I LEARNED RECENTLY THAT PLATO WON THE GOLD MEDAL IN THE OLYMPICS FOR WRESTLING THREE TIMES. THIS PUTS A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THINGS. I ALWAYS IMAGINED PLATO TO BE FRAIL AND MISSHAPEN BUT HE MUST HAVE BEEN FRICKEN RIPPED. I WONDER IF ARISTOTLE EVER FELT ANXIETY ABOUT GETTING PHYSICALLY (I.E. NOT JUST METAPHYSICALLY) DISMANTLED BY PLATO. PLATO WAS PROBABLY PISSED OFF BY AT LEAST A HANDFUL OF QUESTIONS ARISTOTLE ASKED HIM. ARISTOTLE WAS A LITERAL GENIUS TOO. IMAGINE PLATO LECTURING AND WRITING ON A BLACKBOARD AND ARISTOTLE THROWING A COMMENT OUT THERE ABOUT SOME COMPLEX MISSTEP IN PLATO’S LOGIC AND PLATO’S CHALK JUST SNAPS AND ARISTOTLE’S TESTICLES SUCK WAY BACK UP TO WHERE THEY DROPPED FROM, THEN PLATO IN A BLUR APPEARS BESIDE ARISTOTLE SITTING AT HIS DESK AND HE PICKS HIM UP AND SUPLEXES HIS MACEDONIAN ASS.

given the content of a lot of Plato’s conclusions I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Plato responded to a lot of reasonable criticisms with “Fight me” and that was the end of it.

We’re not actually sure whether Plato is his real name! Some people speculate that, because Platon means “broad” in Greek, this was actually his wrestling nick name. Basically, it’s like Dwayne Johnson became a famous philosopher and everyone still called him “The Rock”.

More and more I wish we kind of had time traveling capabilities.

Now I can’t stop thinking about Plato looking like The Rock

Now I can’t stop thinking about a film where The Rock plays Plato.

Imagine the Rock, as Plato, finishing his work on the Republic, and when he announces it in public he asks if anyone can smell what he's cookin'.

the Allegory of the Cave, from Plato's Republic.

a person lives their entire life inside of a cave. this cave has a pool of fresh, potable water. there are fish in the pool of water for the person to eat. this person’s entire life is lived inside of this cave, with no outside interactions of any kind. the person can eat, drink, sleep, and exist fully.

at the end, would this person think that they have had a bad life?

I’d say yes. Humans are social animals: being alone for his entire life would be awful

The point of the allegory is that this person would not know they were lacking anything in their life. It’s about perspective shaping one’s world view.

The point of the Allegory of the Cave is that humans DO know something is lacking, but ignorance and routine prevent us from searching out our higher nature. At any rate, humans are social animals: being along for your entire life would be awful. If our higher nature needs are not met, we feel a nagging discontent. If our lower nature needs are not met, living becomes unbearable.

Except that he Wouldn’t know that something was lacking because there’s no way for this person to know there was something missing in his life. He lives his whole life in the cave with his needs being met so at the end of it, seeing as he has no other life or experiences to compare to his own, he would not think that he had a Bad life.

Also, in the translation of this story that I read, he is not alone (and there’s the fire/wall/puppetry/other ‘prisoners’) and the man who is allowed out of the cave goes through his journey above land, and is more an allegory for philosophical journey of understanding…

Yeah, I left out the part about the fire bc I thought I made it clear. The point I took from the allegory is the one I made originally: our individual perspective shapes our understanding of reality.

That’s… not the parable of the cave… I dunno where the OP’s story comes from, but the version I’m familiar with goes more like this:

Imagine a cave where prisoners have been chained to the wall… behind them is a fire pit. Figures pass by the fire pit carrying objects or puppets, but the chained prisoners can only see the shadows on the wall in front of them.

Basically, the concept is that we can’t perceive reality directly, we work with information provided to us through our senses. When I see a pale blue object, I only know it’s blue because light is bouncing off of it and reaching my eyes. When I think an object is heavy, it’s only because I can feel the force of weight it exerts on my hand. Put that pale blue object under pale yellow light, and it will look green. On the moon, that heavy object suddenly doesn’t seem so heavy. Our direct comprehension of the true nature of reality is, really, about par with looking at shadows on a cave wall.

The lesson is to scrutinize how one thinks, the means by which one deduces information, and the assumptions one makes based on what is known rather than what one perceives. The whole thing about living a good life, I have no idea where that comes from. Nor the fish and potable water (Pretty sure that’s just to explain how the cave inhabitants survive, which is tangental to the real point).

My version of the allegory is the one that I recall from when I learned it in school. Kinda interesting that my whole point has been that perspective shapes reality and should be understood as such, and yet everyone keeps correcting me and telling me that the real lesson is that reality is shaped by perspective, and should be understood as such. Kind of like the cave…

But when you only take half of the story your perception is lacking and uncompleted. You can’t just take half of it and be done with it. It

Is like you are only taking what you need to prove your point…

Which isn’t the point of the text.

And yet you guys are still proving my point for me.

This is now a new allegory. Very ,much like the old one

Plato, The Republic (via samsaranmusing)

~ATLANTIS~

The lost continent/nation of Atlantis was actually first mentioned in Plato’s “Republic” and was not located in the Atlantic (if it even existed). It was probably a mythological city he used to illustrate his ideal version of a perfect society, to be honest. He wrote about it as if it was the idealized version of Athens. And, like all Utopias, it was inherently fictional in its original description.

The picture I posted is actually of some islands in the Bahamas. Obviously, the brown, tan, and green areas are the land masses. The dark blue is really deep water, and the light blue is not so deep. Notice how steep the drop off is? I’ve been fishing down there many times. The areas surrounding all of the islands are often times stretching for miles of flat, shallow water areas. Like, 10-15 deep at most. All around. There are troughs of deeper water in between the larger gaps of the islands, but a lot of it is very, very shallow. They’ve even found things like Clay pots, fallen down stone structures, and other signs of human civilization that are too far removed from the current land masses to have been brought there and fallen. At one point in the Planet’s History, the Bahamas were most likely a single land mass. It was probably a marshland, but it was a lot more connected above the water than it is now. And, if you look at the way the continents fit together (Pangea), there’s a section missing that the area of the Bahamian Islands would have filled.

Conclusions: 1. Atlantis -if it existed- was Pre-Hellenic (before Greek Civilization) and located in the Mediterranean.

2. The Bahamian Islands were probably a unified land mass at some point in Human History.