Computers are a result of these forms of knowledge, not of them.
Maybe so, but the question is the nature of knowledge that aids the pursuit of freedom from the limitations of the cave and if computers are helpful towards it?
Hi Nick,
I’m not sure about astronomy and music, but arithmetic and geometry can be thought of as consisting of logical or self-evident ‘truths’ in their own realm of understanding. Also the entities which are dealt with in these forms of knowledge are abstract and seemingly innate i.e. not to be found in the world of extension.
When conclusions are made about the validity of these operations, the concluding process is one which draws on a seemingly internal set of logical knowledge. Where does this knowledge come from? Is it a manisfestation of truth or also a distortion of light from the sun?
Edit: This knowledge may give us doubt about the nature of reality in the cave and give us insight into how to leave.
Hallo Nick!
Students are no longer “educated” but trained to be “productive members of society”. Universities have become cog factories…and I think the enframing of capitalist technology bears the greatest responsibility for this shift.
Gotta go to work…will write more later
I have, since I discovered it, viewed Plato’s analogy of the cave rather differently and as a very accurate analogy of the truth. Having developed my own views, with a little help from many books and other people!!, over the years I did a philosophy course in my mid fifties to find what others had thought. I was immediately taken with this analogy as a perfect description of the truth as I saw it.
Two points to make here. First, String or M theory postulates the existence of, maybe, eleven dimensions. Secondly, only four per cent, according to the latest figures that I have seen from Cambridge University, of the universe has been found. Put it another way, there’s twenty five times as much out there, or in here, as we can see.
The universe may well be so vastly more complicated than we can see, or possibly ever detect, or even imagine, that it is totally beyond our comprehension. We are but prisoners trapped in our little cave and totally unaware of either the truth or even that the truth exists at all.
There have been some who may have seen a small part of that truth. I refer here to divine experiences, near death experiences, automatic writing, hypnotic regression, etc., etc., etc,… Even here it may be that the contact has merely been with the student who happened to be passing the mouth of the cave, when one of us peeped over the wall behind us, and not his lecturer, or the president, or the archbishop who was praying in an attempt to reach the God who had been postulated to exist. He may even have been a mischievous student at that!! (You may say, rather appropriately, Heaven forbid that such a creature should exist.)
Whether, upon death, we become ‘absorbed’ into this greater existence or we just expire has kept a very large number of people very busy for millennia.
One final point. Either Plato or Socrates was said to have had a ‘Divine Experience’. Which of the two has kept philosophers debating for centuries. The consensus appears to have come down in favour of Plato. I tend to think it may have been Socrates, this in view of the fact that he was quite happy to depart this life in the manner that he did.
Hallo Nick!
Students are no longer “educated” but trained to be “productive members of society”. Universities have become cog factories…and I think the enframing of capitalist technology bears the greatest responsibility for this shift. We define ourselves through our function to the great beast…No longer is Jane Smith a person, she is an accountant,an architect,a Lexus owner,etc,etc… We are known by what we own and by what we “do”.
We are standing in reserve until we perform our socially-mandated function(s)…we are brainwashed into believing that we are “killing” or “wasting” time when we are not performing a goal-oriented task or fulfilling a duty. We are led to believe that this part of our lives essentially does not exist.
I am a blender,you are combo toaster/egg poacher,over there is Katherine the Aga cooker (she’s like one of those employees who stays at the same job her whole life) 
…Bob is a Double Grill Convection Microwave Oven… Like the average human being living in Western culture(or the Western culture-ized) the blender serves no purpose when it is not blending,…it “kills time” until it is called upon to serve.
This is what is being turned out of the ticky-tacky Universities…appliances that serve increasingly specific functions. Why, in most science departments, you’re sucked into the corporate web and begin your serfdom before you’ve even finished your studies…
The average modern Academic isn’t a worldly,well-rounded individual…he/she is narrow-minded specialist with a lack of life experience. We pluck them still-green from High School and pass them through the “Profession” mill as quickly as possible…already planning where they can be best utilized by the machine.
So, yes, I am a little disenchanted.
Shy,
“Students are no longer “educated” but trained to be “productive members of society”.”
When was this not the case?
Dunamis
Hi Avocet
But assuming the universe also exists within us, comprehension may not be beyond our potential. I believe we live in a very small part of ourselves which makes cave life acceptable. Like you, I also look at it as a type of prison To feel the effects of the “sun” means to become open to consciously occupy more of ourselves and our nature which is what its light reveals. The emotional help for this is what Christianity is essentially about since The Spirit replaces our continually changing reactive negative emotional states allowing for the perspective that can experience: “As above, so below” from the perspective of the “middle.”
Hi Shyster
I completely agree with you as to the societal influence on education. Actually I agree with Simone here in that its unconscious purpose is to deny intelligence and retain the status quo. Consider this from the Simone site:
Noel was questioning this also but what do these all have in common in respect for cave limitations: Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music.
For me they take us out of our imagination and pettiness. Arithmetic and geometry build our capacity for attention. Astronomy allows for the experience of attention and awe and something greater than ourselves while music, as understood by Pythagoras which is not “gangsta rap,” opened us to the experience of feelings normally absent when we are filled with our normal emotional states. All of this suggests something other than the values of the “Great Beast.”
You may appreciate this article which goes into more detail.
…,
Hi Shyster
I believe that there always have been those that understood Plato’s cave even before Plato and those trapped within it. The ones that felt its truth have always been in the minority which is why the influence of the "Great Beast"is so strong. It is no wonder that education reflects this.
However, the saving grace as I see it is that there is a minority of private educational institutions that are constructed with knowledge of the restricting influence of the Cave. Their approach encourages the openness and attention that allow the young to live in society but not sacrifice their inner capacity for perspective that can be drawn to and feel the sun in the allegory.
