Ironic....you mentioned a cave and it reminded me about Plato’s work based on Socrates and his “Dialogs”...”The Cave” whereupon one found one-self confined to a chair watching shadows of what was supposedly real life flickering on the cave wall. A realization was reached(he doesn’t say how which was a weakness in his treatise) that it wasn’t the shadows on the cave wall that were important, nor was the 3 dimensional activity occurring behind the viewer(that was lit by light streaming from the cave opening...hence the shadows on the wall)...but rather one needed to break one’s bonds of ignorance, escaping the chair and the shadows on the wall, and ignore the “real life” activity that was projected onto the wall by the light, and instead escape the cave and walk out into the light itself where the truth really exists!
Agree or disagree about Socrates’ views...when a person was forced to drink poison or be killed or exiled, it makes a reader take notice as to what he said that made folks so angry with him!
Which is actually a good argument FOR sticking your head up and looking around. It’s a big world, lots of “culture” is made every day, some of it is pretty awesome, and you’ll never find out about it if all you’re doing is looking at the shadows and chanting “it sucks”.