"The cave. Remember your experience at the cave," Yoda warns the impetuous Luke Skywalker. Each time I think about Plato's analogy of the cave, this line echoes in my mind. No matter how many philosophies I learn, my thoughts continually return to Plato's comparison of our reality to shadows on the wall of a cave. I won't try to recreate the entire idea as anyone reading this obviously has access to the Internet, but the basic concept as I understand it is that we are all prisoners (perhaps willing prisoners) who believe that the shadows we see on the wall (our physical bodies) are the entirety of our existence when the truth is that we are so much more. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter."
Basically there are ideas and then there are Ideas. There are truths and there is Truth. What we see are the distorted shadows of a perfect realm. We live in the Shadowlands. In Plato's tale, any prisoner freed from bondage would be dazzled by the real world and would be ridiculed and abused by the other prisoners who would believe that the freed prisoner was crazy. Those still bound would only trust what they would see and experience for themselves.
I find myself thinking about this concept every time I hear about moral relativism (as I did this past Sunday). Moral relativism simply means that what might be true or good for one person isn't necessarily true or good for another. To some extent, this makes a good deal of sense. My wife believes that mushrooms enhance the flavor of a meal while I believe that they ruin any food they touch. Two people witnessing the same event can walk away from it with very different impressions.
However, this idea can also go too far. While differing religions have various notions about the concept of sin, it is misguided to believe that means there is no such thing as sin. I know, just using the word makes my skin crawl as I have been conditioned by modern society to believe that sin is a word only used by deranged or fanatical religious people. We have been taught that people who see the world in forms of only right and wrong are narrow-minded and often dangerous. Thus, to many, there is no right or wrong, no good or evil (or that what might be evil for one might be good for another).
This is dangerous line of thinking. The only ones who benefit from that line of thinking are those who support evil. To clarify, that does not mean that people who believe in moral relativism are evil, just that evil (and especially the great Evil) is the only thing to benefit from such a belief. Good has no reason to hide itself and goes out of the way to get people to see it as good. Evil has to disguise itself if it wants to get most people to follow it. I believe that we often know that our actions or decisions fall on the wrong side and try to justify these choices through the philosophy of moral relativism. We might fool the other shadows on the wall, but not our true selves, and certainly not the Light that created our shadow selves in the first place.
There is a Truth, a fundamental level which provides the substance to our Shadowland. Only seeing the shadows, we struggle to understand the light. I pity those who believe that the shadows are all that there is, and I fear those who try to convince others that there is no Truth.
Basically there are ideas and then there are Ideas. There are truths and there is Truth. What we see are the distorted shadows of a perfect realm. We live in the Shadowlands. In Plato's tale, any prisoner freed from bondage would be dazzled by the real world and would be ridiculed and abused by the other prisoners who would believe that the freed prisoner was crazy. Those still bound would only trust what they would see and experience for themselves.
I find myself thinking about this concept every time I hear about moral relativism (as I did this past Sunday). Moral relativism simply means that what might be true or good for one person isn't necessarily true or good for another. To some extent, this makes a good deal of sense. My wife believes that mushrooms enhance the flavor of a meal while I believe that they ruin any food they touch. Two people witnessing the same event can walk away from it with very different impressions.
However, this idea can also go too far. While differing religions have various notions about the concept of sin, it is misguided to believe that means there is no such thing as sin. I know, just using the word makes my skin crawl as I have been conditioned by modern society to believe that sin is a word only used by deranged or fanatical religious people. We have been taught that people who see the world in forms of only right and wrong are narrow-minded and often dangerous. Thus, to many, there is no right or wrong, no good or evil (or that what might be evil for one might be good for another).
This is dangerous line of thinking. The only ones who benefit from that line of thinking are those who support evil. To clarify, that does not mean that people who believe in moral relativism are evil, just that evil (and especially the great Evil) is the only thing to benefit from such a belief. Good has no reason to hide itself and goes out of the way to get people to see it as good. Evil has to disguise itself if it wants to get most people to follow it. I believe that we often know that our actions or decisions fall on the wrong side and try to justify these choices through the philosophy of moral relativism. We might fool the other shadows on the wall, but not our true selves, and certainly not the Light that created our shadow selves in the first place.
There is a Truth, a fundamental level which provides the substance to our Shadowland. Only seeing the shadows, we struggle to understand the light. I pity those who believe that the shadows are all that there is, and I fear those who try to convince others that there is no Truth.
RSS Feed
