Plato's Allegory Of The Cave

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In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Plato writes about how people are often fooled and lead astray from the truth by a ruler or, in Plato’s cave, the “puppeteers”. In prompt number one, someone is saying that “Gen Y” have become prisoners to technology, saying how, instead of using technological devices for information and enlightenment, they are using it for communication purposes. We know from Socrates’ example about the cave that in order to know the truth, the “prisoners” must break free from their restraints and must make the journey up the steep hill to get out of the cave. In order for this to happen though, the teacher must drag the student up this hill force him outside into an enlightened world. They would be forced to look at different…show more content…
This process is what the steep hill represents. The journey to true knowledge and enlightenment is a rough one and taking such a journey means the prisoner is learning that they things he was taught to believe were true, were wrong. Once they escape the cave, they are forced into the sun. The sun represents true knowledge and beliefs. Once outside, the prisoner will see what is true, and he will be resistant to accept them (141). This can goes for Gen Y as well. Someone will have to force a single person of this group of prisoners and force them to seek knowledge without being absorbed in technology. This will be rough for them, because they have been taught that all knowledge can be obtained electronically. Finding and seeking information without electronic devices will be tough for them as they have to learn a whole new way of learning. This can be seen as them making the journey up the steep hill and out of the cave. Once they are outside of the cave, the see true knowledge. While the student is learning a whole new way, they find information that conflicts with what the puppeteers have taught. They become resilient and refuse to accept that this new information is right and what they have been taught in the past is wrong (141). As they are outside they cave longer though, they begin to accept these new ideas as the truth and he is able to think critically and evaluate

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