Blog on Perspectives

Plato's Cave allegory was a very intriguing piece. It effectively illustrates the way that experience and open-mindedness can lead to a much higher form of knowledge and understanding. The story is about three men who see the world a certain way, and have no other way of seeing it, when one of them is released into the real world and is in awe at what it is like. The man who escaped goes back to share his findings but he is looked at as the crazy one. The message the story is trying to give is the truth of how people view the world. Although we may think one thing to be true, it could possibly just because we are "chained up" so to speak, and that we cannot truly see what is really going on. However, once we do see what is true, those who held our previous beliefs will not accept that. It truly makes you wonder if you are just living in a cave, and how you would ever know that you are. Could we all just be in a cave that we've been living in our whole lives, and if so, how do we get out, and how do we know when we are out? When I lived in the USA, I didn't even know the names of most other countries, let alone where they were and what their cultures were like. I moved to Germany and everything seemed weird and different and unnatural and I regularly thought to myself "how can people live like this?" Then after moving to China that feeling got even stronger, that feeling of awe and strangeness induced by the culture of a new place. However, upon returning to the USA, everyone seemed so closed minded, not accepting, and borderline racist. It was then I realized that I had seen the truth, that the life one might know in their home country is not the "right" way of living, it is simply the way you are familiar with, the way you were brought up. After traveling and seeing different cultures and living styles, I realized everyone has a different perspective, and only by looking through each of them can you exit the cave and see that life is what you make it, and that everyone's can be vastly different.