November 17, 2003

• Dropping Down the Rabbit Hole

  
  

  One of the wonderful things for me about the Matrix series has been the way it's made it so much easier for me to drag my friends into conversations about the nature of reality, truth, ethics, knowledge, and power.  Power over mind, matter over mind, mind over mind - to what extent are any of these concepts real in your life, in my life?  See what you don't realize is that I have a secret deal with the Wachowski's - they start the conversation, and I'll keep 'em in cookies for life. 

  
  

  We're pushing up against 3,000 years since Plato wrote his allegory, The Cave.  In the cave, people are chained into a position where they can only see shadows on the wall from the light at the mouth of the cave.  When one escaped his chains and goes outside the cave for the first time humanity has access to the information that the shadow pictures they see are not the sum of reality.  There is a bigger reality, a reality Out There that they can experience, if they will only step outside into the sunlight.  The Matrix is in many ways no more than a retelling of Plato with special effects and a loud soundtrack. 

  
  

  But in the years since Plato, we have become increasingly more aware of the many ways in which our existence is or could be circumscribed.  We don't have to imagine ourselves in a cave to ask whether the information upon which we are basing our crucial decisions and actions is real information.  We've all thought it in the past year, how much can we trust the news media?  How much of a role does personal bias play in the reports we hear?  Or even, in what way are media sources manipulating both the medium and the public by slanting the news that is released?

  
  

  Des Cartes asked, what if there is a mailicious demon deceiving me about all my experiences, making me think that which is not true is the truth, or telling me that the truth is false?  Yes, it's a bizarre kind of question on the surface, but in fact, western thought has been so influenced by the resulting split between sensory and mental data in terms of what we view as authoritative and what we see skeptically, that we can't escape his duality in any area of our lives. 

  
  

  There's a Jackson Browne song from the 80's that I'm thinking of now.  Part of the lyric to that tune asks, "I wanna know who the men in the shadows are, I wanna hear somebody asking them why, they can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are, when they're never the ones to fight or to die, when there are lives in the balance ..."  And part of the reason that lyric is interesting to me, is that I doubt that any of us question whether there are men in the shadows.  We assume there are men in the shadows.  Even if we aren't conspiracy theorists, we still have a core understanding that we are not privileged to know the sources of the information, the people making political decisions that affect our lives.  To some extent, we already believe we are living in a Matrix. 

  
  

  The question we must ask ourselves is whether we are willing to take the red pill and see reality, or whether we will take the blue pill and avoid the questions altogether.  I took that red pill years ago and it's turned me into the kind of person that other people avoid at parties.  Because there is no flirting with these questions, once you start to ask them, they refuse to go away and you find yourself asking over and over and over again - am I here?  Or am I in the desert of the real?

  
  

  In Other News

  
  

  It's been almost 3 weeks since I broke my toe.  So I decided I've had long enough of a break from walking on my treadmill.  And one thing I can say about reality - is that a broken little toe has a way of getting attention even after the bruising is long gone. 

  • 12:12 pm
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