So once upon a time there was this one dude, Socrates. Although it is not really clear if there was, strictly speaking, since all we know about him is thanks to only second-hand accounts. Plato, a smart man himself, was allegedly a student of Socrates' and wrote several stories about him and his teachings. One of these philosophical ponderings I've been thinking of lately is know as the Allegory of the Cave.

The allegory circles around the concept of reality observed by an individual. In the story, a group of people are chained in a cave, facing nothing but a blank wall. Behind them is a path and on the other side of the path a fire. When someone walks past them using the path, the fire casts shadows of the moving person on the cave wall the prisoners are facing. Since the prisoners cannot turn around but can hear all the sounds and see only the shadows, they naturally come to the conclusion that it is the shadows that are making all the noises. Even if the shadows are only abstractions of the real objects, to the prisoners they become the reality simply based on that they are all the prisoners can observe.

I am partial to this story and quite like the philosophy behind it. There are several works of fiction in popular culture influenced by the allegory, The Matrix comes to mind. On similar note, I have repeatedly been called an uncultured Philistinian swine for not liking The Truman Show for the same reason. People describe the philosophy behind that movie a brilliant work of art and keep moistening the movie with their tongues, but I just can't get behind that. Surely Truman in that movie would have no idea that his reality is fake; he only becomes to suspect things after his friend delivers an ad in front of him or when a guy smuggles himself inside in a Christmas present. In Truman's world praising the taste of a supermarket beer should be standard behavior, a foamy shadow on the rocks in a cave if you will. From his very birth it could have been made known to him that praising the taste of a beverage and its amazing low price is a tradition invented by a gnome king who lives in an elephant-shaped dirigible above the clouds. He wouldn't know to question that because it is his reality. But somehow he figures it out and I am shunned by the Cannes snobs.

How this allegory came to my mind a few weeks ago and hasn't left it since is because I came across this online article about onion intolerance. The article practically shattered the reality TV show that is my life since I had never heard of it, and I thought that eating raw onion always came with the sensation of washing your mouth with gasoline and a lit match simultaneously. Turns out, I have onion intolerance and regular people apparently chew through it like cotton candy. Raw onion playing arson with my gums is not the universal normal; it is a shadow against the rocks, and I have broken free from my chains.

See, this is how easy it is to never see things past the rocks. You learn something and the universe takes its sweet time to correct it. It's not like a burning sensation after a healthy dose of daily onion is a thing that comes up naturally in a day-to-day small talk at the water cooler.

"Hi Jeff, would you mind delivering the report to my desk by two? By the way, does biting down on an onion make you feel like it's filled with angry fire ants?"

We all take certain knowledge as obvious facts, when it could be that we are but prisoners in a reality TV show. That is how I feel now about the onion case, and it makes me wonder if there's something else in my life that is only smoke and mirrors. Today I find out the truth behind a minor aspect of my bodily functions, tomorrow I could find out that my left leg is actually a cuttlefish and nobody bothered to tell me.