer. In modern day times the Government is the “puppeteer”, but is the Government as futile as the ones in the story? Would you honestly compare us to prisoners standing chained looking at a wall of shadows? No, of course not, they allow us to live our life happily. We live in a fair Government, yes on occasions the do keep things from us, but it is for the better of mankind. Some things are meant to just be left alone. They are aware of the struggles that we go throughout in everyday life, why cause a panic? The fact of the matter is people cannot control what others due now days. We have advanced a long way from then to now, we know certain truths. Science, Literature, Mathematics… all advancements to prove that we are not controlled. We have the right to poke around, and try to find out what is really going on in today’s world. What we find might traumatize us, or upset us but this would be a consequence we would pay in order to find the truth. So do I think that this allegory is relevant to today’s age? It is to an extent, people might do things to hide the truth, but the truth is sometimes better hidden. I believe that our government only pulls out the puppets when they need to hide a truth that is too great for the citizens of the United States to handle. They are doing it to better our country, and make it safer for us.
In the Allegory, Socrates relates to the modern day. He explains that being shadowed your whole life is a terrible way to live and that once you experience the freedom and way of life you will never want to look back. Once he sees the real world he knows the truth and realizes he has been controlled his whole life of what to see. How Socrates relates his tale to the modern day is that technology has let our population hide behind cell phones and computers. The more and more our technology grows the more that people will rely on technology to say what they are feeling or how to express emotions. We are losing face to face conversations or phone calls because teenagers grow more courage sheltered behind their technology. Texting instant messaging, and emailing are ways of how we are growing away from communicating to one another. Everyone always says that communication is the key to any relationship but if people are being raised to hide behind electronic screens then they aren’t going to know how to communicate with people in the real world. The virtual world is all fun in games but our species needs to learn how to keep it as a fun privilege. If we cannot learn how to start putting don’t our electronics then we are going to be showed in that dark cave and won’t have any idea of how to get out.
This allegory is relevant to our lives today because i feel like we r in a cave. I feel like “We The People” are the prisoners from the cave that our government is hiding lots of things from us. I think that the things that government gives us like TV, Internet, are all ways to keep the truth away from us. The Movies, shows, and programs are just ways to distract us like in movies they make us believe that are government works one way while in reality they are doing the complete opposite. Because once you think about it why would they really show us how the government really works we would have people rebelling against everything. I think that their have been people that have found out how the governments system works and we don’t believe it because our TV believe or computers are telling us a different thing. I believe that we are living in this cave and that the shadows that are in the wall now a days are TV’s and computers and that our government is doing so well of hiding the truth that we cant see, I believe that we have always lived in this cave but never noticed it.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato explains how people in society are blinded from the truth. In our society today, I do believe that we live in the “cave”. We don’t know exacly what’s going on with our military, or where all of the money goes in our goverment. A lot of the things that we “know” that’s going on could just be a way to keep us in line while they spend money on the military, improving nuclear weapons, and paying governers millions of dollars to sit on thier butts all day. I think the president is sort of the man who feeds the fire. He will say that he will do all this stuff to make the goverment stronger and better; while most or little is being done. We sit back and wait, just like how the prisoners were chained up for days waiting for nothing. But in another way, we’re the people in the cave without being chained to the wall, but we still can’t get out. Beucase of the Internet, we are able to learn more about what’s going on from the media. I see it as a messanger boy (Internet), who would feed notes through the opening of the wall to let us know as much as possible of what’s going on. Yet, we don’t know what the truth is exacly, nor do we know what exacly to believe.
Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave” is about these men that have been chained inside a cave since childhood unable to move their heads or bodies being forced to watch the shadows of movie objects on a wall. One of them escapes and is exposed to the real world but has to cope with realizing his reality just consisted of shadows on a wall.
In life today, this allegory is relevant. People get sucked into these worlds of video games and “reality” television shows. Are people even realizing the world around us? And beautiful things we are so lucky to have in our every day lives? I don’t think we are. They few times I have played on my friend’s Wii I have gotten sucked in and I have even found myself yelling at the T.V. telling it to “STOP!” or just yelling in frustration. After I have done this silly act I realize that I am yelling at nothing. Why am I getting mad at a little cartoon character? It is not relevant in my life in anyway. People are not realizing the real issues at hand. The media is giving you false advertisement about almost everything nowadays. Flipping through a magazine at the dentist’s office we see all these skinny, beautiful girls. Although, in reality they may be just like you and I; a self-conscious, pimple-popping teenager. This even breaks down people by them telling themselves they aren’t good enough, or pretty enough. Society is corrupting us, and we aren’t even doing anything to stop it. We are corrupting ourselves in ways by letting ourselves get consumed in this fake reality. So really, it’s not the media or the government to blame. It’s ourselves. We are letting it get to us. We know there are amazing things out there, but we don’t even have the time of day to care. Some people may like these flickering shadows. Soon enough, it will be all that we know.
