Term Papers on The Allegory Of The Cave: Turn Around

Term Paper Title	The Allegory Of The Cave: Turn Around
# of Words	1324
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.3

The Allegory of the Cave: Turn Around

     Putting the Allegory of the Cave into my own words seems comparable to
the Christian idea of using the lord's name in vain.  First, I'd like to
introduce a phenomenon I have observed throughout my life time.  I call it soul
resonance.  Bear with me here.  When two objects emit sympathetic vibrations,
the sound or force multiplies.  Example:  Two tuning forks of the same frequency
are struck upon each other and held a few feet apart.  The vibration is much
stronger.  Something basic about each object recognizes a similar quality in the
other, and amplifies it.  As with so many other laws of science, this law
applies to many other phenomena.  I believe this is what people feel when they
first hear the Allegory of the Cave . . . soul resonance.  Somehow, something
deep inside tells them that here we have found a singular truth.
     The Allegory, taken as the story of one man, narrates his life from
ignorance to enlightenment.  He sits within a cave, facing away from a blazing
fire.  He stares at the wall opposite him, watching pretty shadow puppets.  He
listens to the exotic, wonderful, and large words whispered in his ears by the
puppeteers.  He would naturally turn around, or perhaps even stand, but chains
bind him to the ground, and the puppeteers have servants who hold his head in
place.  One day, a situation arises where he finds that the chains are broken,
and he stands. This is against the will of the servants, but they have no
physical power over him, if he does not allow it.  He turns round and sees the
fire and the puppeteers and then he realizes that all has been lies.  He is not
what they have told him.  He does not feel what they have said he does.  The
fire blinds him.  The puppeteers, seeing they have lost another to knowledge,
quickly get rid of him by pushing him into the dark cave that looms off to the
side, hoping for his demise.  The man is lost, he has gone from darkness to
light to darkness once again.  Something within him tells him to climb, and he
does, scrabbling.  He cuts himself many times, and many times he almost falls to
his demise on the rocky ground below.  He pauses often.  Until there comes a
time when he sees a distant light at the exit/entrance to the cave.  When he
sees this light, he is not sure whether this is yet another shadow puppet on the
wall, but it is upward and that is where he must go.  When he comes out into the
bright sunlight, he cannot see, the brightness of the sun alone has stricken him
temporarily blind.  He stumbles about, closing his eyes for periods of time and
then reopening them, adjusting himself to the light.  And one day, he stares at
the sun without fail, and knows.
     Let's start at the beginning.  He is in the cave, he is in the darkness
of his own ignorance.  Even the light behind him is a false representation of
the glorious sun outside.  People have assaulted him with their falsehoods,
telling him what God is, what Ideals are, and what his morals should be.  These
are the shadows on the wall, a terrestrial God, money, Law, etc.  When he was
young he may have questioned these ideas, but if you say something enough to
someone, they will come to believe it.  The man built his own chains, fashioned
them from a forge in his own soul, and soaked them in a barrel of his ignorance.
He learned resignation, and now he sits in an office all day, being unhappy, his
blood-pressure rising.  One day he snaps, for it is a drastic force that rips
the chains from the ground.  He turns around for the first time since he was
young, and cries.  He now realizes the truth, he is not who they have told him
he is.  He realizes there are truths inside him that are not the truths of which
they spoke.  And he cries, also, for he sees that he and the puppeteers are the
same.  He weeps at the realization of his own self-imprisonmen...

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