Suppose one of the prisoners (we could call him "Socrates") escaped, and made his way up the rough track and into the daylight. On the way up, he'd seen the fire, and the causeway, and the two-dimensional figures. In the real world above, to begin with, he was blinded by the sunight. As he got used to it, he was amazed by the shapes, the colours, he textures - now he knew what a tree was, or a girl, or a house. He couldn't wait to get back down into the cave to tell the others. He tried to describe the brilliance of the light and beauty of the things he'd seen. The prisoners soon got tired of his nonsense and killed him. They preferred the pictures on the wall. They preferred the world they knew and understood.
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