explanatory notes

figure A.

Why start a blog?

I figure that's a good question to begin this endeavor with, and so I've titled this post "explanatory notes."

Why blog?  Why this one in particular?  Well, I have just a few reasons, and all of them are selfish.  Firstly, I wanted an excuse to write.  Secondly, I wanted an excuse to be eccentric and "creative."  Thirdly, I wondered what people might think about all of this.

Really, the decision to blog came out of the title...rather, the title came first, then the blog.  I figured with a title as good as "Shadows on the wall" I'd need to have a blog to go with it--it just seemed too promising.

Admittedly, from the start, I expect to update this thing sporadically at best--I also expect most of what I say to be rubbish, and therefore I have chosen "shadows on the wall" as the blog title as an allusion to Plato's allegory of the cave from book 7 of The Republic.   In the allegory, Plato attempts to explain his view of the world and reality.  People in this world, he writes, are like people sitting inside a dimly light cave--they are chained to a wall, and have never seen the outside world for themselves (See figure A. above, in which the family staring at the Television eerily fit the description of the ignorant people inside the cave...however, so called "reality TV" is a topic for another time.)  There is, behind them of course, a fire which casts a light on the wall in front of them.  In front of this fire, and yet still behind the simple folks happily chained, are people with various items atop poles.  These people carry the objects across the front of the fire, and so the shadows of the objects appear on the wall in front of the clueless men and women in chains.  These shadows, they take fore reality--only because they've never seen the outside world.  They've been deceived, all of them--but they don't know it.

My reason for the title of the blog is more of a judgement on my part, that what I write will probably be more like shadows on the wall of the cave, rather than true reality.  It's more of a disclaimer--I don't pretend to know everything--or much of anything.  But, having said that, I do not ascribe to a philosophy that claims nothing is knowable.  I do trust in the reliability of Him who cannot lie, and His revelation--He, who is Reality Himself.

I personally look forward to posting often here, and I am encouraged or at least flattered that you would take the time to read what it is I write.  I find that it helps me to read my writing in a Tony Blair style British accent.

For the kingdom,
Andrew