The Matrix Explained (part 1)
As all of the great stories the Matrix trilogy is a story within a story and deeper sill. Foremost we’re inspired to question the concreteness of our experience. We’re pushed to look at a possibility of a new world which exist beyond mere appearance. It looks at the dark side of intellect, personified as Smith. It looks at technology created via the intellect and it’s impact on our lives. On top of all of it, it’s a renewal of the heroes archetype, played by Neo and friends. These are the pivotal parts of the Matrix and to try to explore it with some sort of coherence I will try to uncover it’s mysteries movie by movie and layer by layer.
What is the Matrix?
The Matrix starts, revolves and ends with Neo. He is made to embody the average guy. He lives alone in a small apartment and has a job in IT. He works in a cubical and he lives in a cubical, just slightly bigger one. Neo isn’t content with his life, just as many of us aren’t. It turns out that being a small cog in a large machine makes living a chore. Neo isn’t one to drown in his sorrow, he has a feeling that there’s something more and he’s driven to find it.
That something is an answer, to a question: “What is the matrix?” We get an answer early on in the movie which is that the matrix is a simulated world where people are meant to forget themselves within their daily lives so that they could be used as an energy source by the machines. That’s a nice answer but what is it really, beneath the surface? In order to understand what the matrix really is, we need to understand what reality is. Down the rabbit hole we go…
Morpheus presents us with a starting point:
“What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
Real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain — doesn’t sound simple. Despite the put down nature of Morphs explanation he’s on the right track. He points to the fact that perception requires something that does the perceiving and something that is perceived. In Morpheus case, the perceiver is a person and the perceived thing is electricity in your brain. Usually in the our world the perceiver is a living being such as a person and the perceived thing is something in the external world. The Matrix explores a scenario in which the perception mechanism itself is exploited. Instead of an object from the external realty causing perception, it’s straight up from electrical signals to conscious experience.
This raises a question, how can you know that what your perceiving is real? How can you know that you’re not living in a simulation? It’s the same old question of how can you know you’re not dreaming? Short answer to both of them is: you can’t but there’s no reason to assume that you are. I would argue that the Matrix isn’t going all the way trough with it’s simulation scenario. If you really could control every aspect of perception, then you could also control everything that’s perceived, thoughts included. You could send a though and a belief which would say: “I don’t live in a simulation.” If they went so far there would be nothing left to make a move about…
I would argue that the Matrix isn’t trying to explore the simulation theory, rather those are the means of making the “real“ world appear unreal. The matrix is the world we can see, smell, hear and touch, it appears to us ergo I would call it the world of appearance and it’s analogous to our external world. People like to go a step further and say that the world that appears to us is the real world, but as everyone knows appearances can be deceiving. What appears to us is determined by us just as much as the thing we’re looking at. As we saw previously perception requires a perceiver and as long as there’s a perceiver statement “reality as it is, is the real world” make no sense.
Wonderland
There is an opposite world to world of appearance which makes even more fun of the claim that there’s such thing as “reality as it is”, the Oracle called it the world without time:
“You [Neo] have the sight now. You are looking at the world without time.”
Let’s follow Neo’s extracurricular activities. In one of the first scenes, Trinity has hacked Neo’s computer and she has instructed him to follow the white rabbit. He hesitantly obliged and the rabbit eventually led him to Morpheus. Neo and Morpheus had a chat and at the end of it Morpheus offered Neo the famous red and blue pill. Here’s what he said about the pills:
“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I show how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
So, Neo followed the rabbit and got into the wonderland — somebody must be a fan of Alice in the Wonderland. If the world of appearance is the world you can perceive trough your senses then the wonderland is the world you can perceive trough your mind. It’s the world that originates all of the fantasy, dreams and movies we enjoy so much. There’s a reason all societies in every corner of the world have fundamentally the same myths — we all have the same collective wonderland, more commonly known as the collective unconscious. In the Matrix the world of appearance is presented as the simulated world (the matrix) in other words as the fake reality while the wonderland is shown to be the real one.
Which of these is real? If ether one of them was real, why would both of them exist? We’re constrained creatures, we live within a world with evolutionary pressures if one of them was “the real world“ then we would have evolved to see it and only it. These worlds have a complementary nature, in order to live the best life you need to live in both of them and what the Matrix is trying to show is that when society at large believes that one is real and the other fake then we’re navigating the reality half blind and we end up in a position where we’re threatened to go extinct.
Neo is the perfect example of why the wonderland is such an important part of an individuals life. Before he went down the rabbit hole he was living a stagnant and meaningless life. What made his life meaningful was the wonderland. In it Neo finds the mono myth more commonly know as the heroes archetype. Neo — the hero, Morpheus — the guide, Trinity — the girl, Smith — the antagonist, Zion — his home to protect, machines — the enemy and so on. It’s the story that we all know.
Neo the hero
There are many types of heroes but two large categories would be — the sort of heroes that are god sent, sort of born to succeed (think of Hercules) and then human all to human heroes. Neo had to be a very human like figure for he is meant to represent the life experience of a typical guy. Neo fails to walk the path all the time. He failed when Morpheus asked him to avoid agents, he couldn’t believe the nature of matrix, he couldn’t jump from building to building with the first leap. He didn’t fell like he was the One.
Neo is stuck in fear and anxiety. For an understandable reason, he’s told that he’s the One, the one to save the world. For anybody whose not a narcissist, that would appear as a crushing responsibility. Here I am, barely able to tie my own shoes and I am supposed to be the one who saves the world? Neo needed somebody to take the pressure off, who’s better to do it than the authority of all authorities — the Oracle. Eventually he gets to meet her and she prepared him to tell himself that he’s not the one. That’s what Neo wanted hear.
It did the trick, he no longer got into his own way and finally started acting like the One. When Neo had a choice of ether letting his friend Morpheus die or risk his own life saving him he chose the latter. That’s when he started walking the path. At first, even after choosing to risk his life to save Morpheus, he was scared. When he faced an agent for the first time, he cried out:
Trinity help!
Neo still is afraid to face agents, but he overcomes his fear and fights. By hook or by crook the dream team of Neo and Trin defeated the agent for the first time in history of man kind.
Inspired by his success he chose to fight Smith, this time mano a mano. Neo barely won the first battle but got blasted a short while latter which led to his death. It’s important not to take the death literally rather look at it as a partial death of some part of him. Neo died in the matrix — the world of appearance which symbolically means that an aspect of his appearance is what died and later when he was reborn, some different aspect of his appearance was born. His essence didn’t change. When Neo was dead Trinity said:
“I am not afraid anymore.”
She sort of spoke for Neo for he is the one who is not afraid anymore. Fear was that which he had to overcome. Facing the agents did the trick. Once he wasn’t afraid he could defeat Smith.
The first Matrix movie is all about unhinging you from your notion of what’s real and fantasy. The wonderland is just as important as the world of appearance, that world is key for transcending our fate. Neo found out that there’s a whole new world of possibilities if he’s willing to face the unknown. Which he did and by doing so overcame his fear and now he want’s to help other people see the world which lead to the path of the One:
“I am going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I am going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible [- the wonderland].”
