The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay

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TV Tropes: Platonic Cave

Sound familiar to school? (Hidden)

Hidden stuff:

This is a classic story and trope, presented in more modern form in The Truman Show and The Matrix, and The Writer's Journey:

Hidden stuff:

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The now-famous Red Pill, Blue Pill trope is an instantiation of the trope The Call to Adventure, the first step in the classic Hero's Journey story structure.

In this video, writer Christopher Vogler explains how the Hero's Journey is relevant to to the creative process itself, and in his experience, life itself:



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This leads me back to Trekkie's post, Your grades do not define you. Stop thinking they do. If you haven't read that text -- go for it. If you have, try rereading it with the above videos an tvtropes pages in mind.

Once you get a sense that you're defined by more than your grades, your credits, your degrees, if any, there's the question of how you define yourself instead, who you are, what your quest is. If it's not handed down by dictate, if no Herald points you in an obvious direction, what do you do? How do you manage your use of time, your attention, your decisions on what to click on or what to search for?

The reality is that your starting point, if you've made it this far, is often some list of posts, links, or videos that show up on whatever sites you go to. This is better than being tied down in front of a blackboard, but it still leads to the question of how to navigate it all, beyond whatever subconscious jumps of attention your psyche makes along the way.

If you begin to pay more attention to where you click and why, what catches your attention, and how you can step back from that first level of neural processing, one thing that becomes clear is that not everything is as interesting or important as everything else. If you think about it, not everything is worth as much your time as everything else.

You can't always tell this in advance, but by learning to think in those terms, you can free up more time to try new things, or revisit old themes that have floated out of the range of your awareness.

Stay tuned for more discussion of the many ways you can use your time in ways that make for a richer life.