Plato and his famous Allegory of the Cave

Take Plato, for instance. Together with Socrates and Aristotle, he is one of the founders of Western culture. Famous for writing up the Socrates dialogues, he also wrote some works of his own, one of which is The Republic. In this work, he describes his famous Allegory of the Cave, which goes something like this:

Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.

Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of various animals, plants, and other things are moved along. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the puppet-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.

The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.

There are many interpretations of this allegory, but for me it has always been about not knowing the true reality of things; we only see shadows cast on the cave wall.