FEATURE ARTICLE

Victor C. Ukpabi, Ph.D.Monday, October 5, 2015
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Imo State, Nigeria

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THE ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE

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his piece is a metaphorical journey that attempts to explain the way people think. Without the necessary and proper exposure, human thinking is limited and ignorance is the direct product. When a man has spent most of his life in rural environments, his vision and thinking are usually affected by the inherent limitations of such environments. My 'good' friend, Mr. Iheukwumere Henry Alaribe, is one such man. The gross limitations of this naturally intelligent young man, occasioned by his countrified upbringing, break my heart.

Mr. Alaribe was so close to me that it is painful to pen down my thoughts on him. While our friendship lasted, I did my damndest to humanize him, but he is too peevish to listen to good sense. How can a man plan to get ahead in life by running others down? Mr. Alaribe is a congenital liar and is too deceitful for my liking. His intelligence cannot achieve its full potential because he is too selfish and puckish. This is a man who always tries to obtain any and everything by fraudulent means. He is too perfidious to lead any group composed of humans. He has no character.

Over the years, I have tried to understand to no avail, why a man sitting atop the leadership ladder of Aboh Mbaise LGA would be so afraid of the Alan Bs, the Julian Nwogus, the Atudumes, the Akalefus, and the Ukpabis that he wants to run them down. But I know why he is scared of the uncommon humility of an American-educated Ph.D. and Professor of Educational Research. Those hanging around him now have no idea that he has already made up things he can use to malign them when things fall apart as they would surely do. Unbeknownst to them, he has already degraded the likes of Dr. Best Njoku and Barr. Charles Mbakwe. The rest of them that follow him are inconsequential, according to him.

In this painstaking effort to unravel this poor excuse of a man, I have to adopt The Allegory of the Cave, a parable that demonstrates how humans are afraid of change. Imagine an underground cave inhabited by prisoners, who have been in the cave from their childhood. They have their legs and necks shackled by chains, so that the movement of the face is restricted, and they can see nothing but the wall in front of them. This restricted movement limits their visibility only to the wall, thus circumscribing the scope of any encounter beyond it.

Imagine also that there is an enormous fire burning at a distance, above and behind the prisoners. And between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised walkway meant for objects to pass. The shadows of all sorts of objects fall directly on the wall, thus providing the sole view for the prisoners. Any voices that came from the wall, the prisoners would perceive it to be the voices of those passing shadows. Hence, the only way for the prisoners to get acquainted with their surroundings is to interpret the shadows and consider them to be a part of the real world.

Somehow, one of them gets loose and wanders outside the cave and is overwhelmed by what he finds. He goes back into the cave to tell the others about what he saw. He tries to persuade his companions that outside there is a more real world, and that what they saw were mere shadows of the real objects. Trying to point out the deep-rooted ignorance of his former colleagues, who are trapped within their own confinement of pseudo intellectualism brought resentment. The prisoners try to resist enlightenment and condemn him for moral misconduct. Our brothers, who are now part of the plot to vilify me, do not know yet why I had to leave that ill-fated group. The allegory of the cave is my best way to illustrate how fear, inherent in the primitive nature of man, only serves to promote his ignorance.

Today, a leading cause of stress is change; change in the order of things, change in leadership, change in one's position, etc. Many of the people that are sheepishly hanging around Alaribe must later realize that change is constant. And that to be successful, one must adapt to the rapidly changing order. They must later come to acknowledge that there is more that needs knowing but embarking on new educational journeys requires courage and fortitude. They are, however, limited by fear; fear of the unknown. More enlightened people must expose the others to the realities of "the beautiful, the just, and the good". And this is what we are trying to do in Aboh Mbaise.

Often the path of explanation is uncertain, but confining thought to merely the realms of the known can only prove fatal. Individuals who currently oppose Aboh Mbaise moving forward and oppose the upward mobility of others mirror the cave dwellers who, out of fear, ridicule the newly enlightened wanderer. We all may comprehend the world around us by our experience of physical objects, but it would be a mistake to limit ourselves to the conventional thoughts indentured by our inflexibility towards change. The Allegory of the Cave is my explanation of the need for the education of the soul of Aboh Mbaise toward enlightenment.

In reality, we are all 'prisoners of the truth', slaves to our senses. The chains that bind the prisoners are the senses. Deceitful politicians manipulate the masses to perceive the shadows they see as reality. We prefer to blindly follow a deceitful leader than question the authenticity of the 'shadows' that we see. The one who does question is often ridiculed and despised. Those who follow Alaribe are like prisoners held in a cave without a true perception of reality. I just hope that someday, somehow, somebody would help release them so that they can travel out of the cave into the radiant world above....

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