Plato's cave

The first two panels from SMBC a few days ago:

The rest of the strip:

The aftercomic:

The mouseover title: "Would you rather sit with friends watching shadows on the bigscreen or spending your time arguing with Plato about whether poetry should be legal?"

This expands on the 9/9/2015 SMBC:

Wikipedia explains the Allegory of the Cave, or you can read the original here.

Wikipedia's explanation of platonic reincarnation is here — and for its linguistic relevance, see here.