Atif Noor - Professor Rowe - Paper II
No Justification in Choosing The “Bliss of Ignorance.”
Philosophy is defined as the love of wisdom and queen of the sciences. It is a field that relies on critical thinking to more thoroughly understand life, the nature of the mind, and even that which is beyond the physical, referred to as the metaphysical. This philosophical love of wisdom and sense of critical thinking is not evident in the character Cypher in The Matrix, who asserts that “ignorance is bliss.” Ignorance is the opposite of critical thinking. In one part of the movie, while eating a steak, Cypher states, “You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy
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Cypher seems to suggest that there are times when ignorance is bliss, and one is better off maintaining a positive illusion than facing a hard truth that one is not ready to accept. His statement could also be viewed as rigid close-mindedness, a non-willingness to see reality for what it is; a refusal to consider conflicting ideas based on a desire to maintain one’s beliefs. Generally, The Matrix raises a profound question as to why human beings want to know the truth. This paper will argue why one cannot be justified in choosing the “bliss of ignorance.”
The ‘Allegory of the Cave’ by Plato can be used to get a meaningful view of the Matrix in relation to knowledge and illusion. Bambrough (35) notes that the fundamental objective of education, as explained by Plato in the Republic, is to change an individual’s behavior and desires rather than to instill knowledge. Plato argues that by changing behavior, people are able to reverse their tendency to pursue what they, incorrectly, believe to be happiness and, instead, seek true happiness (Emlyn-Jones 7). Cypher turns away from even the slightest hint of knowledge in order to live in a satisfying illusion. He wonders, why live in the miserable world the war has produced
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He uses the sun, the cave, and the divided line to achieve this objective. By using the cave, he shows that turning towards the sun reveals the non-existent nature of the shadow, and a subsequent realization that the shadowy world in the cave is not real. This helps individuals make a distinction between appearances and reality; and this is a subject that is given much focus in the movie, as well as, the Republic. A person who chooses “bliss of ignorance” fails to reach the point of turning around from the world of becoming, to one of being. For example, Neo in the movie The Matrix gains a re-education of his senses in a way that creates a new awakening of reality and becomes a major source of fulfilment. However, people who choose ignorance over knowledge do so because the real world is less appealing to them compared to the one driven by illusions. But as Plato’s Republic clearly shows, the world beyond the cave is far more appealing (Lewis 132). The reality is driven by liberal education that seeks to know what is true and what is
Let me briefly explain a simplified plot of The Matrix. The story centers around a computer-generated world that has been created to hide the truth from humans. In this world people are kept in slavery without their knowledge. This world is designed to simulate the peak of human civilization which had been destroyed by nuclear war. The majority of the world's population is oblivious to the fact that their world is digital rather than real, and they continue living out their daily lives without questioning their reality. The main character, Neo, is a matrix-bound human who knows that something is not right with the world he lives in, and is eager to learn the truth. He is offered the truth from a character named Morpheus, who proclaims that Neo is “the One” (chosen one) who will eventually destroy the Matrix, thereby setting the humans “free.” For this to happen, Neo must first overcome the Sentient Program agents who can jump into anyone's digital body. They are the Gate Keepers and hold the keys to The Matrix.
In one of Plato’s works called The Allegory of the Cave he goes over what it means to get higher knowledge and the path you have to take to get to this higher knowledge. Plato also goes over how this higher knowledge or enlightenment will affect people and how they act. He ties this all together through what he calls the cave. Plato tells Glaucon a sort of story about how the cave works and what the people within the cave have to do to get to the enlightenment. A while down the road the Wachowski siblings with the help of Warner Brothers Studios made a movie titled The Matrix. This movie follows the came concept that Plato does in the cave. With saying that the world that Neo (the main character) was living in was in fact not real but a made
In the Allegory of the cave, Plato stated "what he had seen before was a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being near to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truley." It appeals to me because he's basically inferring what if what we are seeing or what we believe are just our figments of our imagination. A lie that we dwell on, because we are blinded from the truth. Plato statement is something we can all relate. For instance children from our younger years our parents disguise parts of reality to prevent them to live a life of fear. Fear of evil and fear from being hurt. But we as grow older we learn, that there is hate and evil in the world. We learn that not every corner has a rainbow glistening in the sky. And for that
This student of Philosophy now sees the movie The Matrix in a whole new way after gaining an understanding of some of the underlying philosophical concepts that the writers of the movie used to develop an intriguing and well thought out plot. Some of the philosophical concepts were clear, while others were only hinted at and most likely overlooked by those unfamiliar with those concepts, as was this student when the movie first came out in theaters all those many years ago. In this part of the essay we will take a look at the obvious and not so obvious concepts of: what exactly is the Matrix and how does it related to both Descartes and Plato, can we trust our own senses once we understand what the Matrix is, and how Neo taking the Red Pill is symbolic of the beginning of the journey out of Pl...
