Thoughts on Plato's Cave and shadows.

The allegory of the Cave is from The Republic presented by Plato. ( 514a-520a )
Written as a dialogue, it describes a group of men, chained to the wall of a cave, facing a blank wall. Behind them is a fire with things which pass in front of it and their shadows are projected onto the wall. The shadows are the only things that the prisoners see and only know life through them. The philosopher is the only person who has seen the reality of the world outside and can see what is really happening in the cave.

This theme keeps coming back to me in many ways and so I thought of investigating the concept of  light and shadows more thoroughly.
In psychology, the shadow side of the individual is seen as the side which is not seen but more hidden. The conscious self is more known and the subconscious difficult to acknowledge.

The light of the sun creates shadows and the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Perhaps this could apply to the individual int terms of knowledge? The more one learns and understands, the more one realises how little is known.

It is not possible to just have light and no shadow. They are different sides of the same coin and just like the performer and the audience. Both are joined together.
Without shadow, it would be very difficult to see the forms of anything as all objects would appear flat.
Water is transparent but it is the light and shadow which gives it form. A wave would not be seen if there were no shadow to give it shape. The ripples of the wind would not give water it's wateriness without light and shadow.
A face would have no form without light and dark.
These things are as negative space. If only the object is seen, it has no sense of relationship with anything around it. Without shadows, only part of the world is seen. Perhaps by examining the shadows more, the object becomes more real and the relationship between them more intense.

All these things seem so obvious but if I am trying to draw and paint, and find what really interests me, it is this. How the simplest things in life are the subject for the profound and through them, the way to explore what matters most to me.
The more I learn, the less I know.