plato's allegory
Plato's Allegory of the Cave contains a lot of ideas that I've been mulling over lately. This is the first time I've read this, and it concisely paraphrases many many conversations I have overheard in Olympia (and on the Evergreen campus in particular). It seems that ascending into the light represents the life choice of the intellectual/artist/poet/philosopher/thinker (etc), while staying buried in the dark of the cave represnts the life choice of "other people" (you know, the people who eat at McDonald's three times week, don't consider watching "Survivor" an ironic guilty pleasure, and who just don't often consider bigger things or question their lives or culture of life's meaning or metaphysics blah blah blah...). Leaving the cave to explore the outside world is the dangerous choice. It is the brave choice. Perhaps it is the foolish choice, because once you leave the cave, you can never be happy inside it again; you will forever be searching for something else. There is a problem though fellow "Arists." Ay, here's the rub: are we being pretentious elitist pricks here? Do we have any right at all to imagine that we are any better off, any wiser, any more intelligent or thoughtful or enlightened, than the cave-dwellers? If we put ourself in a different category, above other people, will our art even matter to anyone besides ourselves? I don't know the answer to these questions. But I don't feel like I'm in the cave- and I've grateful of that.
