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Stefan Molyneux gives a dramatic retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
So picture this. Picture a cave, like an upside-down bowl. It’s huge. And people are born and put in chains. And forced to sit facing a wall. Now, behind them is a big fire. And in front of the fire but still behind them, are people doing hand puppet shows, and cutouts of trees, and maybe they throw a chicken up once in a while.
Now, the people are chained, and they can only look forward. So they can’t see the fire, they can’t see the cutout things in front of the fire, the only thing they can see are the shadows. You can see this in the video, right? The shadows. All they can can see that blob, like, moving between and my hand and my head. That’s all they can see, they can’t see me, they can’t see the light source. All they can see are the shadows.
All they can see are the shadows. Or you can think of it as a movie theater, they can’t see the projector, they can’t see the film, they can’t see the projectionist, they can only see what’s being shown on the wall.
Now, all they can see are these shadows. And so they name the shadows, they discuss the shadows, they make jokes about the shadows. And that’s all they know. For them, the shadows cast by the flickering fire and the blurry objects held in front of the fire, they’re looking at the cave wall, all they see are the shadows. And this is their world.
Now, the philosopher is the man who undoes his chains.
Imagine this: you find a way, you get a hairpin or you find some way you could undo your shackles. And you stand up, and your back hurts like hell. It’s painful. And you’re dizzy, you’ve never stood up before. And you turn around and you look at the fire. But it’s so bright, because you’ve only ever seen this flickering, you’re actually looking at the fire. And your eyes hurt, and they tear. And it’s disorienting. Y’know, it’s that Keanu Reeves waking up in The Matrix moment, what the hell? I still remember that, what the hell is going on here? I thought the movie was falling apart. Nope, coming together.
So you’re looking at the fire. Your eyes hurt, your back hurts. And you sense deep down, in your lizard comply-with-society brain, you sense deep down… that if you keep looking at that fire, and you’re seeing the world as it really is, there’s no going back. You can’t go back.
So you want to close your eyes. And you want to get back down in that comfortable hunched position, and you want to get back to everyone looking at the shadows, and ‘hey, those shadows are really cool – oh look, I like that shadow, that’s really cool, that shadow looks a little bit like a tree, that one looks like a flying elephant.’
Oh look, there’s fame, there’s beauty, there’s wealth, there’s all these things which we think are real and true…
You want to go back into your chains. But let’s say a grip, orc-tight, holds onto your forearm and drags you away from the chains. And it takes you up a tunnel. And as you are being pulled up the tunnel, you’re fighting ferociously because you want to go down and rejoin your companions and everything that you knew and everything that you grew up with and all your friends and all the topics that you had before… You’re being pulled up. Against your will.
You’re fighting like an eel being dragged out of a river. ‘Cause it’s getting brighter, and it causing an unbelievable pain in your head. Because the fire was bright enough. But now, you’re being pulled out of the tunnel into daylight. And your head is pounding. And your eyes are crying a rain of tears. And it feels like your brain is being burned alive from the brightness. And your eyes, having grown up in darkness in this cave with this flickering light that’s very dim, shining off the sweaty laughing cheeks of your companions, who are all discussing the shadows, nothing but…
You squint, you cover your eyes, you just look through the cracks of your fingers. Right? Ever do that, see those orange lines where your fingers meet? You can only see shadows, you can’t adjust. You squint a little and you can only see the reflections of things in water, and you can see people, but you can only see their reflections, because any time you raise your eyes, it’s too blinding.
And as your eyes slowly adjust from a lifetime in darkness, you can see dark bright things. The moon, when it’s really cloudy. You can see the underbelly, the slow rolling elephant underbelly of the clouds. You can see the stars. You can see very distant lights, maybe a city far over the horizon or the light-fingered sweep of a searchlight in the great distance.
And as your eyes adjust, eventually, one morning you see the great glorious orange orb of the sun, rising in ripples above the savanna.
And as your eyes are fully adjusted, you can, with great open eyes, and open mind and an open heart, stand above the promontories of the world and see as Jesus did, everything laid out underneath. You can see the tapestry of the farm fields, you can see the glorious jigsaw puzzles of assembled towns. You can see the winding rivers, the clouds scudding like slowly rolling sheep over, with the shadows of their passing below. The purple mountains, the waterfalls, it’s beautiful, and you’re grateful, so grateful, against your will you were liberated from the cave, you were shown the world, and now you stand in the warmth of the sun, seeing all that is. Not just without pain, but with great gratitude and love, you absorb everything that is in the world, and you can see everything that is in the world. And your eyes, as the saying goes, are being used for the first time ever.
And you love this world! And you do cartwheels, and you throw yourself in icy streams, and you sunbathe. And you taste fruit, which does not grow underground. And it is paradise for you, in this world of light and day and sunlight.
But you think of your friends and your family. Your playmates. All who are trapped in the dark cave, a mile underground, laughing and giggling and crying and chattering, while staring at the shadows of made-up things on a damp wall.
And you want to go back. You think about it for a while, and you find the hole, and you go down the hole. You go down the passage, you go down the dungeon tube. And as you go down, from bright daylight to underground Stygian darkness, you can’t see. All you have is a dazzle of everything you have absorbed in the outside world, and you can’t see. And you stumble. And you bang your head, you bang your elbow, you bang your hip. You limp, but you’re going to help those people.
And then you come into the cave. And you can’t see anything. All you see is the purple fading splotches of the light that you have absorbed in the world above and beyond.
And everyone’s like, ‘Hey! Where did you go? You’re back!’
And you walk straight into a rock. And you crack your shin, and it’s bleeding, ’cause you can’t see a thing!
And people think that you’ve been robbed and blinded, and you’re wounded, you’ve got bruises, you’re bleeding, you can’t see anything, and they say, ‘who did this to you?! It is terrible, what has been done to you! We hate whoever has harmed you, and blinded you and broken you in this manner! We are outraged!’
And you say, ‘I’m not hurt. I’m not hurt. I can’t see right now because I… I can’t even describe to you what I have seen. But you must see it yourselves, you must see it yourselves. I must bring you to the world of daylight.’ And you begin to undo their chains. And you begin to pull them. Up the corridor.
And they’re struggling, the eel being pulled from the river, they’re struggling and they’re fighting and they’re kicking and they’re biting. And they think you are sent by the devil himself to pull them to the place of blindness, brutality, bruising, and torture that you have escaped from, that you are sent by evil to make their lives terrible, their lives of former comfort and conviviality and laughing and joking at the shadow puppets.
And a rock is passed up the chain of people you’re pulling up, and to save themselves from the injuries that you have sustained and from the madness that you are dragging them into, and the destruction and the death they perceive at the end of this cave, and as their eyes are hurting and their brains are throbbing and their headaches are splitting from the growing light as you drag them up the corridor, they pass a big rock up the chain… and crack you over the head. To save themselves from the terrible fate you are dragging them to, they kill you.
‘Regretfully, I am sorry that he went mad.’ ‘I am sorry that he’s trying to drag us into this lava of god knows where the hell we were going.’ And they struggle back down, and their eyes feel better, and their heads stop hurting, their eyes stop tearing. And they sit down and they put their chains back on and they go back to watching the shadows. They miss you, they’re sad about what happened. But you were dangerous. And they saved themselves.
That is a very hard-won-by story that Plato tells.
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