Allegory of the Cave

Hayden Stagnone

Introduction to Philosophy 100.02

9:30

        At the bottom of the cave, the prisoners sit, chained and immobile, facing towards the blank wall of the back of the cave.  Behind the prisoners’ backs, a great distance and inclined away, is the entrance to the cave.  As bright light enters the cave, it slowly dissipates, becoming very dim by the time it reaches the spot where the prisoners are situated.  About halfway between the entrance to the cave and the prisoners is a wall that cuts across the cave.  This wall is about the height of the average person.  Behind this wall, is a roadway in which people carry statues and implements that represent realistic figures of life outside of the cave.  Further up the cave from the roadway, towards the entrance, is a fire.  The light from this fire is used to present the shadows of the statues and objects onto the back wall of the cave for the prisoners to see.

        The prisoners have never seen the outside world.  For as long as they have lived, they have been chained to the wall.  These chains also prevent the prisoners from turning their heads and force them to face the wall and focus on the shadows that are being displayed for them.  These shadows can be somewhat misleading and incomplete however.  This leads us to question whether the people behind the wall are trying to deceive the prisoners with false information, or if they are trying to inform the prisoners of knowledge of the outside world to the best of their abilities.  Are the people behind the wall good guys with good intentions of provoking the imagination of the prisoners to spark a thirst for knowledge?  Or are they bad guys who display the shadows with the intention of deceiving the prisoners and keeping them distracted and captive?

        To the prisoners, the cave is reality.  They do not know that they are prisoners and do not know the reality outside of the cave.  However, the people behind the wall are trying to help the prisoners out of their bonds and escape the cave.  By projecting the shadows of real-life objects on the wall of the cave, the people behind the wall are hopeful that these images will spark curiosity in the minds of the prisoners.  As the prisoners sit in the cave, banded by chains, they are prisoners of ignorance.  Believing whatever they are told, the prisoners have never searched for the real truth.  The only truth that the prisoners know is the cave and the shadows.  However, it is the search for the real truth that will free the prisoners from the chains.  The people behind the wall show a distorted truth not because they want to deceive the prisoners, but because they are human and cannot perfectly replicate the real-world objects by using shadows.  However, they hope that their efforts will ignite the search for the real truth within the prisoners.  

On the other hand, the people behind the wall can also be seen as deceitful and manipulative.  Are they manipulating the images on purpose, to create a false sense of reality for the prisoners?  These shadows are the only things that the prisoners know.  The shadows provide them comfort and entertainment.  Thus, by continuing to project these shadows for the prisoners, the people behind the wall are comforting the prisoners and keeping them captive.  The prisoners do not want to leave the chains because they feel comfortable with what they have.  To the prisoners, the shadows are nothing but entertainment, they play games with the shadows, betting on which shadow is going to be displayed next.  This shows how comfortable the prisoners are in their situation, they actually enjoy being chained up and forced to watch these dull and unrealistic shadows.  

        Modern day main-stream media plays a similar role as the statue carriers.  Media sites feed information to the world, and it is difficult for the people to tell whether that information is the truth, or if it is distorted.  After asking this question, one can ask why the media would distort the information and how they distorted it.  If several different media sites each offer different information on a single topic, how are we able to identify which is the truth?

        Sullivan claims that modern day social media sites are killing democracy and will eventually lead to the downfall of a democracy. This types of media is unreliable because the people who are posting and viewing the sites choose who and what they want to read about, post about, and inform the people upon.  For example, it is through social media in which a presidential candidate with no credentials or political background, can become more popular than a presidential candidate who has an impressive and reputable political résumé.  Twitter and Instagram, a couple of the most popular main-stream social media sites, are collections of billions of biased, personal “mini-blogs,” in which the writers can chose to report or withhold any information in which they wish to.  These sites also seek to provide entertainment to the public people, so a candidate who is found to be more entertaining to the public eye, can make headlines in these forms of media more often, and can become popular through entertainment and false information.  These sites prey upon the ignorance of people and attempt to implant false and distorted information into the unknowing minds of the people.