Plato’s cave

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In Plato’s Republic Socrates describes humans as prisoners who live their lives chained to the wall of a subterranean cave. All they can see is a craggy, broken cave wall, and the images projected on it, of object behind them illuminated by the flickering light of a fire. Those shadows, twisting, misshapen, amorphous and ugly as they are — are all the prisoners can ever hope to see. Those misshapen shadows are the prisoners’ reality, and the prisoners, lazengem are you and me.

We are bound to our earthly coils, and consigned for eternity to see this gruesome caricatures of perfect forms we will never know.

See also

• Platonic form
• Target operating model