Man or a Mouse? Victims

¶ … man or a mouse? Victims and leaders for Plato and Nietzsche One very interesting aspect of the human experience is the manner in which certain themes appear again and again over time, in literature, religion, mythology, and culture -- regardless of the geographic location, the economic status, and the time period.

Perhaps it is the innate human need to explain and explore the known and unknown, but to have disparate cultures in time and location find ways of explaining certain principles in such similar manner leads one to believe that there is perhaps more to myth and ritual than simple repetition of archetypal themes.

If, for instance, we combine the idea of the mythic hero in context with a journey -- "happiness is found along the way, not at the destination," with a rather old paradigm from Ancient Greece, Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," we find that one definition of living a successful life is simply education and movement towards a goal. In The Cave, we see two very dichotomous beings: the oppressed and unenlightened in the cave, and the leader in the sunlight -- desperately trying to prove that self-actualization is possible.

Similarly, we traverse to 19th century Europe and visit Friedrich Nietzsche, who posited the idea of the Ubermensch as an enlightened "leader" of the other type of humanity, the followers, or the unenlightened. The concept is expressed quite clearly in the Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra: I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ..

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape...

The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss .. what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end (Prologue 3-4). Briefly, for Plato, the Allegory was a symbolic dialog focusing on ways a philosopher on the path to wisdom must search for forms of the truth in order to uncover the right path.

If this path is found, the philosopher must use the gift of knowledge to educate others, in a sense, enlighten them towards a new path of self-actualization. This responsibility -- using knowledge to actualize others, is a predominant theme in much of Plato's works that resonates directly with contemporary pedagogical theory. The Allegory itself is written as a fictional dialog between Plato's teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon.

In the allegory of the cave, the reader, whom Plato assumes is also a philosopher on a path towards enlightenment, is treated to a play within a play. There is a dark cave, cavernous and damp. Individuals (prisoners) have been chained in this chasm since birth so that they are able to move in a way that they can only look at the wall in front of them; otherwise they are immobile.

"Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads" (vii: 515). There is only dim light in the cave, a smoldering fire lit behind the prisoners. Behind the wall, though, there is a cloth screen that allows a pseudo-wall in which others can manipulate puppets that will cast shadows so the prisons can view these events (the only stimulation they have).

Behind them, there is a fire, the only light in the cave. It appears these puppeteers are those in transition between the light and the dark, having been unchained, yet still not wise.