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Submitted: July 17, 2006
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Plato's prisonby ~ntora

Contests / 2008 / Create a Feeling 3

It was Plato, the philosopher, that said that what we think as reality is more like the shadows reflected on the back of a cave when you turn your back to the bright open entrance.
Here is my visualization of that...

Plato's Alegory of the Cave
Chained in place, the cave-dwellers can see nothing but shadows (of their own bodies and of other things)projected on a flat wall in front of them [...]
They cannot truly comprehend what they see, since they are prevented from grasping its true source and nature. (Republic 514a) [...]
Plato seriously intended this allegory as a representation of the state of ordinary human existence. We, like the people raised in a cave, are trapped in a world of impermanence and partiality, the realm of sensible objects.

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=Rozrr Mar 2, 2012 Digital Artist

Nice one. I love this allegory and use it often. Dump your TV's people and see the rest of the world and all that is really going on...

~RJ7237 May 27, 2012

There's a part in the allegory when the freed prisoner sees the fire and the objects used to make the shadows. This is when the person goes "Ahha! These are the real things." Though they're not.The object that makes the shadow of what's called a cat isn't a cat. It's the perception of a cat. It's not until we get outside the cave can we see a real cat. Even if we turn off our TV's, we're not seeing the real world, only the perception of the world.We're not quite out of the cave.