‘Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue’ he said as he walked up to me. Random, I know, but that got me thinking. Then, as he sat down beside me he continued, ‘he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil’. Ironic tho, the shackles turned into gadgets, the fire into media, the shadows into those with power, and the cave into the academe. I guess Plato’s cave isn’t just an allegory after all.
Freedom. Objectively defined as the absence of constraint, subjectively, however, is what the majority of us thirst for. ‘Is freedom attainable in this reality?’ a question I often ponder on. Where reality – even more subjective and enclosed in every eye, is consistently tested and questioned. ‘How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?’ the other asked. Deep? Not really, it is plain and simple. Manipulated by the shadows through the fire, made possible by the chains and integrated into caves. So, this so-called freedom and reality, can we call it ‘ours’ or is it only ‘theirs’?
Having been able to sit inside for almost half a life, Plato may not be entirely right because the thing now is, the cave isn’t considered a prison anymore, light is no longer situated at the back but is everywhere and the shadows already took shape, influencing the people even. Fascinating if you ask me, but gives me the creeps at the same time. I sometimes find myself surrounded by clowns purging me mentally and emotionally but then, it would always end up laughing – if not glaring, and pointing fingers whenever I make a single mistake. Them directing the light, blinding me, tightening the chains that bind me, in hopes of making myself like them.
It’s funny, however, that at first, I did want to be like them. It was the fame maybe, the perks, the position. But then just as in any other cave, and just like in Plato’s plot, I was able to break free from the shackles. ‘He will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities’ he told me, and unexpectedly I believed him. Yes, a stranger. But what I saw is ‘our’ reality if not mine. It is not perfect but it is far better, if not greater than the one I had. I wished to stay but again, just like in Plato’s plot, I have to go back.
It was not an inch easy tho, going back to square one I mean. Building myself up again, making modifications, and fixing the system. Hell, it was brutal, it ‘is’ brutal and will be brutal. But I remember, and will always bear in mind the last words he said; ‘The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being’
Random, I know, and yes a stranger. But at the end of the day, no matter what, I will always be a prisoner inside Plato’s cave.
Sinag 