Читать книгу The Punk and the Professor - Billy Lawrence - Страница 6

PREFACE

The professor steps out in front of the room with an invitation to another world. Behind him is a giant lit screen with a picture of the opening of a cave labeled along the bottom: “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, Greece, 360 B.C.E.

The professor asks,

Why do we appreciate it?

The students stare back.

Because we live it, he says.

Plato sets up a scenario where prisoners are born into the world deep down in a cave beneath the surface of the world. The prisoners are chained and face one direction— the cave wall straight ahead. The chains are so tight that they cannot even turn to their sides. They have no concept of what’s behind them. All they see is the cave wall in front of them— this is all they know. This is all we know. We are the prisoners born in the cave.

Behind us sits a roaring fire. Above and beyond these flames is a platform— a kind of walkway where puppet-masters hold up puppets and statues in the form of various elements of nature— a tree, a bird, a tiger, a lamb— and they reflect onto the wall like the fake monsters one makes in a campfire. We see the shadows and believe these visions are reality. Shadows and illusions— this is all we really know sometimes, maybe most of the time.

The professor reveals a new scenario where a prisoner is unchained.

The prisoner gets up and looks around. He is now able to see the statues and puppets but is fooled once more. He thinks he is now looking at the real tree, the real bird, the real tiger, and the real lamb. We know he is staring at just another layer of reality— the puppets and statues that imitate the real thing. To see the truth he must crawl out of the cave to the surface of the planet, and there’s no holding him back. The prisoner is bound to come out. Sometimes he wants to crawl out on his own, hungry, curious, eager. Sometimes he is dragged out, against his own will, for his own good.

The professor walks over to the side of the classroom and opens the blinds on the large window that spans half the length of the wall.

Look out there, he says pointing out to the far end of campus. A thick green forest seems to stretch for miles. Blue sky painted with a scatter of white fills the top of the window.

We only see what we see. When we’re in the forest we see the individual trees right before us, but we can’t see the whole of the forest. When we’re far away we can’t see the individual trees. We can’t see the details of the bark and the leaves. From afar we don’t know much about what those individual trees look like or anything else going on in those woods. We don’t even know what’s going on in the next room, do we? There is a lot we don’t see. There’s danger out there. There are good things too, but we can’t see them either. We would need a microscope and a telescope. We can’t measure them with the eye.

Our senses fool us.

The professor clarifies— We are all in the cave. The puppet-masters are insiders, the ones who control our world. They’re the ones with confidence; they’re the ones selling something. But even they are inside their own caves and don’t clearly see the world for what it truly is. They are the biggest fools because they think they have something over everyone else.

The professor takes a good look at the students and then asks,

What do you think it will take to get us to see?

The professor challenges us to remember.

Wheels turn in one student’s eyes. He closes them and remembers.