The Metaphor of the Cave

When I first learned Plato’s metaphor of the cave I hated it. I thought it was unrealistic and impractical. It took me quite some time before I understood it and began to appreciate it. Then like I once hated it I loved it. It made so many things make sense and one of those things is why children behave certain ways, specifically why some children act up and don’t try.

Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained as well, so that their gaze is fixed on a wall. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which statues of various animals, plants, and other things are carried by people. The statues cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the statue-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of images. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who begin to play poorly.

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the sunlight coming into the cave from its entrance, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.

The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen," but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. Therefore, he would not be able to identify shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight.

I and many others interrupt the metaphor of the cave as people only know what they know, and that’s it, nothing else. If someone is ignorant, intolerant or filled with bigotry and intolerance it’s because that’s all they know. It’s all they have been taught. Young children initially learn from their families and the environments they are in, later they are supposed to learn in schools

If parents have abdicated their responsibility to teach children right from wrong and that there is value in education then and as abhorrent to our sense of what’s right and wrong, what’s fair or not then it must fall to societies shoulders to do so, because if society doesn’t do it who will?

Schools must step and teach those things but sadly schools to are abdicating their responsibilities. They push kids along even if they don’t have the skills to be successful. They also don’t give meaningful consequences for bad behavior.

If a kid in his home doesn’t learn right from wrong, then doesn’t learn it in his neighborhood or his school is it any wonder that they will never learn it? How can they possibly? People only know what they know and if a kid only knows how to be disrespectful or lazy, if a kid has never been taught to try or if they ask for something they are neglects then those are lessons they will carry with them, with them until society has to take over, and if society chooses not to do it in the schools then it will do it in the street with welfare or in the prisons. This is something we should all know.