The Allegory of the Cave

Plato, who was a Greek philosopher, mentions the Allegory of the Cave in his work The Republic. It is also known as the "Myth of the Cave". (Wikipedia, np).
This allegory deals with the prisoners "who have been chained since their childhood". (Wikipedia,np). Their bodies and heads were chained in one direction and they were only able to see the wall. Someday there was a huge fire behind the captured people and this fire created a path where various things were "moved along." (Wikipedia, np). These things caused shadows on the wall, which the prisoners were able to see. As a speaking puppet carrier passed by, his voice transformed into "an echo against the wall" (Wikipedia, np) and the prisoners believed that the shadows were able to talk. The captured people started identifying the shapes on the wall, which was the only reality they had. The prisoners started playing a game, by identifying the shapes on the wall. The assumption that a prisoner would not have been chained and would have been able to stand up and turn around and could see the sun, would have caused him blindness, since his eyes weren't able to adjust to the sunlight. The sun, which was the last object, also meant at the same time the enlightenment. The freed person didn't want to return back into the cave but felt forced to do so and free his "bondsmen". (Wikipedia, np).
An interesting aspect of this allegory is, that the prisoners refused to be freed and for the free person, descending to the cave required his eyes to adjust to the darkness again and his eyes weren't able to identify the shadows on the wall anymore.
My understanding of this allegory is, that we are all "slaves" to our habits and it is difficult for us to change our daily lives, because we are too much involved in our routines. Another aspect of this allegory goes with the saying:"Ignorance is bliss."

Review of the movie Matrix

On Wednesday we watched the movie "Matrix" in class. I am not really a fan of SCI-FI movies, but while I was watching the movie I was pleasantly surprised. "Matrix" has plenty of completely unexpected visual effects. The sequences are shot in the dark but you still can see all the actors. The actor Keanu Reeves has two identities in this movie. Once he is Neal by night and then he is he is Thomas by day. Neal works by night as a computer hacker and Thomas works by day as a decent computer programmer for a prestigious High Tech company. Sometimes the movie gets a little confusing and it is difficult to differentiate between dream and reality. Almost every sequence shows alot of action and from the beginning it is clear that Neo (this is Keanu Reeves hacker name) is chased by some kind of agents and then there is also this woman Trinity who Neo first meets at a club and she warns him that some people are after him. Only after Neo gets to know Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishbourne, the viewer has a chance to finally get a better idea of the plot. From what I was able to understand, there are two forces fighting against each other. The virtual force and the real force. Morpheus offers Neo two different kind of pills. A blue pill and a red pill. The blue pill would lead him back to the reality where he would live like a "slave" and have to do his everyday job day in and day out. The blue pill offers him the opportunity to live in "Wonderland", where Neo could live in virtual reality. This means that everything "real" would only be perceived by his mind as "real". Neo chooses the red pill, which means "Wonderland" and this also means to live with Morpheus. Neo gets introduced to Morpheus' crew. There he meets Trinity again, who firmly believes, that Neo is "the one". Morpheus's crew is small and Morpheus introduces Neo to other characters such as "Switch", "Mouse" and "Cypher", who seemed to me more like captured people, living like slaves in a cave. A very impressive sequence was the one, where Neo had a Kung Fu fight with Morpheus. The fight reminded me a lot from another movie, called "Crushing Tiger, Hidden Dragon", where the viewer gets to see very high jumps, shot in slow motion. There are other sequences in this movie, that are shot in slow motion, which surprise the viewer pleasantly.