In Plato’s Allegory of The Cave he depicts life as looking through a very limited lens. The prisoners know life only as what they have been shown in the cave. This serves as a metaphor for the rest of society being limited in our “cave” of the physical world around us, believing only what we see in our everyday lives. Which that point makes logical sense to me: we will believe what our senses have been exposed to, we will believe to be true what we have known our entire lives and what is tangible. From birth we do not form majority of ideas on our own, rather they are imposed upon us. Plato somewhat touches on this ideology as he writes “For it is true, where they do not pre-exist, they are afterward created by habit and practice.” Interestingly Plato continues on to imply that we humans in the world are comfortable only with that we know to be true. When we are faced new truth or something canceling out our existing beliefs we feel we are at adversity. We become defensive, and deny that things could possibly be different from our truth. This idea most certainly plays an effect on current modern life. In our current year of 2020 we absolutely are influenced by the popular things and ideas around us. The way life is in movies and media HEAVILY influences our beliefs. For example, we see a standard for beauty in America, as every country has their own standard. America particularly we constantly see skinny, blonde, blue eyes, and large breast in the media. This in a sense implants a ideal in our minds of what women should strive to look like. Even if we don’t purposely check these things on a daily to-do list, I believe that they are subconsciously in the back of a woman’s mind. Speaking for myself, when I see this exact description in public it is hard not to wonder what I look like next to it. If someone were to tell me this is NOT true, I would have a very difficult time believing so. If a different example would suit you more, dairy farms and slaughterhouses are demonstrated as a staple to the American diet and way of life. Almost everyone in America believes there is nothing wrong with consuming animal products because this is tradition, culture, and habit. We are shown happy animals in all dairy commercials therefor, we take those images at faiths value. However when faced with the TRUTH of what consuming animal products results in, people quickly become defensive and deny the truth. Our ice cream and burger commercials depict animals in a happy state, therefor no one believes there could be suffering or cruelty involved. A lot of Americans are comfortable following their traditions because it is what we are taught by our families, our peers, by movies, and pretty much all media. Interesting that when given an alternate perspective, most people become incredibly defensive and angry very much like the captives in the cave who never saw the world outside of the cave.

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