Blog # 5 The Allegory of the Cave

In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” Socrates tells a story to his student Glaucon to explain how human are living in a cage and not the real world. Socrates gives an example about a group of prisoners that were living on underground den,  they were chain from their necks down only looking at one direction to a wall that show shadows that were cause by a fire that was behind them from a distance. Anything that passes thru that fire the prisoners saw them on the wall. Meaning that is the only thing they every see in the cave. To me Socrates is telling his student that when we as human are born, we only know what is around us at that time and we try to get adjust to the things we have. Socrates then continues that one day a prisoner was let go and was throw out of the cave, at first he’s vision was blurry and painful to see and get adjust to the light of the sun.  In saying that I believe that Socrates is telling his student that we as human when we try to see new things or learned new knowledge at first it’s very hard to understand and its difficult to process new things.  Learning for human at first it’s painful, like the example that Socrates gives when he prisoner’s eyes hurt when he was glaring to the sun.  The sun to me symbolizes the wisdom or knowledge of the world.

Socrates continues by saying that the prisoner got used to the light of the outside world and soon after he was thrown back to the cave. At first he couldn’t see inside of the cave because his eyes got adjust to the light from outside the cave. Now that darkness is in his life again he felted lost.  In that part of the story I think Socrates is telling Glaucon that once you have a taste or experience the outside world meaning new ideas or knowledge it’s hard to go back to your old ways. Socrates continues by saying that the prisoner that was outside was telling his old friends from the cave the things he saw (meaning the new ideas he learned) and how the cave people didn’t pay too much attention to him and they laugh at him with his new ways of thinking. In this I think that people are afraid to let go of our past or common knowledge and are afraid of learning new wisdom from the real world. We as human are stuck in our ways that we were raise since birth. And that we don’t really want to experience new wisdom because it’s going to hurt in the process. As in life everything is not easy, and we have to let go of our cave and look into the sun to find the real world that is out there.