The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, is a story which is most definitely relevant to today. The allegory tells of people kept in a cave for their whole life, only knowing what is shown to them in the form of shadows on a wall. They have known this their whole life, until one finally escapes into the world, and realizes that there are other things besides shadows on a wall. This is relevant to today because we are all in a cave hidden from the world, in one way or another. We also all have puppeteers in our lives, whether it is our parents, government, teachers, ext. When the prisoner escapes, it is Plato’s way of saying, he has been enlightened. All this time knowing only his life, and to finally been shown the truth, would be truly unearthing. This is just how we are controlled in this life. For example, we know Government does not share everything with us the people. In this scenario, they are the puppeteers, and we are the prisoners. The allegory later goes on to explain how this person that escaped comes back to share this wonderful news of this world they have not known, only to create confusion and disagreement. The prisoners refuse to believe what is “real”, and state that whoever goes into this light/new world and who tries to take people here, will be punished or even put to death. This is an example of fear among the people when told something different from what they have known their whole lives. So the real question is, would you rather be “enlightened” and learn about everything in the world, good and bad, possibly catastrophic, or live a sheltered life you have always known, but unknowing of a possibly better life.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, prisoners are chained to a wall and are never able to look outside. All they see are shadows of what they think are people and things that pass by, when really it’s just a puppet show. The goal is to control their minds and what they believe.
I think this allegory is relevant to our society today, especially in the age of the new media such as the Internet. Lots of kids spends hours every day locked up in their rooms only focusing on the screens of their computers. Some people think the new media have opened up our minds. In some ways they have, because sites such as Google give us access to all kinds of information that we can use to learn about other ways of life and looking at the world from different people’s perspectives. For instance, YouTube has lots of videos where you can learn about current events in other countries. It has videos that show you how to do all kinds of things that you could never learn to do if you don’t have mentors around to teach you.
But on the other hand, the Internet and other media can blind you and make you believe what they want you to believe. They can make you think their ads and the latest trend in stories or rumors on gossip sites. Photographs can be photoshopped to make you believe things, but now photoshop is used so often that you don’t know the difference between a real and fake photo.
We live in a society where the media tells us that everything is supposed to be a certain way, in the way we look and act. That’s what society has told us through advertising because somebody is trying to sell us something. They want to make us believe we have to have it, be it, and act it. That’s how our mind is kept in a cave, because instead of you being you, and me being me, and each of us doing our own thing, we are brainwashed to all be the same. Instead of people living their own lives and seeing what the world is like for themselves, they just rely on the media to tell them what it’s like. This can cause people to form false opinions and views on things, and sometimes they’re not willing to change those opinions because it’s what they’ve been told and grown up to believe. In the end they never really know if it’s true or false.
This relates to the allegory of the cave, because we’re like the prisoners being fooled into believing something instead of experiencing it for ourselves and forming our own opinions. Like Agatha Christie said: “The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself – and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.”
In Plato’s “allegory of the cave” Socrates describes a cave in which prisonesr have been in this cave since child-hood. The prisoners have never steepped foot into reality.Behind the chainned up prisoners is a bridge wear the prisoners have to walk threw carrying scultures of animals etc. But all the prisoners could see and hear were shadows and voices.because the fire from behind them reflected the shadows to the other wall wear the prisoners are facing torwards.one of the prisoners breaks free and sees that realityin the out side world.He runs back to the cave to tell the others but all the others can just see a weird looking shadow and just hear some voice. thats when they realized that they werent the only ones in that cave.This is relevant too our everyday life in modern society. I stronglybelieve that we live in a society that is influencede and controlled by the media< magazines. Channels like disney channel influenc the little kids to behave a certain way and act like a 13-14 year old kid would act. Magazines are very influencial because if you take a look you will always see that picture of an actor or a model. This is very influencial because alot of girls wished they could look like that ,Magazines then tell you how to losse weight and all this tips just so that you kan buy the magazine. The media just wants to sell us whats not true. In my oppinion platos allegory was written long ago but it is still presentand relavent to an everyday life modern society.
