Did You Grow Up Under a Rock? –Hannah Schofield
Book VII
This book revolves around Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave. Imagine this: your whole life you have been chained up and restricted to one line of sight in a dark, underground cave. You know nothing except the warmth of a burning fire behind you and dancing shadows on the one cave wall you're allowed to look at. You guess at what the shadows are and, eventually, they become your reality.
Sounds horribly despairing, right? Well, it should to us because we have been exposed to so much more within the span of our lives. Much more than a single cave wall with controlled shadows for our entertainment and development. To these prisoners, it is nothing short of normal simply because it is all they have ever known. They would never witness the vibrancy of nature, the warmth of the sun, or the image of themselves reflected back at them from the water's edge. What would happen if one of these fellows were allowed to leave, allowed to experience everything previously listed? Further into Book VII, it describes how the prisoner would eventually habituate and adjust to his new findings, therefore, refusing to go back into the cave only to become a prisoner again. The prisoner would only want to expose the others to what's waiting just beyond their own shackles.
When I read this I found similarities in the prisoners and children subject to what is known as "hurricane parenting". Weird, yes. But think about it, aren't severely sheltered children always monitored at all times with strict limitations and very little to no contact with the outside world? When they finally get an ounce of freedom and exposure, they never want to be that constricted again. They want to experience and live according to their own will. Once they have adapted to new knowledge, they want to expose the new truths to other sheltered children. A strange analogy to explain such a complex metaphor, but, alas, it is how my mind functions, unfortunately.
Commented: Sophia's & Moriah's
This book revolves around Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave. Imagine this: your whole life you have been chained up and restricted to one line of sight in a dark, underground cave. You know nothing except the warmth of a burning fire behind you and dancing shadows on the one cave wall you're allowed to look at. You guess at what the shadows are and, eventually, they become your reality.
Sounds horribly despairing, right? Well, it should to us because we have been exposed to so much more within the span of our lives. Much more than a single cave wall with controlled shadows for our entertainment and development. To these prisoners, it is nothing short of normal simply because it is all they have ever known. They would never witness the vibrancy of nature, the warmth of the sun, or the image of themselves reflected back at them from the water's edge. What would happen if one of these fellows were allowed to leave, allowed to experience everything previously listed? Further into Book VII, it describes how the prisoner would eventually habituate and adjust to his new findings, therefore, refusing to go back into the cave only to become a prisoner again. The prisoner would only want to expose the others to what's waiting just beyond their own shackles.
When I read this I found similarities in the prisoners and children subject to what is known as "hurricane parenting". Weird, yes. But think about it, aren't severely sheltered children always monitored at all times with strict limitations and very little to no contact with the outside world? When they finally get an ounce of freedom and exposure, they never want to be that constricted again. They want to experience and live according to their own will. Once they have adapted to new knowledge, they want to expose the new truths to other sheltered children. A strange analogy to explain such a complex metaphor, but, alas, it is how my mind functions, unfortunately.
Commented: Sophia's & Moriah's
There's a lot in this book concerning censorship, sheltering and what not and that is one of my biggest quips about it. If you cut off the evil, you are unable to allow people to learn and grow from the mistakes before that will not protect from future mistakes. - Phillip Vo
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