Topic > How knowledge is perceived

The number of people who understand the importance of knowledge in today's world and in Socrates' world is very different. The Apology is a book written by the philosopher Plato, which describes why knowledge is important. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato talks about a philosophical idea where prisoners are in a cave whose reality is shadows on a wall. When they gain enough knowledge to leave the dark cave, they see the world for what it really is. The Truman Show by Andrew Nicol is a very similar modern version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where a man's entire life is actually a reality show and the man is oblivious to this fact. Knowledge today is different from 2,400 years ago because it is more accessible and is not limited by those in power. In Plato's time, knowledge was not as easily accessible as it is today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There was no organized education for people, and the only education people received was what their parents taught them as children. Through each generation, the population as a whole did not gain knowledge because each generation told the next the same thing. When Socrates is faced with the Athenian legal system. Meletus, one of Socrates' main accusers, told the jury that: “Socrates is guilty of corrupting the youth and of not believing in the gods the city believes in, but in other new spiritual things (Plato 4). Socrates was a philosopher who taught his philosophies to young people for free. One of his main teachings is to question everything to better understand the world we live in by questioning their daily practices. There weren't many philosophers around because of its danger. If a philosopher taught a grown child to kill someone, the philosopher would be considered guilty. Since there was almost no one to ask questions of, the amount of knowledge a community possessed remained the same through each generation. One of Socrates' charges was: "do not believe in the gods that the city believes in" (Plato 4). “Not believing in the same gods as the majority was seen as almost worse than killing someone. You could easily be accused and executed if found guilty if your belief system didn't correlate with the majority. Things like that were a huge deterrent to people investigating about other religions and ideas and questioned their own belief systems. In today's world, the general goal of young people is to finish high school and then go to college so that they can receive specific knowledge at a certain higher level field or area. 2,400 years ago, your life would have already been planned and you would have very little choice about what to do in your life, just as the accessibility of knowledge went from being non-existent to being the focus of the. attention and of younger generations. Knowledge can be altered by those responsible in order to change the way the community as a whole sees things. An example of this in The Truman Show is when Truman begins to realize that his world revolves around him, Christof, the director, takes great steps to dissuade Truman from finding the real truth. From an early age, Christof begins to teach Truman to be afraid of water. Christof introduces this fear of water by killing his actor father in a boating accident and making Truman feel responsible for his father's death. Towards the end of the film, Truman is almost certain that his reality is false and becomes determined to leave Seahaven to find out for himself. When Christof realizes where Truman has gone,.