The Allegory of the Cave (Illustrated)

You should read The Allegory of the Cave by Plato.

It really changed my life.

It was the one piece of literature that I think I read that reshaped how I thought about the world and in a single reading I think I understood everything so much differently and what I understood was I don't understand anything. And it was great.

So you read something and you learned a lot about something. I read something and I learned that I don't know anything.

Plato wrote the allegory of the cave. It's basically about two people that their whole life they've been in this cave. They've never seen outside of it. There's a blank wall in front of them. They're chained to the wall basically. They can't move anywhere. All they can do is their whole life is built on what they can see. It's just in front of them. They can't see out of the cave. They don't even know there's outside of the cave. They're just attached to the wall and there's a fire. And that fire in there, you know fire moves and shadows of the fire are all up against the wall. But everything they have, their culture, their language, it's based on what they can see and experience. That's it. And they're limited compared to us because they can't really move anywhere in the cave. Well one of the dudes is let out. He goes, oh my god! I'm out of the cave. There's green grass. There's a sun. What the? And he goes back in and he's like, yo other cave bro! You never get out. And the other guy's like there's no chance. I'm there that can't exist. I've never seen it.

If you've ever read Plato's Allegory of the Cave, you have a decent sense of how this image of types and shadows work.

The way that it works is that things on earth that we see are simply a shadow of the true heavenly realities.

She said, when you face the sun, the shadows of discouragement fall behind you.