Sttriving For Excellence In The Allegory Of The Cave

Today everyone strives to be the best that they can. They worry that they’ll never be good enough and always strive for excellence and try to prove their worth. Whether they are trying to prove their worth to parents, friends, significant others, or their selves; I personally try and prove my worth to myself. This idea of striving for excellence has been around since the times of ancient Greece. The ancient Greek’s had a word for this strive for excellence. Arete´. The word Areté can translated into “the strive for excellence”. Areté can be described in three different examples, the place in which it originated, the “my wall” focus paper, and the “Allegory of the Cave” focus paper.
Ancient Greece was a time of many unique things such as, all …show more content…
Plato was born and died in Athens, which is a city in Greece. Again, Greece is the one that appeared to found its country on the Areté lifestyle. Everything that Plato strived for, similar to everyone else in Greece, had to be to that expectation of Areté. In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato explains that if select people were tied up from a very, very young age with only the ability to see shadows on a wall cast by the puppet master and outside villagers, then it’d be the only reality that they’d know. If one of them were to be released from this reality, then it would take a few days for them to distinguish what is real and what is a false reality. If the one that was released tried to inform his “cave mates” then they would call him crazy and turn violent. Plato worked this philosophy down to a tee. He was striving for that Areté. In the focus paper, I explained how The Matrix is similar to “The Allegory of the Cave”. In The Matrix robots control the dreams of people and I think this was in order to try and achieve that excellence or perfection. The robots didn’t see humans as having the capability to achieve Areté or perfection and took matters into their own hands. I believe that the “Allegory of the cave” can be thought of in the same way. IF a false reality was real, then what would be the reason? What would be the reason behind creating a false reality? For fun? Because it, or he, or she can? I believe it would be for the idea of Areté or perfection. Personally because I am Christian I believe that the idea of a false reality has a different meaning. I believe that the perfection we strive for will be found after death and when we go to Heaven. The world we live in now, is far from Areté or perfection, but Heaven is what happens when we “wake up” from our false