The Matrix Philosophy

How can we know that we are awake? That this is real? Surely many of us who have seen the film has these types of questions. Many of us have had the sensation of not acting with total freedom, many of us have thought that our acts are predetermined (or very influenced), or that we live an eternal constant return; even, that we are being manipulated and controlled and that we are inside a dream. Matrix responds to all these questions, it is a kind of contemporary myth, a solution to some dilemmas of humanity.

The technological advances that were created to make life easier have ended up enslaving us, those increasingly intelligent machines have acquired their own will, achieved and overcome human intelligence. However, the energies are exhausted, resources are scarce, and these machines need to be fed; this way, after a war, the machines have enslaved humans, turning them into food sources. Humans have been forced to live a dream, to sleep a lifetime connected to the machines that feeds on them. But what is the Matrix? Morpheus himself is the one who responds to this saying: “”it is the world that has been placed before your eyes to hide the truth from you.”” Therefore, the Matrix is a lie, a deception to the senses; it is not real, but we perceive it as real. This, refers us to Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Plato told us that the senses are deceptive, that they are not reliable. The myth of the cave presents humans who live hand and foot tied watching the bottom of a cave, behind them, a lit fire casts shadows on the walls that they contemplate. For these humans, that background is reality, because it is the only thing they know, the only thing they have access to and what they perceive from the senses. If one of these humans manages to escape, he will access the real world, knowledge. At first, the light will blind your eyes, you will feel pain, and you will have to adapt.

When returning to the cave, probably, their companions believe that they lie and wish to kill it, those companions only know a reality and, they will protect it; it is their reality and they do not want it to be in danger. In Matrix, Neo is suspicious of an idea going around his head; like Alice in Wonderland, Neo will follow a rabbit that will take him down the hole but, in this case, will not access a fantastic and unreal place, but will come to the real world, the world of ideas what Plato proposed. Thus, Neo is the liberator; his duty is to open the eyes to humanity, a humanity which is largely unprepared for that awakening.

What’s interesting about the Matrix is, how it responds to “”reality””, taking every day things such as dreaming or deja vù, giving it meaning, adapting it to the proposed system. Matrix is a kind of virtual reality in which we are all asleep and live as if it was real just like when we wear virtual reality glasses, despite knowing that it is not real, our senses may interpret it as if it were. That is precisely what happens in The Matrix, the sensations are perceived as real and, thus, we stop questioning whether we are awake or not. Those questions that Neo had can relate with the Meditation reading by Descartes who solved the problem talking about a malignant genius or “Deity” who manipulated us and deceived us, just like the machines in Matrix do. Descartes doubt everything and Matrix makes us also doubt our senses.

To answer question No. 3, the betrayal of Cypher raises the dilemma of the choice between reality or happiness. Cypher is eating a piece of steak at a fancy restaurant with Mr. Smith, he says that he knows that Matrix is the one who gives him the pleasure of tasting the juicy steak, but that “”after nine years”” (in the real world, in the open) he concludes that “”ignorance is happiness.”” This statement suggest that the consumer world is idiotic, nonetheless happy.

All those commonplaces are pleasing in themselves, probably because they put us in a comfortable and easy situation. It is about choosing between happiness and idiocy or intelligence and unhappiness; Cypher has not forgotten what the reality is and precisely because of that, he has agreed with the enemy to deliver his partners in exchange of living that life of unreal luxury, us humans we know that many of the pleasures are momentary or superfluous, but we would prefer that over the ugly truths.

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