Abolishing the World As It Is

By Charles Snyder

“The eyes accustomed to the shadowy appearances on the screen are blinded by the fire in the rear of the cave. The eyes then adjusted to the dim light of the artificial fire are blinded by the light of the sun. But worst of all is the loss of orientation which befalls those whose eyes once were adjusted to the bright light under the sky of ideas, and who must now find their way in the darkness of the cave ... When they come back and try to tell the cave dwellers what they have seen outside the cave, they do not make sense.“

- Hannah Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics“

Imagine human beings who spend their entire lives confined within a cave peering at a shadowy surface of images. These beings see nothing but images of the real. In the Republic, Plato asks his readers to imagine just this. His provocation does not depict humans held captive by a stream of images projected on mobile devices with bright, sensitive surfaces. Though our own cave tests the limits of the image, Plato’s cave remains instructive. Read the entirety of this piece here on Medium.