‘In order to thrive,’ writes Boston College Director ofAmerican Studies Carlo Rotella in a splendid essay onMagic Slim and Buddy Guy, the last of the great 1950sChicago blues musicians, in The Boston Globe (13September 2010), ‘every genre or style needs bothvisionary innovators and orthodox practitioners. Withoutthe former, it becomes hidebound. Without the latter, itdrifts and loses its center.’ But what happens whenorthodoxy becomes dogma? What is the fate ofinnovators when they pose a threat, not to the acceptedview, but to the accepted truth? The best discussion of that situation I have ever read isover 2000 years old. It’s Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, andit’s one of my favorite passages in classical literature.
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