The Cave that Cannot be Seen

Plato is puzzled as well

Imagine everything you have ever known is a falsehood constructed to prevent you from reaching the truth; everything in your life that you currently accept as truth is in actuality a lie. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, this is exactly what is going on. The cave dwellers remain chained to posts and accept the shadows they see on the wall in front of them as reality, for it is all they have ever known. This reality for them – or lack thereof – appears horrible and misguided to those looking in from the outside, but for the cave dwellers there is nothing else that exists for them to set as a standard. They do not know that the status of their situation, so they live their lives in ignorance of the world around them. It is with this in mind that we, the “enlightened” readers know - or think we know - what actually occurs in life and are able to call the shadows for what they really are: shadows. However, all of this is based off of what we think we know as well, presenting an interesting logical question: can true enlightenment ever be reached?

Truman in the process of self-awareness

Much like the Allegory of the Cave, Jim Carrey stars in a movie, The Truman Show, in which Truman acts out his daily life, unaware that it is the subject of a TV show. His every action is monitored by thousands of cameras, and all of the people involved in his life are actors that are in on the secret. Everyone in the show is aware that it is a show, except for Truman himself. In this, Truman (played by Jim Carrey) plays a role akin to one the cave dwellers, unaware that the life he is living is a false one. However, as the movie progresses Truman slowly becomes more aware of the pretenses that have been put in place in order to keep him oblivious.  As he slowly becomes more enlightened, he sees the world in a totally new light and is much more able to spot the tools that have been put in place to keep the TV show running and on the air. With the ending scene, he is finally able to break free of the massive television set and journey out into the real world. Similar to the cave dweller leaving the cave for the first time, Truman is in for a shock for the world outside the set.

All of this is very unsettling for multiple reasons, mainly being that there is generally no way to know if such a situation could exist in any of our own lives today. Are we the subject of some TV show? Is everyone in the world besides you in on some huge secret? There really is no true way to know, and that is what is the most frightening. Moreover, would we want to leave behind the comfortable lives we currently live, if proven falsehoods, for some uncharted territory? Either way, no matter how far we travel down the path of enlightenment in every day life; we could still be trapped in some allegorical cave to which there is no end in sight rendering such enlightenment useless.

With this in mind, is true enlightenment ever an actual possibility? Immanuel Kant, in his An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, asserts that “enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” However, what if this so-called “immaturity” is not just self-imposed, but rather also put in place by some outside party. In this case, even if man were able to become enlightened, it would all be for naught for he is living an illusion. This dilemma, while extremely concerning, can never truly be solved, for there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not this metaphorical cave actually exists.

Just as with the cases of Truman and the cave dwellers, there is no way to escape the illusion unless a way out presents itself. In the case of Truman, the way out presented itself through a series of mistakes on the part of the film crew that led to his self-awareness. For the cave dwellers, the way out only came about through a forceful removal from the chains of bondage. With the case of humanity, for all we know, all of us could be living in some Matrix type world, where humanity in its entirety is trapped in an illusion. Or, with an idea even more concerning, the governmental institutions that are currently in place could be creating an illusion through the media, in order to retain control and power. Either way, the scary truth with the possibility of such a metaphorical cave, is that true enlightenment can never actually be reached within such a cave. Then again, if true enlightenment were to be reached within such a fabrication, would it not still be true enlightenment? Food for thought, and another possible blog post.