A Hard Pill to Swallow

When I was younger, my older cousin always played The Matrix as he was obsessed with the deeper meaning of the movie. At the time, I definitely did not understand the movie or everyone’s fascination with it, but definitely could NOT get the image of a bug, or robotic probe, being extracted from someone’s belly button out of my head. After watching it again this week, the scene still haunts me; however, I have opened my mind to the matrix and now strongly feel this movie is a deep, philosophical commentary on our society.

Imagine if our “God” was a machine that stuck us in a program; we lived out our lives the way it has scripted for us. We had no access to our physical bodies. Only our mind was in this machine, but we have no control over our mind. Our brain is plugged into the program. In The Matrix, robots have programmed humans to live a certain life. If we question what we are programmed to believe, we are considered a glitch in the Matrix; thus, we are a problem. There are people like this throughout history like Galileo who questioned what was known to be true. More specifically, in the movie, experiencing déjà vu is considered a glitch because the code in the matrix is altered. When a person realizes they are repeating the same routine over and over again, they are seeing through the illusion that is reality. 

The deeper commentary is about how everyone is a “non-player character,” literally programmed to act a certain way. If we really think about it, how many things do we like simply because they are popular? We do not question if it is actually good or bad. For example, someone out there decided the iPhone is the best phone on the market and maybe it is, however, there are definitely other just as well made functioning phones on the market. Millions of people believe this because that is what we have been, in a way, programmed to believe. The idea of the Matrix also stems to politics. Often, our politicians push an agenda that really offers no value to our everyday life. They tell us something is bad, so we believe it is bad because we identify with a certain political party.

In a technologically driven world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between our dream world and reality. Humans are being plugged into virtual reality rather than living in reality. Orpheus offers Neo a blue pill that will allow him to return to reality and continue to be a slave to society, or the red pill. The red pill reveals what is truly going on. The matrix is a prison for your mind. The red pill gives Neo the opportunity to decide if he wants to know the truth and free himself from the illusion. Which pill would people in our society choose? I would argue that people are not ready to be unplugged. Specifically, those who benefit from the illusion. They resist change because it does not suit them; political parties, religions, social class. The real truth is that only you can disconnect yourself from this illusion. In our society, this means choosing to live in reality, unplugging, taking a break from social media, and living in the moment. 

This is a lot of information to swallow, but congratulations, you just took the red pill.