Knowing the Shadows is Only Half the Battle

The other day I was wall-to-wall chatting with an old friend in the States, the Brycester. I hadn't heard from the guy in years, and when I asked where he'd been he made a reference to Plato's Cave.

Story goes something like this: imagine there were these prisoners in this cave and have been there all their lives. They're facing a large wall in the cave and behind them is what appears to be another wall, but above there's actually another level where their captors are. The captors have a big fire and cast shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. Now, to these prisoners, these shadows are their whole world, it's all they know. When they see a shadow of a chicken, they call it a chicken because as far as they know it is a chicken.They don't know about the fire and the captors and the fact that these are the ones casting a shadow of a chicken.
What these captors are doing hoisting a chicken about aimlessly behind a fire as opposed to roasting the fucker is beyond me, but anyway...

Now, imagine one of the prisoners got free. Imagine he turned around, saw the other level, saw his captors and realized they were casting these shadows. He'd been in a dark cave for so long, with nothing but the diffused light from the fire. Imagine if he looked into the fire, how bright it would be.

Imagine the fear in that person, the confusion, the anger - everything he knew to be real was a mere shadow, an illusion. This was the real world, and it was strange and painful and bright.

However, eventually the prisoner would acclimatize, even be happier, knowing the truth. But that prisoner would never be able to go back to his fellow prisoners. He'd never be able to convince them without freeing them first and showing it to them first hand, they'd just think he's nuts. And he'd never be able to go back to the way he used to be, not with the knowledge he now has.

Plato used this allegory to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of education". What we know to be truth until discovering the truth. Knowledge is power, and once knowledge is known, going back to ignorance is impossible.

And though the Brycester may still wonder whether it is his hands or just a shadow, I on the other hand got out of the cave...

...but I'm still not quite acclimatized. I still haven't fully accepted the facts yet, I'm still reeling, affected by the truth. And in truth, a part of me wishes I could go back to the cave, but there's no way. There's no way I can return to that level of ignorance. The truth was staring me at the face the whole time, but all I saw was shadows.

That discovery of knowledge threw my entire world in skew and I've been trying to balance myself ever since, and even though I thought I'd made some headway it turned out I was still biding time, distracting myself with work thinking I was moving forward, making my way out further from the cave and into the real world so that I could cast my eyes on the sun, but I'm not there yet. I'm still down at the crossroads.

But I'm trying. I'm trying real hard to step out into the sun.