Near where I live there is the Blue Rock School for example. If you look at their aims and means you can see how it puts life’s impressions into a more conscious awareness.
But these approaches are very much a minority as it sadly must be considering the effects of the cave. But at least for some, the beginnings of education can become more meaningful in the human sense through freedom from the dominance of the cave.
Shy,
I hate to tell you, but when the University of Paris or Bologna opened not too long after the year 1000, people were asking:
“What kind of job can you get with a degree in_________?”
Don’t you think?
Dunamis
…,
Careers are still a usage of pursuing. Physical Science is a career. Each practice contributes to society and that I believe should be the purpose of education.
Shy,
“Yes, but it was more of an afterthought”
Sorry to disagree. But what I have read of the university movement, from its inception it has been a career-based enterprise. The growing secular and non-secular bureaucracies of the early middle ages basically needed bureaucrats. People attended these institutions in order to become lawyers and clerks. I understand your point, but I think it dangerous to idealize the past. Just an opinion.
Dunamis
Hi All
Let me try this from a different angle. How do you define an educated person? Do you ever consider it from the point of view of the Cave analogy or do you automatically define an educated person by cultural standards?
SS writes:
This leads to the question if the purpose of education from the cultural perspective can lead to an educated person in the context of the cave analogy?
Simone Weil wrote:
This refers to education as recognized by culture.
However, the cave analogy suggests that man is more than a life in a cave. He also has access to life outside the cave which is not recognized by society as a whole. So from this point of view, a person with only cultural knowledge is just a half educated person. The other half that refers to the connection between what the sun represents and the unawake life in the cave is ignored.
As I see it, the person limited to cultural knowledge and oblivious of our higher nature which allows this knowledge to be put into a more human perspective creating “understanding” cannot be considered educated in the sense of man’s potential. This educated person is only considered so in relation to cultural standards as Simone Weil implies.
From my appreciation of esoteric Christianity, this makes perfect sense. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is suggesting the connection between consciousness outside the cave and life governed by imagination in the cave. The point of connection or the “heart” is where the soul begins to develop.
So for me, the truly educated person is one who not only has knowledge but has begun to develop a soul from having experienced and valued consciousness outside the cave at the expense their imagination. Such a truly educated person will be frowned on as suggested by Plato by those limited to conventional standards.
…,
From the rivertext Simone Weil site:
From the point of view of considering the “educated” person, this, for me, is simply elegant. Out attention is captured by change. We value the changing as progress and forget all about the “perfect pattern of things” so as a whole, society follows the cyclic patterns as described in Ecclesiastes 3:
Man living life in the cave is caught up in imagination at the expense of consciousness. I read all the time about new peace plans but all are doomed simply because Man’s life in the cave is a reaction to influences much like other forms of in the world. What causes animals to move in the jungle either on the ground or in the air? It is mechanical reactions to influences serving the purpose of organic life on earth. It never dawns on us that lacking consciousness, society moves in the same way responding to influences in accordance with man’s collective level of being. The ancients IMO were quite right to recognize this as a form of sleep.
The same things have been written before and will be written again concerning the human condition and war for example, but nothing will change simply because it is a mechanical response of man’s being to influences. The best that can be done is to minimize its consequences but this requires people who have awakened to an extent or experienced the light outside the cave without distorting it into an interpretation acceptable to the “Great Beast.” This is real human education IMO.
What descriptive clarity! Imagination keeps us chained to time and oblivious of the eternity the perfect patterns of which are within “Now.”
From this point of view a budding philosophy student could write a thought provoking paper as to the value of computers. Granted they make our lives more involved but at the same time, they are so enchanting that all but the serious esoteric students will tend to lose sight of the big picture as they become more involved and reliant upon computers. They spit out knowledge in the context of time but at the expense of the psychological appreciation for eternity necessary for freedom from the cave.
This of course is the question of Jesus’ temptation and his choosing of eternity or the old question if it is better to serve in heaven or rule in hell? Serving in heaven leads to freedom from the cave but in these times with the help of computers so many experts have been produced skilled at interior cave decoration that the cave has become harder and harder to see for what it is and human perspective is sacrificed to the cyclical enchantment of the wheel of samsara.
Is it any wonder that Jesus said: “forgive them for they know not what they do.”
'allo 'allo Nick!
You said (in case you forgot )
Yes.
I really dropped the ball during my tangent about modern Western society’s negative influence on the once pure and noble University culture. It was a profit-driven corporation from the start. Giving people a recognised written account of how much they have have learned about any particular area of study was a European concept designed to produce medical doctors and bureaucrats. It made money (and they discovered the profit to be made in specialization),so they branched out. Then Federal assistance came along and soon post-secondary education was franchised.
It doesn’t seem that truly original thought will be produced by a franchise trying to make a buck and it doesn’t seem to be the intention. Their sales pitch of “Buy a degree and have a better (wealthier) future…also useful for waving in the face of anyone who disagrees with you” appeals to pride and greed. These are poor motivations for learning any subject. Overall, it produces a uniform,homogenous understanding and increases pressure on the students,many of whom will plagiarise,lie,cheat,steal and manipulate in order to get the neccesary grades.
It is preparation for the rat race for most, a series of memorized “facts” and a stamp of approval that shoves you to the head of the maze queue.
Every moment an aware being exists there is an opportunity for education. You can learn nothing in a lecture and much watching a kettle boil…it’s based on your level of desire for knowledge.
I like this very much, since I’m more from the kettle boiling watching variety. But surely there are other factors? What makes one person desire knowledge more than another?
A