Plato’s cave is just the first layer of an infinite recursive cave system
Since very early in my life I’ve been obsessed with understanding the world. It didn’t take long for me to arrive at the same conclusion that Plato did: the world is an illusion. This is illusion is shaped by our “common sense”. The ideas and worldview of our collective consciousness. And the more I understood this “specter” the less power it had in me.
But something was always missing. I kept finding inconsistencies with my worldview. Small things that needed to be adjusted to finally arrive at the “complete truth”. My model of reality was never really complete.
All models are wrong, but some are useful. - George Box
At some point in my adolescence I came across the allegory of the cave by Plato. It was clean, elegant and explained reality. But it still lacked something. Although I felt like I escaped the “cave” I still felt like I was trapped and had a long way to arrive at the outside world. I could always see a light coming from outside reflected in the walls of the cave system. And at each layer the light seemed brighter, but I could - and still can - always see the walls made of stone.
Once you stand up from watching the projections the only path is to keep walking and exploring the cave. The moment you sit down and convince yourself that you escaped the cave and arrived at the outside world, you go back to being a prisoner of the cave. That’s what all thinkers, and groups of thinkers, so far have done. The best ones arrived at methodologies of walking the path. But even those did so by anchoring themselves to some fundamental truth to explain reality. None so far, at least as far as I know, have truly embraced the complete lack of light that being in the cave entails.
But then we have a problem, and a big one: Why? Why keep walking? If there’s no destination, what are we searching? What to we gain?
I have some answers to those questions. Answers that I’m inclined to share and will probably discuss later. But doing so here would be akin to making shadows with puppets in the wall to distract others to sit down and watch - which is not wrong or bad, sometimes we need to sit down and see the shadows to distract ourselves, we even invented devices that we carry around all the time to be able to so at any time - but that’s not my goal here. My goal is to remind you that you may be sitting down and need to keep walking.
The only exception I’ll make is the answer to the “Why?” question that stuck to me the most: love. Unconditional love for all things that live. The desire to understand and love all human beings and all things in the universe. The hatred for unnecessary and avoidable suffering of living things. The moment that I stop walking I’ll inevitably hurt someone without knowing.
But love is just my personal prerogative. I’ll try to give an answer that was given to me by another walker when I was distracted sitting down: “knowledge is the only thing that is truly yours.” That combined with a famous quote by Descartes:
I think therefore I am. - René Descartes
Reminds us of what differentiates us from animals; of what makes us human, and, in some ways, alive: reason. The moment you stop reasoning and rethinking your beliefs and worldview, they stop being tools you use to navigate the cave - which is our reality as there is no escape from the cave - and become your chains. You stop being a walker of the cave, a human living in reality, and become an object. Something that other’s observe. Something that a puppeteer can manipulate.
Maybe either by love or ego you may be bothered by the idea that you may take actions influenced by others or by things you don’t understand and those actions may not be aligned with your intentions. And that may make you want to stand up and go back to walking. Or maybe you’re happy sitting down and may be taking care of others that are also sitting down. Or maybe you’re taking a break watching the shadows. Or you may be a puppeteer making shadows for others (in the same way I’m doing now). But whatever that may be I’m in no way shape or form saying that you are wrong. To do that I would need to know the truth and the only thing that I’m sure is that I’m not right and will never be.
I’m not against stopping and building something in the cave to call a home, even if for a little while (as long as it is done without puppets and shadows). But to do so I would need other walkers that are willing to do the same. And so far I haven’t found them, so I’ll keep walking.