What is it teaching us, and (bonus points) what did FX’s Legion (tv show) try to say by mentioning it?
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Because the other response looks like it’s ChatGPT:
The literal story is – imagine growing up chained to a wall in a cave, never able to see outside the cave. What you would see though are the shadows cast by people and animals that walk by. Never having seen other people or animals, you’d assume *the shadows* were the things themselves. Better yet, if a dog eventually entered the cave and licked your face, you wouldn’t recognize what the dog was, even if you had grown to know dog-shadows very well. You’d both be unable to link the meat-dog to the shadow-dog, as well as you’d be unable to even comprehend *what* the meat-dog is, as you have no concept for other physical things – only shadows.
Why is this important?
Plato then goes on to create “the Platonic Ideal” or the truest version of a thing. For example, imagine a chair in your mind, right now, imagine a chair. Have you ever actually seen that chair before? Have you ever touched or sat in a chair that looks exactly like that chair? Maybe, maybe not, but also – considering the vast variety of chairs, the number of legs, or the materials, or the angles, etc. How is it you can always see a chair and know it’s a chair? You haven’t seen *every* chair, have you?
So the Platonic Ideal of a chair is sort of like the ‘core idea of a chair’, the chair that every chair that has ever existed or ever will exist approximates. Every actual chair is just a shadow on the wall cast by the Ideal Chair walking by your cave.
I don’t the TV show you’re talking about so I can’t explain the reference.
It’s meant to show how what we see with our eyes is not necessarily reality, it is just our perception of reality.
To the people in the cave, the shadows on the wall ARE reality, because that is all they have ever known or seen. But we know that they are not actually perceiving reality, just the shadows of reality.
It’s meant to make us think about how we perceive reality. Can we really trust our eyes? What might we be missing or not understanding?
People accustomed to false traditions would return to them even after learning the truth because they are comforted by familiarity.
It’s like a person raised in consumerism becoming ascetic, then returning to materialism because they like a warm bed.
The reference in Legion is about narcissism, and the opposite of what the Allegory of the Cave is truly about. I think it even specifically says that. It’s about willfully seeing others as just shadows, and believing you are the most important thing in the universe, where the Allegory is about seeking truth beyond the material, ideas. The shadows what we perceive in the real world in day to day life, and the sun and all the things outside the cave are the truths we seek and find through reason.
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