Enlightenment is something people have strived for, personally, for generations. The knowing of information is essentially to people for everyday life. In the movie The Matrix as well as in the story The Allegory of the Cave, written by Plato, being enlightened is sought after. In The Matrix you see Neo trying to find out what's going on and how everything is happening, both to him and to the people around him. In The Allegory of the Cave you see the prisoner being let out of the cave trying to find out what's going on and what's happening in a new world they've never experienced. Altogether, The Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave show many similarities and differences in there characters, plot, and theme.
“ They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave”(Plato 1). This is from the article “ Allegory of the Cave” and there are oppressors in the story who are hiding the truth from the people who know nothing but what they are taught by them. In the film The Matrix, it shows a man named Neo who gets help from a man from the real world to help him escape. Neo finally sees the truth of the world he was living in and realize it was a lie and a illusion to him and the others who still don 't know the real world. He is being train to fight and go back and defeat the system of the machines who are controlling the people who are blinded. The Matrix parallels Plato “Allegory of the
In The Cave prisoners are chained, from birth, to face a wall within a dark cave. These prisoners have never had any interactions with the outside world. Their only understanding of the outside world comes from a bridge and a fire at their backs. When people, animals, or objects cross the bridge, the fire projects their shadows upon the cave wall which the prisoners are facing. To these prisoners, the obscure shadows which dance along the walls of the cave are the only “real” thing they know. To their brains, which have never experienced, seen, or came into any contact with anything in the outside world, this is reality. To the prisoners, reality is a jumble of dark shadows which occasionally move from one end of a cave wall to another. This is their perception of reality because it is all they have ever known. While The Matrix does not involve prisoners being chained to a cave wall, the ideas within it are very much the same as in The Cave. Neo, the main character in The Matrix, has unknowingly been living in the matrix his whole life. The matrix world is his reality much like the shadows on the cave wall are the prisoner’s reality. As the world outside of the cave is the true world for the prisoners, the true reality for Neo is the real world which exists outside of the matrix, which is a highly advanced
The Matrix, a 1999 film created by Andy and Lana Wachowski, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both reveal the ongoing questions of “What is reality?” and “Are we living in the real world or an illusion?” Matrix is a sci-fi action film that talks about how the real world that Neo thought to be real was only an illusion and how the people living in the Matrix world are being trapped in a cave. This film adapted from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave because they share many similar characteristics and Matrix is a modern, more exciting version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The Matrix and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both show us how to perceive our own reality and to distinguish between what is real and what is not real using our senses.
The movie "Matrix" is drawn from an image created almost twenty-four hundred years ago by the greek philosopher, Plato in his work, ''Allegory of the Cave''.The Matrix is a 1999 American-Australian film written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. Plato, the creator of the Allegory of the Cave was a famous philosopher who was taught by the father of philosophy Socrates. Plato was explaining the perciption of reality from others views to his disciple Aristotle. The Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave share a simmilar relationship where both views the perciption of reality, but the Matrix is a revised modern perciption of the cave. In this comparison essay I am going to explain the similarities and deifferences that the Matrix and The Allegory of the Cave shares.In the Matrix, the main character,Neo,is trapped in a false reality created by AI (artificial intelligence), where as in Plato's Allegory of the Cave a prisoner is able to grasp the reality of the cave and the real life. One can see many similarities and differences in the film and the allegory. The most important similarity was between the film and the Allegory is the perception of reality.Another simmilarity that the movie Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave shares is that both Neo and the Freed man are prisoners to a system. The most important difference was that Neo never actually lived and experienced anything, but the freed man actually lived and experinced life.
