Jun 16 2008
Reflections on the Matrix
I watched the Matrix yesterday. It’s an extraordinary film. Virtually every scene is perfect. Choreography, lighting, costume, sets, effects, tints, dialogue…it’s all exceptional. Films 2 and 3 are good, but they are nothing to the first masterpiece. It’s hard for me to watch it, for two main reasons:
- I’ve seen it too many times. When I discovered it in 2000, I must have watched it every day for at least 50 days. I was captivated. But that has ruined it a little for me. It’s hard to really watch, and not just play back memories.
- I think it’s the perfect depiction of what I see around me in the real world. But then, so does everyone else. I’ve seen the Matrix used as an example in dozens of essays and rants around the net. Everything from spirituality to education to diet, people use the Matrix as an example. And yet, I feel I have more of a right to use it than most.
There is a very remote chance that you, beloved reader, see the world as I do. And I do mean literally see. I know that at least one man reading these words can see, but chooses not to care because he has decided that the horror is not his problem. I know that one woman reading these words knows, but I don’t think she sees. And I know that another dozen men and women, at least, feel the itch in their minds, that something is wrong. But you do not see. You can choose to believe me or not, but I do actually see a different world to you. I have stepped out of the bondage of one world, one system, one lie, and now I see another world. Plato put it like this:
Imagine prisoners who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their arms and legs unmovable because of chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.
Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of various animals, plants, and other things are moved along. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. Behind this cave there is a well-used road, and upon this road people are walking and talking and generally making noise. The prisoners, then, believe that these noises are coming directly from the shadows they are watching pass by on the cave wall.
The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game : naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.
Suppose a prisoner’s chains break, and he is able to get up and walk about (a process which takes some time, as he has never done it before). Eventually he will be compelled to explore; he walks up and out of the cave, whereby he is instantly blinded by the sun. He turns then to the shadows on the floor, in the lakes, slowly working his way out of his deluded mind, and he is eventually able to glimpse the sun. In time, he would learn to see it as the object that provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.
This applies to a lot of situations. One of Peter Vardy’s favourite analogies is prime numbers. Lets say you know what a prime number is, and I don’t. To you prime numbers are real, tangible, intelligible. When you use the words you know exactly and instantly what you’re talking about. I don’t. To me they’re just words. So you sit down with me and painstakingly explain to me what prime numbers are, and you take me through examples, until finally I realise and in that instant, prime numbers stop being just words to me, they become real. Before, I knew the words. Now, I know the meaning.
The Christian who has found Christ would say that he has woken up from a dream, that he now knows something new, that before his realisation, he was mistaken. The world will look different to him now.
The Buddhist who realises that the world of suffering is an illusion has stepped into a new form of perception.
I have shared these states, and I know something about how they feel. What I see is something else. I am by no means unique in having found it, but I am unusual. In philosophy and religion you’ll sometimes encounter mystics who have shaken themselves free. It’s impossible to describe this world to somebody who is still living in the illusion, because they think they know the meaning of the words, but they don’t. They have never experienced life outside of the prison. And I can come up with endless examples, but they would just expose one lie, and the lie and it’s exposition would still be framed within the terms and parameters of the illusion. All the slave has to work with is the shadow.
…what do you see? Businessmen, Teachers, Lawyers, Carpenters…the very minds of the people we’re trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
You will fight. Your insecurities are shored up by the illusion. Your pleasures are bound up within it. Your relationships all depend on it. When you look at life beyond it, it seems like a grey, drab world. To step outside is to use bravery that is never shown in film, rarely depicted in book, and would certainly not be approved of by your friends and family.
And there is the great barrier to freedom: everyone else. The main thing that is wrong with the Matrix is that in reality there is no enemy. There is no great conspiracy of evil machines. There is just us. We are the system, we imprison one another, and we set up an infrastructure to make questioning the illusion impossible. Our language, our culture, our beliefs and values, our version of history, our heroes, our saints, our villains, our governments, our jobs, our relationships, our hopes and fears, our hobbies, our pleasures, our goals, the things we most crave and the things we imagine when something goes bump in the night: it all exists to keep us safely closeted within the lie.
I love you. As few lovers ever care for each other, I love you. You are very precious to me, and I care for you deeply. But you will hate me if I take away the lie that underpins your life. You will fight me, and you would almost certainly kill me to stop me taking away something so precious.
For myself, it is a frustrating life. As I said, there is no enemy to fight. And I am not a Neo, I cannot escape from the system, do what I like with impunity. I have no special powers, I cannot exploit the weaknesses in this system.
…yet
