The Platonic Imagery of Mumford & Sons

The Platonic Imagery of Mumford & Sons

I am not someone who should ever review music, my tastes being without pattern when they exist at all.  But, my students and an old friend have recently introduced me to a very intriguing band who released their second album to great fanfare in late 2012.  Mumford & Sons, a quartet from west London who play a version of American folk rock music, have travelled the U.S. in their "Gentlemen of the Road" tour.  Last evening a friend who has gone to their concerts described them to me as full of "20-somethings who love the music and 40-60 year olds who are there pondering the deep meaning of the lyrics."  Since I am in the latter age category, I've got a few thoughts about some of their lyrics which I find full of powerful imagery and deep meaning.

This week the students in my political leadership course at the University of Louisville and I discussed Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" and, though I don't assume to know what the song writer meant, the parallels between Mumford & Sons' song "The Cave" ( http://video.answers.com/mumford-and-sons-performing-the-cave-live-at-the-music-hall-of-williamsburg-473940896 )and the Platonic story are impossible to miss. (As are illusions to Homer and other ancient texts, but I won't confuse things too much today).

Plato invites us to imagine a society as a dark cave (Book VII about 514B-520D) the average person being shackled to a post staring at the back wall.  Those people spend their lives looking at the shadows on the wall and assuming they are reality.  Though they don't understand it, the voices and sounds they heard were mere echoes off the wall of shadows. Ignorance reigns in the human condition.

Beyond the objects creating the shadows, however, is the half-truth of the firelight and beyond that is the truth that exists in the world of the sun outside the cave.  The role of education is to help students (and us all) to turn away from the shadows toward the light of truth.  Coming to understand that our lives have been lived with lies and that truth lives beyond our comfort zone is painful and requires a great struggle to accept. 

But for Plato the great goal has not fully been achieved when enlightenment is found outside the cave. Rather, Plato then lays a responsibility on the enlightened one to re-enter the cave (again a painful process, now reversing the trek by leaving the light for the confusing darkness of the cave) in order to encourage and serve those left in ignorance.  Mumford & Sons capture this situation brilliantly in their lyrics.

The band seems to sing to a fellow human being, perhaps a lover, who is still shackled to the stake of ignorance in the cave:

But I will hold on hope

And I won't let you choke

On the noose around your neck

They capture the pain of enlightenment and the need to embrace the discipline and discomfort that comes with the journey from the shadowlands toward the light where truth is found--including the truth of knowing who one really is.  It is surely the truth that will "refresh my broken mind."

And I'll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

Know my name as it's called again

Because I have other things to fill my time

You take what is yours and I'll take mine

Now let me at the truth

Which will refresh my broken mind

Plato tells of the plight of the political leader or educator (an allegory of the trial and execution of Socrates?) who returns to share his knowledge with the people still comfortably playing games with the shadows.  These servants would be mocked, dismissed, and perhaps even forcibly reeducated or killed.  Mumford & Sons captures this situation with defiant lyrics:

So tie me to a post and block my ears

I can see widows and orphans through my tears

I know my call despite my faults

And despite my growing fears

And issues the challenge to come out of the cave of ignorance and see the great Truth that lies beyond the shadows the politicians and corporations and movie makers and teachers and public relations people tell us is reality.  The maker's hand is waiting to be known:

So come out of your cave walking on your hands

And see the world hanging upside down

You can understand dependence

When you know the maker's hand

Plato knows the power of the siren's call to "fit in" with your peers and love interests and become "well-adjusted" to society.  It takes a defiance and strength to get free of the culture and to be what we were intended to be: "To live my life as its meant to be"

So make your siren's call

And sing all you want

I will not hear what you have to say

Because I need freedom now

And I need to know how

To live my life as it's meant to be

"To live my life as its meant to be." What a life-changing goal for us all. . . to strive to know what it is to be human, what it is to live a life worthy and humane, to be what we are meant to be.  And, what a great excuse to re-read Plato, ponder Mumford & Sons' outstanding songs, and wonder what might someday call us out of the cave.