In apparently part two of this series, I'll tell you about what I think is Plato's contribution to 'The Matrix'. Plato needs no introduction himself so I'll just go ahead and introduce you to his 'Allegory of the cave'. This allegory is described in book seven in Plato's most famous work, The Republic. In 'The Republic' Plato describes his utopian world where the philosopher and only the philosopher is eligible to be the king or the ruler. Not because the philosopher is the most intelligent person, but because, the philosopher has climbed the highest levels of consciousness and has freed himself shackles of base desires and the overcome the mirage of a life ordinary people live. He is a man of character, who lives by his ideals and dies by them and has no interest in gaining power or fame or wealth. He and only he makes the most just ruler.
In the allegory, Plato tells the story of a set of people who are chained to chairs in a very dark cave. These people are trapped to such an extent that they cannot even turn their heads and they are facing a wall. Immediately behind them, there is a raised platform, where other people walk and go about their work. Behind them burns a fire and because of that fire shadows are cast on the wall where the trapped people are facing. These people have been here all their lives, watching the shadow go about their lives, different shadows doing different things. This is all they know of.
Plato mostly wrote dialogs. This allegory too is a dialog between his teacher, Socrates, and Galucon, who is a young man inclined towards the pleasures of life. Plato describes to him that from the trapped prisoners one of them escapes. When he looks towards the light, the light of the sun, it is very harsh on him. He climbs up the cave towards its mouth dazed by the strong light. Slowly he gets aquatinted with it and finds out that the world he lived in was not really the world. At first, he only understands the shadows well because that's what he was familiar with. Then, with time, he learns about other things.
He returns to the cave to his people and is rejected by them because they cannot see his point and are only familiar with the shadow world. They compete with each other in following the shadows and he just finds it useless, knowing the reality of their actions. He is not a man interested in this shadow world, now fully aware of its reality. The prisoners believed themselves to be free as well. The felt they were aware of the reality too, the reality of shadows, of a world they grew up to appreciate and accept.
According to Plato, reality cannot be taught to anyone. Just like the escaped prisoner had to face the harsh light, slowly learn to differentiate shadows from reality, everyone, who wishes to attain realization, must go through the harsh and toilsome process.
Allegory of the cave
Wikipedia: Allegory of the cave
Wikipedia: Plato
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