Youtube Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWOpQXTltA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDaSgyi3xE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQfRdl3GTw4

NYTimes article on experience:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/opinion/sunday/why-do-we-experience-awe.html?referrer=&_r=0

 

Symbols:

 

Cave

 

The World Outside the Cave

 

Prisoners

 

Chains

 

Do you agree with Plato that human beings are often reluctant to confront unpleasant realities and prefer to fantasize and avoid them?

 

How does this idea relate to the people that prefer to stay in the cave?

 

 

According to Plato, how would people in the cave react to an escapee who tried to explain the truth to them, or who came down and broke their chains to set them free?

 

                

Relation to The Truman Show:

The Truman Show is repeating a story that dozens of other works of popular fiction have used for decades. It is a story that reveals an essential truth about what is happening to society in the 20th Century.

What is that truth? In part, it is about how the media and corporations have begun to surround us with a universe of illusions. From their high-tech control centers, they increasingly script and stage-manage events, creating the danger that we will find ourselves living inside seamless works of theater that we mistake for the world.

Like dozens of characters before him in other works of fiction, the hero in The Truman Show goes on a journey to escape this realm of smoke and mirrors. And then he discovers something unexpected -- what he believed was an open horizon and a way out, is really a wall (http://www.transparencynow.com/truman.htm).

 

Both stories examine the idea of the unexamined life –vs- the examined life. How much is one truly living if he or she is not taking chances, asking questions and going out to see for oneself?

"unreality" versus reality
physical and sensory simulations versus accurate perception
psychological illusions versus self-awareness and honesty
inauthentic life versus authentic life
containment versus escape
fears and external obstacles versus freedom to leave
neurosis versus psychological health
childhood versus maturity
addiction versus freedom
a life of pleasure and idleness versus work and responsibility
a life of fantasy and play versus work and responsibility