Allegory of the Cave by Plato can be applied to modern day society in many ways. The ideology of success in our society is responsible for dictating human thought that success is based on money and wealth. I believe that one is successful when a person achieves their desired goals and aims. Success is different for everyone. In our world, people usually associate success with either money, money, or money. Success shouldn’t be about how much money we earn, how good our job is, or how famous we are. It should be about our own personal goals and aims in life. I think everyone’s definition of success is different. For each individual, success is something that makes them feel proud. For example, someone can be successful if his/her passion was to travel and they make an impact on the world, and they end up achieving their goals that means that they had success. It doesn’t have to revolve around how good ones job is or what their salary is. The people who are responsible for this definition of success are everyone, including out parents. Everyone is so used to correlating success with money and good jobs that we incorporate it in our daily lives without even knowing. Our parents are partly responsible for the way our society thinks of success. They are the ones that nurture us and teach us our morals and values. For example, my parents also brought me up saying that being successful when I grow up means that I have a good job with a good salary. The implications are that
Click here to unlock this and over one million essays
Show MoreWhen it comes to success, people have their own definitions. Some people may define success as having a job that suits them and by the joy they feel when they are in and out of work. Others may define success as having a surfeit amount of money without the need to be happy at their work. In the book, outliers, Malcolm Gladwell defines success based on the careers of the well-known and rich people and he mentions that they have achieved success because they are the best at what they do. Gladwell also believes that anyone is capable of achieving success if they work hard enough and that the people who are mega-successful such as Bill Gates or Michael Jackson got where they were because of thing such as their geographic locations, their specific college experiences, the opportunities that they were presented with in high school, or even the month that they were born in.
I believe success is one of those terms that has multiple means and to every person asked, a different answer is received. While some people would base being successful in life off of how much money one makes, I would consider myself successful in life if I graduate from college, have a loving family and a steady job. To me success can be defined as achieving a goal that I have previously set and having a result come from various efforts to achieve that goal. I also believe the real outcome of being successful is happiness. There is short term success which adds up repeatedly and eventually becomes long term success.
Success, after all, is what most human beings are striving for in their life, whether it is a successful marriage, successful business, successful family and their success in overall happiness. Cardone showed that there is no scarcity when it comes to success, that I cannot let others success limit the boundaries of the success I want. “Success is not a lottery, bingo, a horse race or a card game that allows for only one winner” (Cardone 58). That if I want success, I need to realize that success is created and not won. It truly has no limits and I can have as much as I want.
Success is something everyone vies for. Our society is built upon success- everything from the education system, jobs, happiness, etc... The problem is that success is highly indiviualistic. Everyone has his or her own definition of success. However, Sir Winston Churchill's brilliantly defines what he believes success to be in his quote, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm".
Success, a word we hear everyday and live our lives to achieve, but what does it mean to you? Throughout this school year, while exploring success I have learned what success means to me. While your stand may not be acceptable to others, success is when you have found happiness in your position in life, because you know you have given it your all , and have become a person you are happy being. People have a habit of basing their success off of the expectations of others.
Kangbo Lu Josh Coito English 122 20 March 2016 Journal #9: “Allegory of the Cave” In Plato’s allegory “The Allegory of the Cave”, he implies that people might born or live in a world of darkness and being unenlightened, and knowledge can enlighten them. Plato develops his ideas by giving an parable of a caveman was being enlightened by the light of outside world and returned to the cave to describe his experience, comparing the people in the real world to the story of the caveman, and explaining why governing is similar to this parable. By using the allegory of the cave with formal diction and educating tone, he exams the reality of our world in order to educate Glaucon that the reality of this world is like the shadow on the world, and the governors of state should be like the enlightened caveman to not only continue attaining knowledge,
When you think of success what comes to mind? In sports it’s making it to the pros. In business it’s making your first million. In high school it can be as simple as acing that test you studied for all night. No matter what profession you are in, success is the desired goal.
If you were to ask a few people how they measured success, most of the answers would vary. Some may state that is based on your monetary value or that it is measured by your happiness. Yet, these answers can be categorized by a broad definition: success is achieving the goal you set your mind to. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, challenges the societal view of how success is ultimately obtained. The author states “...if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” to emphasize the importance of persistence and work ethic when looking for success (Gladwell 151).
1) In the allegory of the cave, Plato’s main goal is to illustrate his view of knowledge. A group of prisoners have been chained in a cave their whole lives and all they have ever been exposed to were shadows on the wall and voices of people walking by. The prisoners in the cave represent humans who only pay attention to the physical aspects of the world (sight and sound). Once one of them escapes and sees the blinding light, all he wants is to retreat back to the cave and return to his prior way of living. This shows that Plato believes enlightenment and education are painful, but the pain is necessary for enlightenment and it is worth it.
Plato tells us that the prisoners are confused on their emergence from the cave and that the prisoners’ will be blinded once they had been freed from the cave. After a period of time they will adjust their eyesight and begin to understand the true reality that the world poses. The stubbornness to develop a different perspective is seen in much of today’s society. The allegory of the cave is an understanding of what the true world is and how many people never see it because of their views of the society they are raised in.
The cave allegory helped prove how the philosopher would be worthy of becoming the philosopher king and created the perfect government system for their city. Once this government is formed, they know how to effectively structure the city and raise the next guardians and philosophers to maintain their perfect society. After their society has found harmonious living, this proves the process required to make a just city. Using this, they can now focus on the soul as a whole rather than the whole city. Socrates shows that the three parts of the soul, reason, thumos, and appetites must work in harmony much like the city to achieve optimal success.
It is often believed that success is a relative term. For instance, even if you consider of yourself a successful person numerous people almost certainly do not also embrace this view. The aforementioned anomaly is indubitably a direct byproduct of the definition being, having gotten or achieved wealth, respect, or fame. For the three describing words, wealth,
#2 Plato’s Allegory In Modern Day Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” is about the human perspective and enlightenment. In todays society Plato’s allegory is still relevant and is deeply rooted in education. College students are a perfect analogy for the “Allegory of the Cave”. We are told from the very beginning that we need to have an education to be successful in life.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was an interpretation of the aversion humans have to things that are outside of their experienced reality, as well as a proposed solution. Firstly, I can’t help but notice that there is a racist, classist, sexist, and ableist element to Plato’s proposal. Allegory of the Cave is found within The Republic, which is a book that describes “the education required of a Philosopher-King”. Racial minorities, poor people, women, and disabled people are all immediately eliminated from the selection of potential candidates.
Success is found in all goals that are accomplished no matter how small or large that they are. Being successful doesn 't always mean that one must accomplish goals that are hard. To others it could be marrying the person they love. To be happy with that person for the rest of their life is a big success. Being successful at an educational standpoint would be graduating college with a degree in a future career.