Berenice Eumana
May 16, 2011
The Matrix and Imagination
Dr.Elizabeth H. McCormick
Existence is difficult to understand; even for great philosophers like Plato it was difficult to explain life. People came to believe that what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell are what exists and determines what’s real. We’ve accepted a long time ago that these five senses are what reveal everything and we tend to ignore what’s beyond them, and beyond our boundaries. The truth is someone’s pulling the wool over our eyes, some unknown elite, God, or maybe machines keeping us in an incubator, and as long as the people under him/her are comfortable they’ll accept the lies. People might be living a lie their whole life, just like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Wachowski brothers The Matrix, without a choice or chance of freedom. In both cases, a handful of people are broken free from the oppression and show the people of the world that they have two choices; to continue living in an illusion or to know the truth and fight for change. In The Matrix, which is similar to Plato’s story, the main character Neo is given this choice. He made the decision to discover the truth knowing there’s no turning back from the nightmare. Understanding reality reminded Neo of the bliss of ignorance, but the feeling of freedom was much more satisfying and he wants to share it with the world, just like the prisoner in The Allegory of the Cave.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave there are human beings who have lived in a cave since their childhood, where their legs and necks have been chained, not allowing them to move. In front of them are shadows being presented by a fire in the distance and a low wall built to create a screen. These shadows are projected by people holding up puppets, sometimes making sounds. The humans were only able to look forward, so their “truth” would be nothing more than the shadows they have seen their whole life. These humans can be seen as prisoners, but to the prisoners they are just living life. One day, one of the prisoners escapes from the cave and as he looks back, he recognizes that the shadows are just objects that are shown by the fire. The brightness of the fire, hurts his eyes since he is accustomed to the darkness. As he steps out of the cave he is exposed to the sun, which gave off such a light that it didn’t allow him to quickly observe his surroundings. He first sees shadows of the objects around him, then the reflection on the water, then the objects themselves, then the stars and moon at night, and finally the sun. He would see the sun in his own proper way and argue that the sun “gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world” (Kreis 3). The man decides to go back to the cave where he can share the real world experiences with the prisoners, but it’s hard to convince them right away that the shadows are not real. If the man had a contest to measure the shadows with the prisoners, the prisoners would win because all their life they have seen these objects rather than the escaped man who has been exposed to a new habit of sight. The prisoners would laugh at him and tell him how foolish he was for leaving the cave and that he came back without his eyes. These prisoners don’t know their prisoners, don’t think their prisoners this is the only reality that they ever known.
May 16, 2011
The Matrix and Imagination
Dr.Elizabeth H. McCormick
Existence is difficult to understand; even for great philosophers like Plato it was difficult to explain life. People came to believe that what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell are what exists and determines what’s real. We’ve accepted a long time ago that these five senses are what reveal everything and we tend to ignore what’s beyond them, and beyond our boundaries. The truth is someone’s pulling the wool over our eyes, some unknown elite, God, or maybe machines keeping us in an incubator, and as long as the people under him/her are comfortable they’ll accept the lies. People might be living a lie their whole life, just like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the Wachowski brothers The Matrix, without a choice or chance of freedom. In both cases, a handful of people are broken free from the oppression and show the people of the world that they have two choices; to continue living in an illusion or to know the truth and fight for change. In The Matrix, which is similar to Plato’s story, the main character Neo is given this choice. He made the decision to discover the truth knowing there’s no turning back from the nightmare. Understanding reality reminded Neo of the bliss of ignorance, but the feeling of freedom was much more satisfying and he wants to share it with the world, just like the prisoner in The Allegory of the Cave.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave there are human beings who have lived in a cave since their childhood, where their legs and necks have been chained, not allowing them to move. In front of them are shadows being presented by a fire in the distance and a low wall built to create a screen. These shadows are projected by people holding up puppets, sometimes making sounds. The humans were only able to look forward, so their “truth” would be nothing more than the shadows they have seen their whole life. These humans can be seen as prisoners, but to the prisoners they are just living life. One day, one of the prisoners escapes from the cave and as he looks back, he recognizes that the shadows are just objects that are shown by the fire. The brightness of the fire, hurts his eyes since he is accustomed to the darkness. As he steps out of the cave he is exposed to the sun, which gave off such a light that it didn’t allow him to quickly observe his surroundings. He first sees shadows of the objects around him, then the reflection on the water, then the objects themselves, then the stars and moon at night, and finally the sun. He would see the sun in his own proper way and argue that the sun “gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world” (Kreis 3). The man decides to go back to the cave where he can share the real world experiences with the prisoners, but it’s hard to convince them right away that the shadows are not real. If the man had a contest to measure the shadows with the prisoners, the prisoners would win because all their life they have seen these objects rather than the escaped man who has been exposed to a new habit of sight. The prisoners would laugh at him and tell him how foolish he was for leaving the cave and that he came back without his eyes. These prisoners don’t know their prisoners, don’t think their prisoners this is the only reality that they ever known.
