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The following is my modern take on the allegory of the cave.
For my purposes, I define the ‘shadows’ are our ‘world view’. Our ‘world view’ is how we see the world, people, societies, etc., and how we understand (or believe) the world, people, societies, etc. to work.
When we are comfortable with our world view, it is hard to see things that do not fit into our world view. It may be hard for us to to escape from old world views. This is represented by the prisoner being released, but it may be better to think of him/her as escaping from their world view/comfort zone.
Others may not understand our world views (i.e. the prisoners believed the world outside the cave couldn’t exist), but that doesn’t make our world views any less valid.