"'We owe the Terran Empire nothing. It dragooned our forebears into itself. It has spurned our leadership, the vision that animated the Founders. It will only allow us to remain ourselves on this single patch of land, afar in its marches. Here we dwell like Plato's man in chains, seeing only shadows on the wall of our cave, shadows cast by the living universe. The Merseians have no cause to fear or shun us. Rather, they will welcome us as their intermediaries with the human commonality. They will grant us the same boundless freedom they want for themselves.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 423.
Nonsense, man! You are in the living universe. You are free to travel, trade and explore. Do you want a freedom "granted" by Merseia? Your only right to "lead" is the same as anyone else's: give us a moral or social lead or example and find out whether we freely follow your example.
Anderson wrote an Asimov Robots story called "Plato's Cave." Plato stood reality on its head. He thought that ideas were not abstractions from our experience but that they were ultimate realities merely reflected by sensory experience. Thus, his men watching shadows in a cave were (so he thought) seeing objects which were merely copies of ideas whereas, I suggest, it is the ideas that are derived, by abstraction and generalization, from the real objects. The universe contains many real animals from which "animal-hood" is an abstraction, not vice versa.
In any case, the Zacharians on their island cannot claim that they see only shadows.
