What is Real?

In Plato’s Cave, slaves are chained to a wall. They see shadows cast on the opposite wall, and debate among themselves concerning their meaning, purpose, and nature. These slaves are meant to represent us now on earth, with our limited understanding, trying to grasp high concepts such as the nature of love, justice, honor, truth, pain, and hope, among others.

We experience these things in our lives, but we do not understand them. We don’t know what it is that makes people love us, or why we love others, so we fantasize about it in bodice rippers and chick flicks, Twilight and Sex in the City and Romeo and Juliet. We instinctively know about justice. We know when it has been violated, particularly when we are on the losing end of it, but can we define it? Plato himself tries, albeit imperfectly. Why does pain exist? What purpose does it serve? We rebel from the idea that we should accept it, avoiding it at great cost. We rail against God and the fates when we experience it.

We are slaves, chained in place, seeing the shadows of these things thrown against the wall, enduring the assault of these things on our psyche and struggling to know what they are and what they mean. We understand only in part. If we could slip the chains and turn around to see the things that cast these shadows, perhaps when we are recaptured and returned to our place we will be better comforted, having known the true form of what these things are.

I am currently working on a book called First Monday Park. The bulk of this story takes place in a world where these things are more knowable. Postmodernism, the worldview that embraces the shadows and says, “These flickering forms are whatever you want them to be,” does not exist. It is a place where people know what justice is, know what pain is for, and know how to hope without foolishness.

My problem is that I am a slave that is still chained. I certainly have no hope of escaping myself, for I do not believe in transcendentalism on earth. The best I can do is inquire of other slaves who are also chained to the wall. I have to try to understand justice as Plato understood it before I can render it properly in the book. I have to know pain as Lewis believed it to be before I can show it in the real world. I have to seek out the sophists and philosophers, the askers and the thinkers, and consider what they say. I must discover if there is a consensus on these issues, and if there is good reason behind them. I must not bend to majority, but to truth, and place that in my book.

            In the interests of answering these questions, I am putting together a reading list of books that deal with the high minded, difficult questions. I want to cut underneath appearances and understand what things truly are. I am willing to stretch the limits on this. I will read philosophical essays and thought exercises, theology books, novels and quotes, anything that might help clarify what things are, how they present and why me might be confused when we see them, and how these things work together and support one another into a comprehensive picture. If you know of any, please send me authors and titles.
Some of the ones I already have on the list are 

“The Republic” by Plato, “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis, “Wild at Heart” and “Captivating” by John and Stasi Edlridge, “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov and “The Upanishads.” 

Thanks for the feedback.