Plato’s allegory of the cave begins with three prisoners that were confined in the cave since they were born with their back facing the entrance. They were unable to turn their heads and had no idea about the outside world. However, they could see the shadows and hear the echoes of people, animals, and other things that passed by the cave opening. They believed that they were perceiving the actual entities. Suddenly one of the prisoners is freed and brought outside for the first time. He learned that the shadows were illusions of the real entity. He turned to the cave to share his discovery with the other prisoners, however, the prisoners thought that his journey made him stupid. (Gendler)
Plato’s allegory of the cave is representing how our society is. The prisoners that are living inside the cave can be represented as people who don’t know and understand about the “outside” world. In this very present day, there are still many people who don’t have enough information about the world. We know that there are still several countries that are closed to the outside world, in which the citizens have no information about other countries and the world because of media manipulation by the government.
North Korea is one of the example. North Korea citizens has no right to access information about the outside world because the government has a great influence in the media and the media is being manipulated. These people only know the small world that they are living in, which is North Korea. They have no idea what is happening in the outside, because they have no access to that information. They are like living in a cave, without having enough information about the world reality.
Even though we are living in a big country. like United States and China, we are still living in the shadow. The information that we received from media such as news, television, and internet might not be true. There is biased news everywhere. It is difficult to distinguish the truth and lies. There is many information that is being hide by the government. There are too many secrets about the society that we don’t know about.
The digital era that we are in also can represent Plato’s allegory. Most of young people in these days tend to communicate with each other through internet using social media like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others. Talking using social media may seems like you actually interacting with other people directly, but it is not. Interacting with people directly, face to face, is different with chatting through phone. There is no emotion or facial expression in chatting, even though there are emojis. Using social media to have many online friends is worthless, if you are not interacting with them in real life. Social media create an illusion of human interaction.
People who have been interacting using social media without meeting in person are like the prisoners who are interacting with the shadows of living things. Many of us forget the purpose of social media and replace actual human interaction. Virtual reality devices also create a similar illusion as social media. We need to be aware about these illusions that bring us further from reality. These devices and applications are being invented to make our life easier, not to replace reality with illusion.
