Think about having to live on a day to day bias utterly unaware of the truth and then facing a so-called reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ are to be considered blinded from a society that is real, as well as the expressive actors in the movie “The Matrix” as they are replications of what seems like what the real world could handle. They acknowledge what their instincts are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all of reality.
Plato, the well-known and intelligent ancient Greek philosopher, wrote ‘The Allegory of the Cave,’ to help educate society about enlightenment and what actual reality is and what it looks like. In the movie ‘The Matrix,’ Neo was born into a so-called world, which ended up being a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is revolved around technology and machines that decide every move that he will make. Even though the Wachowskis brothers think that the truth matters, how would anyone know what they are seeing wasn’t reality if they haven’t lived any differently before.
In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato thoroughly provoked that one of the prisoners who was locked up, yet still considered to be a philosopher or the intellectual member of society, would eventually escape from the cave and endure the scary outside world to uncover the truth, but why does Plato want him to go out and have him be taking the risk that he is going to have to adjust his whole life and remanence that the life he was living before was all a dream.
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The captive in the cave that Plato refers to shows resemblance to Neo in “The Matrix,’ hence when he is starting his outing and Is being set free from his pod that technology has helped the machines create. Shortly after the prisoner of the cave fled he is now able to look all at real-life objects and not just what he thought to be real. In addition to the statement made previously in ‘The Matrix,’ Neo is allowed to use his own eyes initially for the first time, and able see the horrid truth that he is stuck nourishing in a human factory.
In history a British writer and military leader, Winston Churchill, once said “The truth is so precious that she must be protected by a sentinel of lies”. It’s in human’s nature to lie to one another. Our society is depriving, misleading, abusing and deceiving one another under the appearance of business, government, and society. No one can stay true to what they say forever because dishonesty will be forced out of everyone, as well as we are all obligated to negotiate and to make a way for society to be comfortable or for the sake of security with someone or something.
There are two kinds of truth… an ultimate truth and a relative truth. We live at the relative truth level because the ultimate truth is too of a high bar for a person limited ego’s perception. Relative truth is to be considered to be uncertain sometimes. No sane person can call others out because we all are misled at one point or another. It’s a moral code we all respect.
In Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave,’ he suggests that the prisoner that was let out to experience the real world would be shocked by what he was seeing. He would also not be able to come to a conclusion as to why the realities that he used to think were the only ‘reality’ while seeing the shadows in the cave are not what the real world is actually like.
The prisoner would try to convince himself that what he saw while just simply living life through shadows was truer than what is he actually is living and seeing now out in the real world. When Neo is resuscitated from being separated from the pod, Morpheus tells him what the world is like and what kind of place it’s in now and Neo is in distress and denial due to his past life. This advanced knowledge of the truth stressed out Neo so much so that he had physical side effects such as vomiting and passing out.
The unleashed prisoner in “The Allegory of the Cave” might think that what he is seeing was the just a figment of his imagination like the shadows on the wall and not what others perceive of the real world. All together this proves the point that the dream is more real hence that the characters in the short story are living in vitality and through what they perceive the real world to be. But if the dream is more real, does that mean that ignorance is bliss?
An all-time favorite Socrates quote for much of humanity is ‘The unexamined life is not worth living,’ This can be perceived in many ways by many different people. While talking about the play Oedipus Rex By Socrates, the meaning is even harder to depict. To add, the story of Oedipus, who is the king of Thebes, makes this statement even harder to find believable. Would Oedipus have taken the situation more seriously if he was ignorant to the knowledge of his birthing and the destiny which was predicted to someday happen to him?
On a real note, his life could have gone so much smoother if was blinded from knowing about his true ancestries. He follows the Socratic technique of searching and finding and proceeds down the path that leads him to pain and distraught. So, after it was all done, was any of it worth it? That is a solid no; it was not. Having him be considered satisfied with how he thinks about himself would have prevented Oedipus and his family especially his children from dealing with a lot of pain. However, as Greek Tragedies always lay out, we have to see his fall from his highest peak. In the bliss of ignorance, agony is prevented.
Why would a man not want to be ignorant? Oedipus would have been fine having ignorance. The quote ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’entirely isn’t a reality for Oedipus Rex. Even though it may have a sense of importance and a significant path for our own lives, Oedipus Rex would have done better by lacking it. Certainly, for some time the unexamined life is deprived in a theoretical sense. On behalf of the unexamined life, it would have been considered a simple one, so much so, that he would have had a delightful, long life while never uncovering the truth behind his birth.
All in all, after reading the short story ‘Allegory of the Cave,’ reading the play ‘Oedipus Rex’ and lastly after watching ‘The Matrix’ they all sparked philosophical questions associated with actual and apparent reality. The truth is a lot stronger than fiction. In my opinion, the Matrix and Oedipus Rex and The Allegory of the cave are just tales that will never be considered an actual reality.
