Allegory of the Cave

I love Philosophy. One of my favourite Greek philosophers is Plato. When I saw this Garfield strip I thought of his work in the “Allegory of the Cave.”

For my readers who aren’t familiar with the account, it tells of a situation where prisoners are held in a cave. They are bound and placed to sit only with their backs turned to the opening of the cavern. Their view is limited to the back wall and the only thing they can see are silhouettes of objects that pass in front of the opening where the faint light casts a shadow.

One of the prisoners escapes and decides to venture out in to the unknown. Once stepping through the entrance, he is blinded by the intensity of the light as his eyes have grown accustomed to the dimly lit environment. After his eyes have adjusted, he sees that there is a whole new world outside the cave – objects have more depth to them and they are in colour.

He decides to return to share his new experience with the others who are still bound. After the exposure to outside, he has difficulty seeing anything inside in the darkness, wanting more light. He describes all the wonderful things he has seen but they cannot relate. In fact, they start to wonder if he isn’t crazy and how leaving has damaged his sight. The prisoners are resolute about not being freed because they are comfortable with how things are.

I can relate to the freed prisoner. Ever feel like no one’s on your wavelength? Like you’re seeing things in a different dimension from everyone else? And when you give your account the reaction you get is like wide-eyed wonder, “O k a y t h e n …?” You’re always misunderstood?

Yeh… it sure does suck. But alas it’s not going to let me change who I am. A simple example is how some people can’t relate when I say that a shade of green has more yellow in it. Blue is blue. Yellow is yellow. Right? How you see some other colour in a colour?

I’m sensitive. Sometimes overly so and it’s because of how I think. I’ve been told many times that I “think too much” and people get in trouble when I think. Hmmm… Sorry? I don’t want to live my life with limited scope and not be able to have a deeper understanding of everything I’m interested in. And I don’t mean to be condescending either. I’m just different.

Right now I am just trying to make myself comfortable in the patch of weeds. Why can’t we all accept that the one thing we all have in common is that we’re different?