Reality vs Truth

Truth and reality is a difficult thing to discuss. What is reality? Is it also truth? There is a very thin and fascinating line between reality and truth. In The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, Socrates attempts to get Glaucon to see from different points of view. He attempts to make Glaucon think of the true differences between truth and reality. Socrates paints the picture of the cave. The shadows and darkness are the reality of the prisoners, but are they the truth? Socrates wants Glaucon to think of this for himself. Is the darkness the truth or the light? Socrates points out that to the cave dwellers, the light is blinding and otherworldly. To the men who left the cave, the darkness is pitch black. The people in the cave can see perfectly fine in the dark, but the people who left cannot. Both are reality. Which is truth? This is Socrates's whole message. Reality is what you perceive. Truth is difficult to profess. Socrates forces both us and Glaucon to think of truth as something undefined. In reality, do any of us know truth? I don't know. For example (spoilers), in the film Fight Club, the narrator and his friend Tyler Durdin join forces to start a fight club. The narrator sees Tyler slowly taking over his authority and his life. Tyler tells the narrator what to say and do. Eventually, Tyler has full control of the fight club and has turned it into an organised crime ring while the narrator sits around wondering what is going on. As an audience, we wonder why the narrator does nothing. Why does he listen to what Tyler says if he does not like it? This is when reality changes and truth is uncovered. The reality that there is a narrator and a Tyler Durdin is false. Tyler Durdin exists only in the mind of the narrator. The truth remains unchanged, but the audience now has a clear understanding. When we look back, we realise that the story wasn't quite right up until our discovery. This ties in with The Allegory of the Cave by showing us that reality is uncertain and truth is hard to detect within our skewed reality. The difference between one man and another lies between who is in the cave and who is not.