I Learn That Sharpie is Superior to Crayola While Drawing A Cave
So, this is my cave. My idea behind it is that we’re
introduced to something, and we become obsessed and don’t really “branch out”
from them. I cave, as you can see, has the supporting structure at the opening
comprised of social media platforms, parents, school, and books. These are
supposed to represent what we learn from. The more we depend on these single
sources and trust their validity (Learned how to use that word in history. Thanks
Kochanuk), the further we find ourselves traveling into the cave. The interior
of the cave is black and windowless because once we find ourselves engrossed
and all trusting in something, it’s hard to turn around and find our way back
to what may be called truth or reasoning. As my stellar drawing skills show,
books (like the Bible or the Quran) also add to our sheltering from what is the
truth. Some religious extremists don’t believe in science because what they’ve
read has told them to believe otherwise. To me, this is what Plato’s cave is
all about, our refusal of knowledge in favour of security (security as in the
comfort of religion or what you think you already know).
So, if social media/parents/school are keeping us from seeing what is true-true, how will your generation learn to differentiate between what is, what we will loosely call "good," and what is, what we'll pejoratively call, "crap"? In other words, how are you going to come to know?
ReplyDeletehttp://soficanttok.blogspot.ca/2015/01/platos-cave-raging-about-dinosaurs.html
ReplyDelete^ I kind of explained here better what I thought of Plato's Algorithm of the Cave.
In a sense I think that the only way we will be able to understand the difference between what is valid and what is "crap" is by (sorry to throw an IB term in here) critical thinking. We need to question just about everything, trying to see bias and lies within what we are trying understand if we are going to sift through the false ideas implanted by social media/parents/school. Like for example, there was a teacher in Alberta that taught for 20 yeas that the Holocaust was completely fabricated and didn't actually happen. I'm pretty sure with a little research and critical thinking the students would have easily realized that the teacher was completely wrong.