In the Allegory of the cave, Plato said that men that were chained up and spent their whole lives looking at shadows being cast on the wall would accept this and not challenge it at all, for it was all they knew. One day one of the men was taken out into the real world, into the sunlight. He was allowed to run free for a while, but was then brought back into the cave, chained up as he was before. Did the man like being chained up? Of course not, he wanted to be free. He told the others of his adventures, but they didn’t want to hear such tales. Eventually with all his ramblings, the others would kill him.
Now look at the world that we live in. We are not so different than those in the cave. Anyone who comes along who is different is ostracized for what they believe in. In the 1950’s if you believed in a different form of government then the US, then you were the enemy and could go to jail. Everyone believed that Communism was pure evil, but if you look at the theory of it, that all men are and would share equally, then it actually isn’t that bad of a theory, improbable, but in theory it works.
With religion, it is the same way. Christians, in the old days were brought up to believe that everyone who wasn’t Christian were evil. Through their own experiences, social gatherings in which not everyone was the same, people were able to step out of the cave and see the light. Just because you aren’t the same doesn’t mean you aren’t good people.
Now look at your own lives. Is there an instance where you are in a cave? In high school there are so many different caves, jocks beating on goths, populars beating on punks, all because they don’t step out of the cave and look at the real world. In the US some people hate people with different colored skin, because of the way they speak, or because of the country they come from. These people are in a cave all their own. If you don’t step out of your own caves, then your children will be in caves, and this world will never get any better, or safer.
