Plato and the Collider (An Aside)

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As I was recently reminded though, every argument has three sides: version one, version two and the unbiased truth. Despite the many doctrines that exist, logically the existence of a Supreme Being can still be argued. For those seeking the Higgs, it would likely seem that the part of Plato's allegory which states...

The Republic, Book VII (Allegory of the Cave)

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,—what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them,—will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?

...would certainly refer to me. Perhaps it does. Perhaps my mind has become so rigidly set in it's belief (that what shapes this world, what makes one particle stick to another, what forms mass and so on, is God) that I am unable to fathom this "more real existence".

Still... No matter the hard times, the harshness of life's trials, I can't shake this certainty that the world as we know it is more than chance, more than mere coincidence. A grand designer is responsible for the majesty that is the human form, I'm sure of it. Some age old instinct which nestles inside of me screams... there is purpose.

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Plato and the Collider

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I recede into silence when whatever trial I am currently, by life's hand, enduring... becomes too much. I stop communicating with even the closest of friends, except for those stubborn few who call me despite my reticence to speak with them. As recently as a few weeks ago, that ready response to hard times didn't bring with it any sort of implied connotations. Then I read Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

The Republic, Book VII (Allegory of the Cave)

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:—Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

I carved out this little space for myself years ago, you see, this cave. A place where I could retreat when things, didn't matter what, began to spiral out of emotional control. These descents I make into silence, these withdrawals from intimates and agates, are inclusive of world news and events.

I plod out of my cave expecting to find the world unchanged each and every time. Ah, but we humans, we never quite can seem to stand still. My most recent return to enlightenment revealed this...



I can't help but wonder after watching this series, if I didn't have the right of it by remaining stubbornly ignorant of the world's goings-on. (Mind you, the following is merely my opinion.) I'm not so much disturbed by man's need for enlightenment, his need to quest, to delve into the unknown and return from his travels more knowledgeable for having made them. I'm disturbed by those who refuse to see that the answers to some mysteries have already been defined.

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