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I did some reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It reminded me of what my journey in Mormonism so far has meant. One thing — the analogy below paints the people in the cave as in bondage, inferior or uninspired, which I reject….in my view, if they are at peace, they are fine. With that caveat read this as if: a) the people in the cave are the people who believe the literal LDS gospel and all the cultural trappings associated with it in traditional Mormondom.
b) leaving the cave as looking at the truth about our history, seeing the temporal side of the church, learning facts we had never known, gaining a new enlightenment or understanding of our religion.
c) The reactions of the people still in the cave as the reactions of traditional believers to unorthodox members like us.
Quote:SynoposisInside the caveIn Plato’s fictional dialogue, Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, compelled to gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk carrying things on their heads “including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone and other materials”. The prisoners watch the shadows cast by the men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise produced from the walkway.
Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever, whoever could best guess which shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world, and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.
Release from the caveSocrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than what he sees.
“Suppose further,” Socrates says, “that the man was compelled to look at the fire: wouldn’t he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn’t the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn’t he be distressed and unable to see “even one of the things now said to be true,” viz. the shadows on the wall (516a)?
After some time on the surface, however, the freed prisoner would acclimate. He would see more and more things around him, until he could look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the “source of the seasons and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing” (516b–c). (See also Plato’s metaphor of the Sun, which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI)[2]
Return to the caveSocrates next asks [students] to consider the condition of this man. “Wouldn’t he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn’t he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn’t he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn’t it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it’s not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead them up, wouldn’t they kill him?” (517a) The prisoners, ignorant of the world behind them, would see the freed man with his corrupted eyes and be afraid of anything but what they already know. Philosophers analyzing the allegory argue that the prisoners would ironically find the freed man stupid due to the current state of his eyes and temporarily not being able to see the shadows which are the world to the prisoners.
Yeah, I don’t know if I dare touch this one. But I think it is applicable to many groups and societal constructs. But I will say I don’t know if I would call unorthodox members more enilghted, just differently enlightened. We are all pretty ignorant when it comes down to it. I imagine to God it is like us listening to two 5 year old trying to argue an adult topic. It is a very interesting line of thinking. I do think though really that all mortals will always remain in the cave and the only way we see the truth is when we die and have true knowledge of all things. Our mortality weighs us down so much. I still choose to believe that this is an eventuality for us all one day. But let us use that the cave is indeed orthodox views and that I was forced from the cave and into the “light.” There are things I see here I never wanted to see and some of me so wishes I could go back into the safety of the cave and what I thought I knew. So much here terrifies me. But can I go back? I don’t think so. I don’t think there is any way to go back- at least not to everything- not the way it was. Just as we can visit our childhood home as an adult, we can never go back to being a kid again. We can never see the world like we did when you were 10. So yes, I am mad at life to some degree for dragging me out of the reality I thought I knew.
Do the cave dwellers get mad at me and reject me because I now see different things? Yep. Most. (If I tell them.) But from an evolutionary perspective, the save dwellers hold onto what they know because it works for them. That is how they survive. And generation after generation for the most part, it works. I, on the other hand, am unsure, scared and not sure how to survive now. Does this make me more highly evolved, or less? Does it make me more like a mutant in an animal population that is actually more likely to be picked off by natural selection? Less ability to reproduce with the general population? Like a white butterfly amongst the gray that hide in the bark of a tree; more likely to get eaten? It may not so evolutionarily advantageous to be in this side of light. I am alone now– having lost much of the connection with my sub-culture, my family, my friends and even my husband. Alone is not so good for survival. (Especially here in Utah where Mormon culture dominates.) While I am forming some support with the “phantoms in the machine” it is still quite an unreal, intangible connection.
IDK. I do not “look down” on the cave dwellers at all. In fact, I am not sure my reality is any more real than theirs- just different. Perhaps my reality is still greatly obscured, and perhaps the things I see now as truth are no more truth than the shadows I thought to be truth before. In fact, is it not true that we believe things we see to be solid when in fact they are not? Just tiny masses of energy circling energy and nothing actually touches anything? Perhaps even this reality is not reality at all and still another version of shadows. I think that even though I have discovered there is more beyond the cave, I acknowledge that some of the knowledge I had before may not have all been false, and yet has been lost to me as my eyes have changed and I can no longer process some waves on the light spectrum. I also now know that my brain and eyes are not always to be trusted. If they misled me once, and my reality was not real before, then why would I think that they would be any more correct now? Therefore I must be wary that any truth I now learn will likely be replaced by another.
I agree with Brown’s thought. Perhaps we are not more enlightened, just differently enlightened. Maybe it’s not better or worse. Just different.
Anyway, hope it doesn’t all sound like ramblings. I appreciate the perspective and food for thought. It is an insightful step which hopefully leads to other steps, one direction or the other, and a fun exercise in reality perception, whatever we apply it to.
Brown and RagDoll… SilentDawning wrote:I did some reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It reminded me of what my journey in Mormonism so far has meant. One thing — the analogy below paints the people in the cave as in bondage, inferior or uninspired, which I reject….in my view, if they are at peace, they are fine. With that caveat….
Both Brown and RagDoll make the same point — that the people in the cave are not inferior — just different — that, I hope, came through in my caveat in the opening post. Their view is simply just different. We could easily reverse the allegory and call it “The Allegory of the Sunlight” where the average person sees in the sun, and the enlightened person suddenly finds the cave and considers it better, because it allows for greater interpretation, art, diversity of interpretation and is just plain easier on the eyes….
I don’t want to imply we are more inspired or enlightened. I might argue we are more complicated though, and there are times I wish I wasn’t so darn complicated
Throughout history those that have have dared to venture further against or despite dogma of the time with clear mind and will to discover have found enlightenment. Societies that didn’t venture forth with a love to understand and observe have remained stagnant in that time. The history of cosmology is a good example of this. One rarely gains new enlightenment or knowledge sitting in their comfort zone. One rarely grows. I’m not a fan of the cave allegory. Plato represents that the shadows are what we think of as reality: being the material things of this world, when in fact for him, “Reality” was the realm of the ideal. Such thinking that the only ‘true’ reality is that which is not ‘real’ is really problematic thinking. From this thinking, we get the idea that the material world is forever defective, or as Calvin would say, “totally depraved”. I find that the materialist/extistentialist message of the Restored Gospel is phenomenally important. It isn’t consistently taught, but the idea that this reality is a kingdom of glory, and that this reality, even moreso as material reality, is what is meant as the CK. We are in the middle of our eternal lives, therefore, the images we see in the cave are not shadows, but real.
Forget the cave — it’s not a good metaphor for life — it creates elitism — it creates contempt for who we are here and now.
just my opinion….
I think if you nullify that part of it — as I tried to in my opening caveat — analogy has a lot to say about the way we are perceived by Traditional believers. And when reading it, felt it showed that we can experience rebirths that enlighten us in ways that others disdain.
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