Monday, October 17, 2011

Remnant Trust: Social Change

Students in Angela Zizak's Sociology class this semester are studying documents from the Remnant Trust Collection that concern social change.  Read their thoughts and comments here:
http://socialchangemovements.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Remnant Trust: The Allegory of the Cave

      The Allegory of the Cave is a symbolism of how Plato saw the world. The story is about prisoners trapped in this cave for all of their lives. They are chained to a wall, only able to see what is in front of them. In front of them is a wall with a glowing light. The glowing light is from a fire behind them on a ledge. People walk across this ledge with objects in their hands. The fire casts shadows on the wall for the prisoners to see. To the prisoners, this is their reality world. Then a prisoner is freed, he hurries to get out of the cave. When he walks outside he is blinded by the sunlight. He takes in all the beauty and truth that is around him. He runs back to the cave to share his visions with the other prisoners, but of course they don’t believe him and call him crazy.
      This is an allegory; it uses symbolism to tell a story where something represents a bigger idea. Basically it makes you think of the point and brainstorm to but the pieces together. In this story, the cave represents the physical world it’s convinced the prisoners that there was no other means of life. The shadows represent what they experienced in the physical world of the cave. The prisoners represent the people of the physical world who were hindered from the real world. The sun represents the real world for which they were withheld from.
      The importance to western literature to us was not all the time you fit in (the in crowd) and you weren't accepted. Like today I think they call them cliques, groups of people that hang out or lifestyles, financial statues meet a certain criteria.
      When you think about it a lot of movies could be based off of this, but the one that comes to mind is the Matrix. When people enter the matrix they are put into a world that they cannot control. The Matrix is a computer generated world that is operated by one person. People inside only know what others make them see. Like the men in the cave, they could only believe what was in front of them. Also like the men in the cave, the people in the matrix didn't know what to believe when they found out that they were being told lies about their life.
      To us the central idea is that humans have limited perspective. Though we may think that what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, and experience is real, it may not be true because we are chained from perceiving what’s behind us, beyond us, or beyond our five senses.  -- Written by ENGL 083-36N Group 2