"Imagine a cave separated from the outer world by a high wall. Between the wall and the floor of the cave there is a gap through which a thin beam of outer light passes, leaving the cave in almost complete obscurity. From birth, generation after generation, human beings are there, with their backs to the entrance, chained without being able to move their heads or move, forced to look only at the back wall, living without ever having seen the outside world or without ever having actually seen one another or themselves, but only the shadows of others and of themselves because they are in the dark and immobilized ..... "