“cave,” all while trying to make their lives better even when they mock him.
As such, Biden appears to possess the character and temperament – and practice the
kinds of actions – one would wish of an enlightened leader.
Aligning Respective Supporters to the Allegory of the Cave
Blind loyalty to a person or policies is much like blind ambition, very foolish. This was, of course, the situation in the cave: all people were prisoners who sat chained before a blank wall where they had lived since infancy, unable to move or turn their heads, staring directly forward, where they interacted with shadows – images of people and animals carved from stone and wood and other materials – that were projected on the wall from a fire behind them. There, through their experience, the captives consider truth to be nothing but the shadows of the carved object projected before them. They were ignorant, and they truly reflect what in contemporary political history would be regarded as mass man.
Arguably supporters of Trump and Biden, if they
support them or their policies through blind loyalty, would be like the people in the cave who accepted their position as given without question. But this does not provide a context through which others can legitimately condemn
them, to call those still living in the “cave” clowns or deplorables or idiots as some have done. They are who they are because of circumstance; but who, like the individual who escapes the cave, also inherently possess the skills – like reason – that suggests they can make their way to decisions that could change both their understanding of things and their behavior. They could, in other words, engage their reason to discover the way to a better life as well as learn from others if only they were to be unbound from their chains and set free.
This suggests two things: 1) that individuals need not be told how to live amongst the good, the right, and the beautiful through truth, but can discover it for themselves; and 2) that individuals can be open to the teachings of others, and thus guides (educators and leaders) can not only increase the speed at which individuals learn but facilitate their critical thinking skills as they challenge claims presented by others.
This is why Socrates points to the importance of a man being sympathetic to an other’s position; the individual who leaves the cave and experiences the light understands from his own experience the most difficult thing a man can undertake is ‘being brought from darkness to light and transitioning back from light to darkness.’ It is why the man ‘would not make light of another when he met with a confused
Biden is a man who has apparently searched – in some manner, through his various trials and tribulations – for the “Idea of the Good” and has sought to discover what truth/s have revealed themselves.
51
Graphic left,
Courtesy of:
BarBus &
pixabay
tiburi
tiburi