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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Quotes 240. Today we have another quote by Plato.

  • Okay and we have done a couple by him before. But let's take a look at the

  • quote today. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.

  • "The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. " Okay. Let's take a

  • look at the note here. Tthe first part of the quote seems to be obvious and easy

  • to understand. If a child is afraid of the dark

  • he can easily be forgiven because he's just a child

  • and he is still naive To really understand the quote one one must

  • question what does Plato mean by the light ? So he's talking about men are

  • afraid of the light. What does he mean by light here ? There

  • are several ideas you know, there are people that could still be debating

  • exactly what does he mean by light. So here are several ideas. First light could

  • refer to exposure of evil or bad deeds. This of course could lead to great guilt

  • or hold one back from one's potential out of fear of exposure. So if somebody did

  • some bad things in their life and they they fear that one day this could come

  • out and you know, they may be thought of in a different way. It may ruin their

  • reputation or whatever and it can hold them back from you know from reaching

  • their full potential. So this in itself could be a tragedy that they got to

  • carry this around with them for the rest of their life. So this is one way that it

  • could refer to light. Let's look at the second one here. The second possibility

  • is light represents truth and knowledge of the world. Okay. Perhaps a particular

  • man may prefer the comfort of ignorance rather than search out and face or deal

  • with the truth. Yes. He may be unable to face ugly truth. So maybe there's some

  • truths out there. That's not like he imagined could ever possibly be.

  • He may be afraid to even think about it or deal with it. He won't dare to

  • consider that something may not be real or true from what he thought before. Yeah.

  • You , you might think about this like with today with fake news in our modern

  • times or you know, news that we hear directly from either government or you

  • know that we read in the books. Sometimes we find out if we search deeper that not

  • all this is really is the way that we've been told and the way it's been written

  • in the books. So if you if you look deeper, you may find there some truths beyond

  • that and you know basically if you're afraid of finding out some of these

  • truths, if you're afraid of searching and looking for these answers, this Plato

  • might also think is a tragedy in many ways. Or and the third possibility. The

  • third possibility is light may represent proper and moral behavior of life. Okay.

  • The tragedy here is once a man admits this. Once he admits this . Once you figure out well

  • this is the moral way. This is the right way, so you should follow it. You should

  • do it. So the proper or moral way ... the tragedy here is once a man admits this to himself,

  • he should follow it, but may be unwilling to sacrifice some comforts or he may

  • prefer to justify his bad behavior with excuses rather than make an effort to

  • change. And this in itself could also be a tragedy. So these are all three

  • possibilities of what Plato might mean by this quote but either way it's a very

  • interesting quote. It's an interesting quote to dwell on or to think about.

  • Anyway, I hope you got it. I hope it was food for thought. Thank you for your time.

  • Bye bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Quotes 240. Today we have another quote by Plato.

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