The Allegory of the Cave; revisited
Picture this; a great cave and a mass of people, all seated and bound to each other, before a great fire at the cavern’s rear. They are watching the shadows cast by the flickering flames, spellbound seeing forms and shapes both enchanting and terrifying.
Thus are they enthralled perpetually- believing the shadowy apparitions to be real, and suffering from the belief. They grasp and covet what does not exist, blaming, hating and jabbing at each other for grievances based on phantasms.
Ever and anon a cunning charlatan arises and speaks, telling the crowd of a place beyond the cave, a world of bright sunlight. None ever go there. Neither has the charlatan. The latter merely fills the imagination of the crowd with yet more fuel for the illusion-dance of the shadows. The bewitchment only increases in force.
Now imagine that on occasion one or two or even many honest sages awaken in the crowd. They see the reality and do not seek to become merchants or tyrants of the unhappy fantasy. Instead they want to help. They tell of the real liberation; a liberation into- not out of the world. For there is no leaving the great cave. But seeing what it is is a real liberation.
When these sages are listened to, many of the people awaken and see that they are bound to each other, not in shackles but in kinship, and that the cave is not a prison but a home, and that the ghosts of the shadows are nothing but the projections of their own creative imagination. Then, instead of begrudging and hating each other over these phantoms, they can embrace each other as family.
Thus it happens occasionally, and an epoch of great peace arises in the cave. It arises, endures, then dissolves, for this is the way things. In these eras of peace, the cave-folk look around. They see and explore the great vastness of the cavern-world, of which they are part, glittering with all manner of precious gems and living beings like and unlike, but interdependent with themselves.
Picture all this, dear readers, my friends and fellows. Then step out into the cool and crisp air of the cave that is our common home.