Do you know what it is? Well for a start it’s not a real cave, it’s an allegory.
Plato did a very famous one, often called ‘The Myth of the Cave’. He did it to show what clever chappies philosophers are, and how they had “seen the light” and were not bound by the mere observations that many called reality.
It’s very good. Here’s a pic to help the scene.
See the prisoners (me and you) can only see the images on the wall in front of them, and they talk and discuss the shadows they see, fully believing them to be real. They have no reason to believe otherwise. They are bound into their little world and are quite happy there.
What they don’t know is that there is a second source of shadows, known as the puppeteers, who are shining a light onto the same wall the prisoners are looking at, and adding images that have nothing to do with reality. The puppeteers are adding shadows for reasons of their own, often cruel reasons.
Plato says that a prisoner, if released, would scream and ask to be re-imprisoned because, if shown the false world he believed in, could not cope with the knowledge that all he had ever seen was a mere show……but he can never be put back, his world view is never going to be simple again, and if he tries to explain to the other prisoners what is going on, he’ll be labelled insane, and ignored.
(Philosophers are of course immune and far better able to deal with the reality…clever buggers ain’t they?)
But if you bring that whole cave allegory out of ancient times and into the 21st century, it still applies….even more so now. And with deeper implications!
See if you can follow.
The cave is your house; the wall is your TV. The shadows are both reality on TV, and images projected by various organisations (puppeteers) onto your TV, designed to make you believe whatever they want you to believe. You are the bound prisoners. How do you tell what is reality and what is just an image projected by puppeteers?
The Media have you.
I’ll let you think on that.