Plato might have had it more right than he knew when he wrote the Allegory of the Cave. I would highly advise anyone, with some free time, to read the Allegory of the Cave (Book VII of Plato's best-known work, The Republic). In summation, the story is how regular people are only aware of what they are told or the information that they are fed. The philosopher or the scholar are the ones that break free of the shadows and interpretations to see the real world and in turn escape the cave and, even though dealing with the truth is more difficult and painful, continue to live outside of the cave. It really is a very awesome and powerful metaphor of how we deal with the world around us. Escaping the cave in Plato's story is more of a mental liberation to learn and understand the world around us. However, escaping the cave doesn't mean we are completely free to experience the universe. Subsequent to our escape we are now confined to a planet that circles a star in a space with seemingly never-ending boundaries, and we are only equipped with a limited set of senses.
When exploring the reality of the universe we need to remove ourselves from the planet Earth and not limit ourselves to the common senses. Much of Einstein's ideas defy what we experience from day to day, and he makes that very clear in his papers. He is often explaining his ideas twice, under real world expectations and in theoretical terms (mainly because he deals with things that travel near to the speed of c, and we don't experience things that move that fast). The elephant in the room is, does it even matter to study it if it only theoretically exists? We can't experience this in our everyday lives so why waste our time? I do not agree, if we are okay with binding our bodies to the earth then we are simply ignorant Earthlings, there must be more for us out there.
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