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locustforks Glynn Wilson:Under the Microscopeby Glynn Wilson
TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Aug. 3 — Imagine Alabama as a cave and the people as prisoners who have been chained since their childhood deep inside in the darkness, where good information is almost impossible to come by.
Their lives are stuck in an unmovable chain of events limited by discrimination in education, a narrow range of job opportunities and a press with only the profit motive to guide its deliberations. The people are thus chained with their heads aimed in one direction, their gaze fixed on a single wall.
Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, which puts out lots of light.
And between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which various animals, plants and other people, seen as puppets, move along and form the rest of the world outside the cave called Alabama. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows, sometimes on a screen that resembles a TV.
Behind this cave there is a well-used road, and upon this road people are walking and talking and making noises. The prisoners believe that these noises are coming directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.
The prisoners engage in 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 objects.
Inside the cave there is an island, where radio talk show hosts parrot the unreality gleaned from the shadows on the wall. Anyone who objects to the zeitgeist of the cave and tries to tell people they are jumping to conclusions based on shadows on a wall is banished from the island and paraded in public as an “idiot” or, Dog forbid, a “liberal.”
This story is adapted from the Greek philosopher Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” which symbolizes the trek from ignorance to reality, where truth is gained from looking at universals in order to gain understanding of experience. The things which people perceive as real are actually just shadows on a wall.
Just as the escaped prisoner ascends into the light of the sun in Plato’s story, the people of Alabama must use the Web to amass knowledge and ascend into the light of true reality. Otherwise, they are doomed to a life of ignorance and damnation.
Allegory of the cave Got an inner philo.. thought,I guess ignorance of will is the common mans conumdrum ,when its the ignorance to will it of the uncommon as there device.people choose ignorance of rightousness out of necessity,and /or ignorance. interesting story that plato,I must read it sometime.