If Evolution theory is a fact, then maybe
as man was rushing out of the cave to finally land on the moon, he might have
moved so fast that he left his brain lagging behind trying to catch up with
him. In short, our technological advancement does not reflect our social
advancement, as Isaac Asimov puts it “the saddest aspect of life right now is
that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." We
have gained so much information that can direct us to the truth but we have
lacked capacity to apply it in our lives.
Plato in his allegory of the Men in the cave
illustrates this. In this allegory, four men sit in a cave; they are chained in
such a way that they can only face and gaze at the wall and nothing else. Behind them, is a
flame emitting light and between the flame and the chained men there is a
platform where people walk through carrying some object. When people walk on this
platform, due to the light of the flame, the shadows of the object they carry
are cast on the wall the chained men are looking at.
When the chained men see the shadows, they
engage in an act of naming every shadow that passes before them. They even
award each other to the one who names the most shadows. To them the shadows are
real objects, the shadows are their reality.
One day, one of the chained men becomes
free and his chain fall off from him and is able to get out of the cave. He
discovers that the shadows are not real but manufactured reality; that the
shadows are just a blurred image of the real objects. He discovers all that he
deemed to be true all his life (since he knew no other life) was a shadow. He
gets out of the cave and sees the sun, the source of natural light, the
brightness of the sun hurts his eyes as they are not used to so much light
after being in a cave for so long. Finally he is able to see clearly and see
the real things as they are.
He then decides to go back to the cave to
free the other prisoners so that they can also see the light. But the chained men
protest, they refuse to believe him, they consider him a fool, crazy and they
laugh at him and even conspire to kill him.
A quote wrongly attributed to Harriet
Tubman an American who escaped slavery and made immense effort to help other
people escape from slavery says "I freed a thousand slaves; I could have
freed a thousand more if only they know they are slaves". No man is a
monopoly of wisdom and in one way or another we are in a cave of some sort and
we may not be aware of our own ignorance. To get out of the cave we must accept
our own ignorance. We may have accepted something as facts and they have
survived without questioning, things regarding our view of justice, democracy, economy, Culture,
religion, money, education, fame, love etc. and have viewed their shadow as the
reality due to how they have been projected to us by various entities. And when
we are told the truth we never bother or we get annoyed and yet it is the
truth.
But the good news is that, in one way or
another, all of us have come out of the cave in a given aspect of life. Our
uniqueness, our individual world view are our information out of the norm and
we have a duty to share this knowledge and subjected it to debate and its
validity tested. For years people believed the earth was the center of the
solar system saying otherwise was considered blasphemous. It took courage of a
handful of people like Nicolas Copernicus to break this chain of thought, it
took the stubbornness of people like Martin Luther to question the necessity of
the sale and purchase of the prayer of indulgence which was a misuse of the
moral authority of the church, it took the persistence of people like William Wilberforce
to question the justness of slavery, it took to steadfastness of people like
Wangari Mathaii to safeguard every single tree.
In modern times entities like the media, government,
education religion, culture and others have tended to project shadows to our
mind and chain people's minds to make them view things in a particular way.
This is normally called "Brainwashing". They have vilified the truth.
Telling the truth is seen as a rebellious and revolutionary act worth
punishment for disturbing the status quo. People like Socrates were sentenced
to death in the process on questioning and telling the truth as far as they
understood it. In Modern times Things are seen from the lens of competition to
get richer or more fame or to satisfy greed by all means including destruction
of the environment, selling food and consumable products laced with poison,
causing violence and instabilities to accumulate power, stepping on other
people to get ahead and seeing people as pawns. Majority of this selfish
agendas have led to squandering of opportunities making them scare, living mediocre
and meaningless lives and nobody realizes how much more can be realized outside
this cave of shadows, greed, delusion and illusion.
we all start from the cave, but we must not
stay there, as Thomas Paine says "it is the duty of every man as far as
his ability extends to detect and expose delusion and error" and to
question and punch holes to any assumption made so that a glimmer of light may
shine on them and cast them out with truth. We are all in pursuit of truth. It’s
our duty to break out of the cave, get out of our comfort zones, own up our
ignorance, discover new and unique solutions to solve our problem and we shall
have made one giant step for humanity. We must cause trouble today so that our
children will live under truth and justice, for fear is always a creation of
ignorance and delusion. "To the captives, get out! To those in darkness,
be free"(Isa 49:9, NIV)
