The stories that influence us are the ones that stood out to us the most Essay

Submitted By Keenan-Crowley
Words: 822
Pages: 4

The stories that influence us are the ones that stood out to us the most. Everyone has seen the movie the Matrix and is an all-time favorite amongst most people. But what some people don’t know is that this movie has a lot of similarities and differences with stuff that Plato wrote and stuff that Descartes wrote. The scene we are looking at in the movie the matrix is the scene between Morpheus and neo. As Morpheus is telling neo the truth about the world around him. Basically in a nutshell the world that neo has come to love really doesn’t exist. “Their brains are all connected (via cables) to a powerful computer on which a programed simulation of the world is running, and they are all unconsciously living out virtual lives as individual players in this computer simulation”(Wachowski). The world that neo and everyone in the world has come to know and love has been a lie. Nothing in anyone’s life matters, no one’s life accomplishments matter, and no one neo has meet in the matrix really matters. , ““All of this comes as a huge shock to Neo. It is almost too much for him to accept. He experiences fear, denial, and confusion, but eventually acceptance and then sadness. He realizes that all of his “life” had been a lie. Morpheus reminds him, “I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I only said it would be the truth.””( Wachowski). The truth can hurt sometimes. Sometimes in life we really want to know the truth and think it will make things better but sometimes the truth can make the circumstances a little more sad and heart wrenching. In the “The Allegory of the Cave” Socrates and Glaucon are conversing about this very same concept of the matrix. “Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets”(Plato). Yes the environment is different than tubes with cables but the concept and the idea that Socrates is bring up is very much the same. What if there is whole world that we are not allowed to experience. But we are prisoners of the world we are convinced is real. “Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects”(Plato). We would locked away in a world that we comfortable seeing as reality just like in the matrix. If we were to say we escaped the cave and see the real and not the shadows or if we were stay in the fake world of the matrix would one place be better than the other? My answer would be ignorance is bliss.