The Shadows of Reality

The Shadows of Reality

We are like the people in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” The people chained to the cave were forced to look at projections and shadows that were cast upon the wall. Because the shadows were the only thing they had seen, they perceived them to be the “truth”. Today our “shadows” have become the media, death, and pain which influence what we believe to be “truth.” The media, death, and pain are fairly common in today’s world and we encounter them often enough. Very few have reached the real “reality” ruled by thought and reason. Life is a struggle in which achieving enlightenment and seeing “reality” is the goal. We have a biased outlook on life because we are imperfect. Our notion of reality is distorted from the shroud of ignorance that surrounds us.

Most of our information about current events comes from the media. The newspapers along with the television news and radio stations publish their own take on events to the general public. Their ideas are formed mostly to benefit their sponsors and colossal corporations. The general public in turn shapes an idea off of the tainted ideas of the media. We either understand what they publish as the truth which is the more likely case or disbelieve it completely. For example, one article from the associated press states that “2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days.” Because of this statement and many others like it, the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site is getting emails from fourth graders saying that they are “too young to die.” Meanwhile Mayans near the Yucatan peninsula think that the idea of the world ending is ridiculous and have more “real problems like rain to worry about.” Television news is another example of propaganda. We ...

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... we have a “utopia.” The shadows that every person has to struggle to break free of are cast by the media and their sponsors, death, pain, and ultimately fear. Every individual is a trailblazer that must have the initiative and the courage to turn to the mouth of the cave and seek out the light. We are ultimately turned away from the light because it is the easier option. The state of denial that almost everyone goes through is just the first test we are put through in the process of seeing the light and coming out of the cave. We become imprisoned by our own beliefs regardless if those beliefs are thinking that all men are rotten apples, my beloved son is not dead, simply missing, or that my husband isn’t a murdered because he couldn’t hurt a fly. Our society today is suffocating with shadows and our job is to shine a light in an attempt to disperse those shadows.