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| http://thecaveisanexus.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/the-matrix-is-invisible/ |
Would you like
to be fast enough to dodge bullets? Jump
a hundred feet in one leap? Effortlessly run up walls? Well, that’s not possible…except if you live
in the Matrix, a 1999 sci-fi movie
about a dystopian future world in which reality as perceived by most humans is
actually simulated reality. As I watched the movie for the first time, I
learned that for people trapped within the Matrix, they believe that everything
they see, do, touch and feel exists, even though it is only a cyberspace simulation
of a real world.
When professor
La-VaqueManty went over Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” in lecture, I
immediately thought of the movie, The
Matrix. What we perceive as reality vs. what is actual reality can be two
completely different things, and it is a mistake to limit ourselves to
conventional thinking due to our unwillingness to change. Both Plato’s story and Hollywood’s movie perfectly
illustrate this intellectualism.
The “Allegory of
the Cave” is written by Plato about a hypothetical conversation between
Socrates and Plato’s brother, Glaucon.
The conversation is about prisoners who have been chained in a cave
facing a blank wall all their life. Their legs and necks are held in place,
compelling them to do nothing but stare straight ahead. There is a fire on the ground, and between the
wall and d the fire objects can pass. Occasionally,
shadows are projected onto the wall by things as they pass in front of the
fire. The prisoner’s only conceptions of reality are the shadows of what they
see and so the prisoners claim to understand the world based on these shapes. Socrates suggests that because of their highly
limited view, the prisoners take the shadows to be real things and the echoes
to be real sounds created by the shadows, not just the reflections of reality.
In the Matrix,
Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer, with a double life as a hacker under
the alias of “Neo,” seeks to find a truth that he does not yet understand. The
Matrix is the name of a world created in cyberspace that is used to pacify and
subdue most of the human population. Humans
submerged in the Matrix believe that they are living in the world circa 1999,
or the “peak of human civilization.” But this is far from reality. Although people believe they are living
normal lives, they are kept in pods where their bodies are sources of heat and
electrical energy for the artificial intelligence machines that have taken over
the world. They use the energy generated by the human body to power their systems.
The Matrix is a computer program created to occupy the minds of those trapped.
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| http://www.triathlontrainingblog.com/post/i-choose-the-red-pill/ |
In one of the
most pivotal points of the movie, Neo is given the choice between two pills,
red and blue. This represents a metaphor between blissful ignorance of illusion
(blue) and embracing the difficult truth of reality (red). But my thought is what would one chose, using
the example of the Matrix, if one were fully informed of opting for the
dystopian world which really exists or the much more comfortable cyberspace world?
The red pill represents a stepping away
from conventional thinking and enlarging one’s view. The Matrix trilogy sets the story up so that
if Neo fails, he would live and die in an authentic life.
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| http://tamayaosbc.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/74/ |
In Allegory of
the Caves, Socrates supposes that if one of the prisoners is freed and
permitted to stand up and see what is causing the shadows, he would not be able
to identify them. He would believe that the shadows on the wall were more real
than what he sees. If this man was able
to leave the cave and enter the sunlight, would he not be blinded and turn back
to the dark comfort of the cave? I believe that after sometime on the surface
the freed prisoner would begin to adapt to the new world. He would see more and
more things around him and eventually try to return to the caves to make others
aware of their ignorance.
At the beginning
of the Matrix, once Neo has swallowed the red pill of enlightenment and is
released from the grasp of the Matrix, he awakens in a body pod encasing him in
a pool of glutinous solution and wires coming out of nearly every part of his anatomy.
Once he is released to look upon the throngs
of people in the real world encased all in similar pods, he abruptly passes
out. His transition from Matrix to
reality takes a long period of time. There
are mental hurdles and also great physical hurdles to pass as well. It requires a lot of time to build muscles
that have never been used. Like the
prisoner of the cave newly released from his shackles, he eventually adapts to
the new environment and decides he must re-enter the Matrix to free others.
Like Neo, the
freed prisoner returning to the cave is something else that Plato considers. He
says: “Wouldn’t he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and
his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable?...Moreover,
were he to return there, wouldn’t he be rather bad at their game, no longer
being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn’t it be said of him that he went up
and come back with his eyes corrupted, and that it’s not even worth trying to
go up?” Why would one go back to the cave after being trapped there all of
their lives? Would not those who were free take pity on those who were still
trapped and have a skewed version of the world? The answer in my opinion is - absolutely yes. Why would you not take pity
on those who do not know anything about the world as you do?
Neo decides to
return to the Matrix for exactly the same reason. Neo has to learn more about the real and
virtual world n order to try to stop the artificial intelligence machines
holding the population as prisoners. When
Neo returns to the Matrix the first time, he seems in shock because everything
he has ever known is right in front of him, but he knows that none of it is
real. He appears to take pity on the many who are as completely ignorant now in
their limited view just as he was just a few weeks prior.
Neo and the
prisoners both begin with a very limited view of the world. When Neo was
approached by a mysterious man who offered the choice
between taking a red pill of reality and a blue pill of blissfully continuing
ignorance, Neo chose the red. Which one
would you choose? Is it entirely wrong
to choose the blue pill, and live within the pleasurable confines of the Matrix
when the outside world is so ugly? And
in the Allegory of the Caves, if a prisoner was released outside and came back
in to spread the “truth” about the “real” world, and free the others, could he
expect to be readily embraced for his efforts or be condemned because of a
stubbornness to change? Plato suggests
that it is always a mistake to be limited in our views, and he would have
chosen the red pill also.
I want you all to ask yourselves the question: What is real?
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