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If you are not familiar with The Allegory of the Cave by the great Greek philosopher, Plato, then you really should Google the hell out of it. I can help you if you’re too busy. Here’s a great little video for you. Essentially, Plato observes that we live in a false reality where images are presented to us and we accept them willingly without question. We adopt them as truth and chain ourselves to them. We love them because we do not have to think for ourselves. Until we break free of those chains and experience a higher metaphysical state of being, we will continue to be prisoners to other’s messages and be forced to live our lives based on the reality they provide to us. And, even after we find this enlightenment, we are hard pressed to convince our brothers and sisters that the lives they have been living has been a product of unjust confinement. Their world is turned upside down and what they previously believed was comfortable reality becomes an assault on everything they knew, so, they refuse it.
There are plenty of us still in the cave and those of us that have felt the sun must continue to drag the others out even if they are kicking and screaming.
You can readily point to reality TV and it’s influence on pop culture. The Kardashians and the Honey Boo-Boos, the Duck Dynasties and the Real Housewives have been a norm in our culture that we cannot let go of. They have influenced our fashion and our dialogue making our interests not truly of our own or with any sort of value to our everyday lives. They appear on magazine covers every week for every stupid word they say and every little interfamilial spat or inane event that captures our divided attention.
It also can be said that commercials create our reality. They provide images of what a woman “should” look like or what a man “should” act like. Women are still portrayed as sex objects and men are characterized as strong and aggressive. Therefore, we try to emulate those behaviors despite what our true, inner nature tells us. Our food choices are determined by labels like “lite” or “gluten-free”, which tell us that what we’re eating now is somehow wrong. Pharmaceutical ads tell us that we always have some sort of problem that can only be fixed by what they prescribe, even if the cost of the side effect can be much worse that the symptoms.
How have we let ourselves be chained in the cave like this? And, what can we do to break free and feel the sun on our faces, drink pure waters and succor ourselves on the fruits of paradise? The answer, my friends, is education and its embrace of critical thinking.
Critical thinking allows our children to speak up to ideas that don’t compute.. It allows them to question the data and demand observable evidence for the claims that are being made. Education should be a two-way street, not a series of facts that they swallow down like bitter, useless pills. Students should be allowed to freely express themselves and to be invited to do so by parents, educators and the rules and regulations that govern our educational system. Quite simply, students should play with knowledge as much as with a soccer ball or baseball. They need to gain true knowledge so they may experience reality for themselves, not have it created for them.
The game is rigged against them. Children with little or no mathematical aptitude are being forced to learn trigonometry. Yet, those same children can have an appetite for history that is not being fully whetted. Where then are our next great leaders coming from? Creative students are being led down the path of analytical thinking when their natures are the opposite, which may rob our culture of the next Van Gogh or Michelangelo or Shakespeare. By putting our children in a cave of our making, we shape their realities for them, not necessarily, how they are supposed to be. This is the path towards taking pills for Restless Leg Syndrome, bulimia and, quite possibly, the advancement of misogyny and the Rape Culture.
In Plato’s Allegory, a hero takes one of the prisoners into the real world where they are shocked, but soon become enlightened. That hero is Socrates, as he was that person for Plato. The question is, who will be our vanguard now? Who will guide our future and our present to this higher form of metaphysics?
The answer can only be you and me.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
I challenge the concept that kids are not bad in math, or trigonometry. I find it tragic that kids are being put in situations where they are measured without appropriate support. Current math education produces winners, yes, but also losers. As math is a foundation based concept – you can’t just pick one concept up without comprehending a prerequisite concept. Whereas history allows you to jump in and out. Kids that are bad in trigonometry likely just missed some earlier concept, and the issues cascades. Supportive educators and parents need to simply work with them, or with a math tutor,… Read more »
I think this is a fine observation of how the vast majority of people live their lives. I’ve always been very critical of the marketenrs for this very reason. It uses our worst fears of not fitting in against us, and suppresses us expressing our own knowledge of ourselves and how we’d want to truthfully express our individuality. Great to be reminded of this.