I live in a community where more often than not, people blindly follow religious and traditional practices. This includes spending entire life savings and even taking loans to hold an extravagant wedding, and following certain religious teachings without even contemplating the actual reasons behind them. Witnessing some of them, I can’t help but wonder ‘why’, but I only dare to wonder as uttering this simple word would be considered almost blasphemous. 

This is because people fear doubting their beliefs. They fear this doubt will irreversibly shatter beliefs that have become a part of their identity; this is unsettling, as this means stepping out of their comfort zone. Personally, I believe this is true, as after doubting my beliefs, some have been shattered. However, oddly enough, others have been reinforced. After doubting, sooner or later, we come to two conclusions—either our belief was wrong or it was right. Both of them are beneficial in their own ways. The former cleanses our belief system, ridding it of anything nonsensical, and the latter strengthens our belief system, giving us confidence in what we have already believed in. 

There is another reason to regard our beliefs with an eye of skepticism; beliefs are often inherited, not chosen. If we don’t doubt, we remain stuck with blindly accepted preconceived notions that we haven’t consciously nurtured. We don’t believe these ideas because we think they’re true; we just believe them because we were taught to, either by our parents or society.

I think Plato also agreed with this viewpoint, and in his allegory of the cave, this becomes ever so clear. Plato imagines some prisoners chained up in a cave since birth. These people can only look straight ahead at the walls of the cave, where the shadows of different objects are cast. As they have never seen any object and have only seen their shadows, they all come to believe that the shadows are the essence of the objects; in this way, their perception of reality is manipulated. 

One day, a prisoner escapes and ventures out into the world. He is shocked to see the actual objects that he never knew existed beyond the shadow they cast. Slowly, he comes to realize the reality he was oblivious to. Excited to learn this revelation, he hurries back to the cave to tell his people about this discovery. He is even more shocked to find that the people shrug off his explanations and do not believe there is more to objects than the mere shadow they have been accustomed to all their lives. In the end, his people did not believe his discovery and remained chained up in the cave for the rest of their lives.

The allegory of the cave was Plato’s attempt to prove his Theory of Forms, but I think there is a secondary meaning to the metaphor, which is just as prominent and arguably more useful.

The allegory of the cave shows that if we are too scared to doubt our beliefs, we will forever remain chained up in the cave Plato has imagined. Instead, venturing out to find evidence for our beliefs will reveal truths to us. This metaphor is a reminder for us not to be like the people who didn’t even think to doubt and thus remained chained up for life. It is a reminder for us to break the shackles of our preconceived beliefs and venture out of the cave to discover answers to life’s most perplexing questions.