The Matrix had an interesting concept on life, that it’s a computer program. The movie’s main story began when Neo, The One, was contacted by Morpheus, a person who’s been already enlightened. Something about Neo made him very valuable to this stranger, and also a target of the agents, the machines who created the Matrix. He finally met Morpheus in person and was asked to pick one of two pills.
The option Neo chose at this point was going to be the most important and symbolic decision he would ever make in his life. It involved a blue pill and red pill and each one had a special outcome. If he took the blue pill “The story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you wanted” (Wachowski ). If he took it he’d remain a computer programmer in his Matrix life, and a slave to the machines. If he took the red pill “You stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes” (Wachowski ). He took the red pill and discovered reality and how ugly and damaged life is. He also discovered the ridiculous fact that humans are being used as batteries by machines. The metaphor is very similar to Plato’s allegory. Neo went out to discover reality and think of a way to retrain and wake up all the drones in the Matrix. To save humanity is a tough journey, especially since most people rather live in ignorance and bliss, but he set out to do it.
The two stories go hand in hand when it comes to the theory of being enlightened. In the Allegory of the Cave there were shadows of statues held by unseen puppeteers reflected on the wall by the fire. The Cave has a theme that it’s a poor copy of the real world, which to the prisoners is their only reality. According to Plato, “our world is nothing but shadows, imperfect manifestations of the forms” (Allegory). The Matrix is very similar to this belief of being lost in the dark because it is also about people being prisoners and believing what they are born into. The Matrix is their cave and the machines are their puppet masters. In the Matrix it’s a lot trickier, life could be so comfortable that you forget to even think you’re in bondage. Your mind is enslaved by an artificial life, your senses may be working but you’re only a brain in a glass jar. People accept these senses by completely listening to them and believing everything like it really exists, and nothing more. Some people break out though and enjoy the freedom. Morpheus and his ship are a prime example of what an enlightened person should do. They went back, knowing the threat of death, in an attempt to enlighten and free more victims of the puppet masters. Unfortunately, the grasp of the machines is so strong that the person, their very own race turns against them because they’re seen as a threat. The prisoners in the cave do the same thing, laugh at the enlightened one and tell him the light has ruined his eyes. However the escaped prisoner would not want to have the same perception in life as the others because his mind has been expanded to so many new horizons. Just like in the Matrix when Morpheus tells Neo “I’m trying to free your mind Neo, but I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it” (Wachowski ). This compares to when the escaped prisoner would tell the other prisoners that they would have a different perception in life if they could see what he has been exposed to. The prisoners would enter a new environment where they might question existence, question their old world, due to the shadows being an unreal projection by people before them. The scene when Neo is slowly drawn into the mirror represents the gateway between the bondage of stimulation, of the beginning, and of the new world. This is the rebirth of Neo being involved in the actual real world and not the Matrix. The escaped prisoner goes through this rebirth as well as he steps out of the cave, to recover his eyes and to use them like he never used them before.