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The main idea in the Allegory of Plato and Socrates is simple, and just explains how kids live today a way that they shouldn’t. Watching television reflects just like how the prisoners would see the shadows and assume things that we or weren’t true. In magazines, television, any part of media is just like the shadows on the walls. Today as we all know it, believe in almost anything the media sells us. Especially when it comes to appearances, whether it’s wearing makeup, to being overweight or just being insecure in general about yourself. Society is the thing that makes everyone feel ugly and like they’re aren’t good enough. Maybe if we all stepped aside from out phones , watching TV, and Facebook and look at reality and face it; instead of watching television and wishing you had something you don’t, life would be a million times easier and less drama-filled. Us people, need to step out of our cave and face reality ourselves and realize that no one is perfect and to stop believing in all this nonsense the media is trying to drill into our brains.
Allegory of the cave is about these people who are chained up, and one person controls what they see by shadows, even when they talk, they cant understand what they are saying. The Main guy is controlling their minds and what they do believe in. I believe that the Allegory and the Cave does exist today. People do control and construct us; For example, Magazines and Tv. Our mind and focus is all about what everybody else is doing and the new hip thing, especially the new generation. It is like they mind controlled us. It feels like, To be liked, you have to be in the hip .. Have the best clothes, coolest phones .. It is honestly ridiculous. Another major cause, Obesity, Is due to the media and advertisements.. Without McDonald’s and all the fast food’s places advisement, I believe half of the people that are obese today, wouldn’t be. I do believe that our world is more transparent than it has ever been. We all do live in a cave ….
Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is very relevant to today’s reality. In the “Allegory of the Cave”, there are prisoners chained their whole lives. All these prisoners have seen are shadows casted by puppeteers- to them, this is ‘reality’. One day, one of the prisoners manages to escape and he is literally blinded by the REAL world and recognizes that what he has been living is well, a lie.
Now, back to how the “Allegory of the Cave” is relevant to today’s society. Turn the TV on and go turn to whichever channel E! is on. Most likely Keeping up with the Kardashians is on. What does this show teach us? That life is easy. That it is easy to earn money by doing nothing, that partying and getting drunk every night gets us far in life. Any magazine you flip through is undoubtedly full of pictures of flawless models. Flawless-thanks-to-photoshop-models, that is. From a young age we have been taught that being “good” at life requires absolutely no effort. Reality will hit a lot of us teens hard at one point in our lives and like the prisoner, we will get to see what the REAL world is really like. WAH.
In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates explains to his student that people are not able to see the truth and when one person is finally able to see the truth, others will not believe this one person. The people chained up in the cave represent the people unable to see the truth. The one person chained up in the cave is finally able to escape and see the truth. When he goes back to tell the others still chained up they cannot understand him.
Today the “Allegory of the Cave” is still relevant in our society. The news puts out false information or propaganda. The government is in charge of what information is given out to the public. Many of the people believe that what they read on the news or what they hear is true because it is on the news. They want to believe it so they will they do not want to try and understand things better.
Past experiences or memories can greatly affect our choices to accept or to deny in the future. Negative experiences will have a much stronger impact. We remember negative experiences better than we remember the positive ones. The human brain is a very powerful thing. The brain is what allows for us to not see the truth. We are our own biggest enemy. We are the ones who either try to see the truth try to not see the truth.
We may not be the ones who keep the truth from everyone but we certainly do not help the situation. We could try harder to see the truth, but some people do not want to see the truth. That is the biggest reason why the “Allegory of the Cave”.
The short part of Plato’s Allegory of the cave tells about how a bunch of people are locked inside of a cave for their entire life. Inside the cave was very dark and all that they could see was a wall. They had a fire behind them and that caused there to be shadows on the wall. The saw funny shapes and figures on the wall and they thought that the shadows and figures were talking. Then on a regular day in the cave, one of the people escaped and left the cave. He went outside for the first time in his life and he was blinded by the light. He got to see reality for the first time and when he tried to tell his friends back at the cave, no one would believe him.
