What does it mean to choose unreality?

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy, etc.

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, Plato (and his interlocutor Glaucon) describes a situation where people live in a cave, with their heads forcibly stuck looking in one direction, at shadows on the wall. They don’t know that what they are looking at are in fact shadows, the after-effects of objects passing in front of a fire behind them, a fire they can’t see. The people think they are seeing Real Life, but they’re seeing Shadows. Plato wonders what would happen if someone were freed from the chains, looked backwards, and realized not only that the Shadows were shadows, but also that everyone was in a cave. That person might leave the cave, discover that what was up there is actually Real Life, and that the world below is merely a facsimile, and not the real thing. (I also could’ve just said, you know the plot of The Matrix?)

In this allegory, it feels implied but definite that it is better to live outside of the cave, to live in Real Life rather than in Shadows. (Plato also explores the idea that many people would want to keep living in the cave, because the outside world, in comparison, is blinding.) 

The usefulness of the allegory of the cave is limited, in my opinion, by its stark delineation between Real Life and Shadows. Plato’s allegory suggests that there is a real world, and there is an unreal world, and you must choose which one you live in. Either you can live in the unreal world as a (1) blissful idiot or (2) a knowledgeable coward, or you can choose to live in the real world as a brave pioneer. The real world might not be as comfortable or safe, but it’s Real. 

Beyond Plato’s allegory and all the other content that is an adaptation of Plato’s allegory, where’s the line between Real Life and Shadows? If you’re hopeful about the future, is that Real Life, because that hope, you will find later, was actually not a dream but a prediction? Or is that Shadows — you never should’ve been hopeful, because what you hoped for never came to be. How do you know which is which?

Perhaps my favorite exploration of this is in Miguel de Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote, one of whose central questions is — why does Don Quixote choose to deem himself a knight in a world without knights?* (To me, the book implies — at least by the end — that this is in fact a choice he makes; he’s not just crazy. He knows the world he lives in, and he chooses to live in another.) Upon first glance, this choice seems irrational, ill-fated, and maybe just… dumb. He’s going around fighting windmills, after all, and thinking they’re giants. They’re clearly not giants, they’re windmills, buddy.

But perhaps it’s not so simple or fixed. Maybe the boundaries between the real (windmills) and the unreal (giants) can shift and be permeated. When Don Quixote sees a literally random woman, he decides she is his Dulcinea, his lady love, worthy of respect and deference, despite her low station. People around him seem to think he is living in Shadows — the truth is that Dulcinea is a poor prostitute. And yet, Don Quixote rejects that reality in favor of another, one that doesn’t exist yet, but could. 

Through Don Quixote’s treatment of Dulcinea, Cervantes asks: by treating someone with respect and love, does that person become someone worthy of respect and love? 

Outside of this novel, I ask: by treating someone better than they treat themselves, better than life is currently treating them, do they become better? 

I think the answer to this question — in life and perhaps in the novel, too — is yes. 

I think we can create reality from unreality, sometimes, in some cases, by daring to live the way we think the world should be, even if it isn’t that way right now. It’s why I make art, for crying out loud! I make plays to imagine a world that doesn’t exist yet, but maybe by imagining it all together, we get one step closer to making it real. If you can imagine being strong enough to change, or grow, or apologize, or be angry, or be quiet, or be loud, maybe you can actually become a person who has grown, who has apologized, who has been angry, who has been quiet, who has been loud. 

Maybe there’s a lot more than the shadows in the cave and the supposed real world outside. Maybe there are people that go live outside of the cave, and miss the cave every single day. Maybe there are people that learn about the world outside the cave, and it sounds terrifying, and though they want to go, they’re too scared, so they don’t go. Maybe there are people that go up there and bring back some lamps so the cave isn’t so dark, and now there aren’t even any shadows, there’s something else entirely, and that’s light on peoples faces. Maybe I’ll write a play where the cave is the stage directions, and other people will watch that play, like how the people in Plato and Glaucon’s imagined world watched the shadows in the cave.

*Another incredible exploration of this is in Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, which I cannot recommend highly enough!!