The two stories go hand in hand when it comes to the theory of being enlightened. In the Allegory of the Cave there were shadows of statues held by unseen puppeteers reflected on the wall by the fire. The Cave has a theme that it’s a poor copy of the real world, which to the prisoners is their only reality. According to Plato, “our world is nothing but shadows, imperfect manifestations of the forms” (Allegory). The Matrix is very similar to this belief of being lost in the dark because it is also about people being prisoners and believing what they are born into. The Matrix is their cave and the machines are their puppet masters. In the Matrix it’s a lot trickier, life could be so comfortable that you forget to even think you’re in bondage. Your mind is enslaved by an artificial life, your senses may be working but you’re only a brain in a glass jar. People accept these senses by completely listening to them and believing everything like it really exists, and nothing more. Some people break out though and enjoy the freedom. Morpheus and his ship are a prime example of what an enlightened person should do. They went back, knowing the threat of death, in an attempt to enlighten and free more victims of the puppet masters. Unfortunately, the grasp of the machines is so strong that the person, their very own race turns against them because they’re seen as a threat. The prisoners in the cave do the same thing, laugh at the enlightened one and tell him the light has ruined his eyes. However the escaped prisoner would not want to have the same perception in life as the others because his mind has been expanded to so many new horizons. Just like in the Matrix when Morpheus tells Neo “I’m trying to free your mind Neo, but I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it” (Wachowski ). This compares to when the escaped prisoner would tell the other prisoners that they would have a different perception in life if they could see what he has been exposed to. The prisoners would enter a new environment where they might question existence, question their old world, due to the shadows being an unreal projection by people before them. The scene when Neo is slowly drawn into the mirror represents the gateway between the bondage of stimulation, of the beginning, and of the new world. This is the rebirth of Neo being involved in the actual real world and not the Matrix. The escaped prisoner goes through this rebirth as well as he steps out of the cave, to recover his eyes and to use them like he never used them before.
Humans are truly the biggest miracle of life. They are born with a blank slate, a “tabula rasa” as the psychologist Watson would call it, and are really capable of anything. At first we lived harmoniously by nature. Everything we observed taught us how to live and how to care. Unfortunately, nature could be reckless and painful. It has destruction and disease and that might have influenced the original human as much as anything. According to John B. Watson in the textbook, “Human emotions and behaviors, though biologically influenced, are mainly a bundle of conditioned responses” (Myers 303). In The Matrix, the agent said that he would most likely categorized a human as a disease than a mammal because of the fact that we look at the small picture and just rob all resources produced by earth and move on. Humans should be a category of their own. People could be destructive, but they can also be constructive. It all depends on what came before us and how we were trained to think and imagine. It’s so simple to teach a human, to program how they think.
The phobia fear, a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, could be taught to us. In an experiment conducted by John B. Watson he showed that even what we’re afraid of isn’t necessarily our choice or genetic. In his project “Little Albert” (Myers 303), he applied classical conditioning to an infant by exposing him to a white mouse and using a metal bar. The mouse, the neutral stimulus, brought no fear to the child; in fact the baby enjoyed it wandering around. The noise the metal bar makes, the unconditional stimulus in this experiment, was uncomfortable for the infant. Mixing the two and eventually exposing little Albert to the mouse without the hitting of the bar brought the same uncomfort to the baby and he feared the mouse, and five days later everything that was furry. We are as vulnerable as infants and people before us exploit it. Being put into an illusion, like the Matrix, is so simple for our predecessors, we don’t need any wires or complex computer programs like the machines used, they just need to tell us what they want and pull the wool over our eyes. Getting out of the illusion is very difficult, and the next step, accepting the truth, is probably the toughest a person could go through, but when the war is over and the fog is cleared, the greatest thing happen and people are engulfed by true reality. These things include Equality, freedom and happiness.
Humans tend to believe in what they are taught reality is, or what is considered normal today. The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show how there are people out there who wish to know the truth and spread it. Watson’s experiment shows how people are born with a blank slate, ready to be inscribed with knowledge, but accepting the truth can be difficult if you’ve been corrupted from the start. The life you lived is not in fact the totality that is possible for you, and if you can release yourself from bonds you don’t even see, you will then be able to see the world as it truly is.
Humans tend to believe in what they are taught reality is, or what is considered normal today. The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show how there are people out there who wish to know the truth and spread it. Watson’s experiment shows how people are born with a blank slate, ready to be inscribed with knowledge, but accepting the truth can be difficult if you’ve been corrupted from the start. The life you lived is not in fact the totality that is possible for you, and if you can release yourself from bonds you don’t even see, you will then be able to see the world as it truly is.
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