The way that the short story relates to reality, is the media. The shadow could be a model; the light could be the way the model actually looks without her make up on. The media makes us think that all of the models are natural and have everything perfect, but that isn’t true and they have pounds of makeup on to cover all of their flaws. The wall and the fire is what covers up what is not perfect. So basically what the Allegory of the Cave is trying to tell us is that everything isn’t always what they seem and reality isn’t always what it seems either.
The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato in my opinion is a great example how the government can blind its people to what is really happening in the world. In the United States I would say we are not as blinded as people in perhaps Japan or China. Our government does not suppress us; they let us go anywhere on the Internet and our news stations can broadcast anything. In the Allegory of the Cave the people inside the cave are chained to a wall and only get to see shadows that one person projects. The people in the cave don’t know reality as any different. Today, in the Untied States I could say that the only reality that we are most unaware of is how our media, meaning advertisements, TV shows, magazines, and music manipulates how we should act, dress, and us to tell us how we should look. In another reality those things could mean nothing. What is blinding us today is on a way lower level then in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, our world is more transparent than it ever has been but the allegory is not outdated and we need to remember it for how we raise the worlds future generations.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is still relevant to our lives today. We are born and know nothing better than what we are taugh. We see shadows like in the cave. Although, our shadows are not really shadows, they are seen in magazines, tv, on the internet, practically anywhere you look. These so called shadows are false realities, they are created by people advertising. When you see advertisements people are usually trying to get you to do what they want you to do. Like When people try to get you to vote for what they are voting for or what who they are rooting for, they will exaggerate the opposing vote so youll think it is bad so that you will agree with them and vote for what they want you to vote for. This is like the shadows on the wall of the cave in Allegory of the Cave. The shadows relate to how people in the world are not shown how they really are, they false realities, photoshoped images.This all is exactly like the shadows on the cave in Plato’s allegory, it is not reality, but only what they want you to believe is reality.
In my opinion, i think Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is still totally relevant to what is happening in today’s society. The shadows in the cave represent the media, such as what we see on TV, in magazines, and anywhere we look.They also represent an unrealistic reality. The media represents the shackles that were in the story. Plato’s talking about how completely ignorant society WAS, but sadly, it still is. What we see and hear is being controlled by people above us, authority wise, and we don’t even know if they’re feeding us lies or the truth. Not only are they doing that, but they’re even telling us how to look. Be under 100 and apparently you’ll be gorgeous? Or wear packs of makeup and you’ll be a model? No. This all represents the shadows (TV, magazines, internet, etc…) and our puppeteers controlling these shadows is the media which has us all shackled.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he expresses a story of men who are locked away and fed false information about the world. I feel this is very similar to our society today. Even though we have freedom and liberties, most Americans do not know what news is. For most, news is what happens on “TMZ”, or “People”, and not the trageties happening in Sudan, North Korea, Baghdad, and other places. We are so rapped up in our own lives, that its like everthing thats not happening where we are is almost irrelevant. These days, America is a puppet on a string to all these material things, and I believe if we dont recover quick, the U.S.A, which is already suffering, maybe break down. In fact, most people dont even realize some of the problems our economy is suffering with today; they’d rather put that on the back burner and see how Jessica Alba’s new nose job turned out. I deem that America takes everthing we have for granted, and dont even acknoweledge the second and third world countries, and their inhabitants that can travel 25 miles a day for a few ounces of water, while we waste 75 gallons a day. I also truly think it is possible that if America dosnt change its ways, we could end up like those countries. If we think we arent cool because we have the iPhone 4 instead of the iPhone 5, imagine how un-hip we will be when we are down to our last pair of clothes, havent showered and weeks, and cant find water in a 10 mile radius. Clearly, I believe America is trapped mentally, and if we dont figure out a way to break free, we might be headed for a grim future.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a man is told to believe only what he sees on the wall in front of him. He expresses that we shouldn’t let people control us on what to see in tabloids and reality. With Jersey Shore for example. Fergi is a total drama queen which is probably set up by the director to make it seem more intense than it really is. she probably seems all nice outside of her show and without her show she wouldn’t of became popular. Another example is the tabloids making teens my age who aren’t popular seem very insignificant. In reality we are fine the way we are without other people making us feel bad. People are trapped in their own minds that they can’t even find a way out to save them from false reality. They want to believe what the media tells them and nothing else. The media won’t let us think for ourselves. If we want to buy a pair of jeans for example, we go with what the media tells us is the best pair of jeans around us.