The Matrix, once being released was a world-famous film that involved a lot of thinking and the ability to interpret complex ideas. However, these two topics of fate and freewill were creatively and smartly submerged in this film. The pill, jujitsu and Oracle scene were three main examples of the effect this all had on The Matrix, however there were a few others scattered throughout the film. It remained to be quite a mysterious concept but gradually as more in-depth thoughts came to mind, it seemed to be quite interesting. By exploring these themes it forces us to think if we are in a Matrix and what are reaction would be like if we were to find out that the world we lived in was a fake, never our true reality.
In this allegory, the depictions of humans as they are chained, their only knowledge of the world is what is seen inside the cave. Plato considers what would happen to people should they embrace the concepts of philosophy, become enlightened by it, and see things as they truly are. As we have mentioned in class, Plato’s theory did not only present itself in his allegory, but also in the Wachowski brothers’ hit film, The Matrix. In the film, the protagonist, Neo, suffers from a similar difficulty of adapting to reality, or the truth, which we will see later on. In order to understand Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, one must consider how Plato’s use of symbols to explain what true knowledge (or enlightenment) really is along with the comparisons to the Wachowski brothers’ film, The Matrix.
In The Matrix (1999), the world is not quite what it appears to be. Everybody perceives life to be nothing extraordinary, unaware of the devastating truth that lies within their experiences. In the film, Keanu Reeves stars as a computer programmer/hacker named Thomas Anderson, who goes by the alias “Neo”. The plot consists of Neo’s search for the truth behind the computer-generated world, “The Matrix”, or what he used to call ‘reality’. The entire movie revolves around a philosophical question posed by the 17th-century French philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes believed that one could not know what is real based solely on sensory experiences. We cannot distinguish what is a real experience from a dream experience.
Imagine living through life completely bound and facing a reality that doesn’t even exist. The prisoners in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” are blind from true reality as well as the people in the movie “The Matrix” written and directed by the Wachowski brothers. They are given false images and they accept what their senses are telling them, and they believe what they are experiencing is all that really exists. Plato the ancient Greek philosopher wrote “The Allegory of the Cave”, to explain the process of enlightenment and what true reality may be. In the movie “The Matrix”, Neo (the main character) was born into a world of illusions called the matrix. His true reality is being controlled by the puppet- handlers called the machines who use the human body as a source of energy. In the movie, Neo, finds and alternate reality and he has to go on a journey to discover himself and what is around him. Much like “The Allegory of the Cave” the prisoners in a dark underground cave, who are chained to the wall, have a view of reality solely based upon this limited view of the cave which is but a poor copy of the real world. Both the prisoners of the cave, and Neo from the Matrix, have to transcend on the path of ‘enlightenment’ to know the truth of their own worlds.
In the movie The Matrix we find a character by the name of Neo and his struggle adapting to the truth...to reality. This story is closely similar to an ancient Greek text written by Plato called "The Allegory of the Cave." Now both stories are different but the ideas are basically the same. Both Stories have key points that can be analyzed and related to one another almost exactly. There is no doubt that The Matrix was based off Greek philosophy. The idea of freeing your mind or soul as even stated in "The Allegory of the Cave" is a well known idea connecting to Greek philosophy. The Matrix is more futuristic and scientific than "The Cave" but it's the same Idea. Neo is trapped in a false reality created by a computer program that was created by machines that took over the planet. Now the story of course has many themes such as Man vs. Machine, Good vs. Evil, and our favorite Reality vs. Illusion. Neo is unplugged from the matrix and learns the truth and becomes "the one" who is to save the humans from their machine oppressors. "The Cave" is similar in that it has humans trapped in a cave and chained up to only face one direction. The "puppeteers" then make shadows against the wall the humans face using the fire from the outside as a light source. One big difference is that "The Cave" is about two philosophers conversing about the cave as one explains what needs to happen and that the prisoners must free their souls to find truth. The Matrix is the actions of what the philosopher describes actually happening. The comparing of the two stories will show how things said in "The Cave" are the same as in The Matrix, of course with the exception that one is futuristic ...
The word “philosophy” is derived from two roots that are “philo” and “Sophia.” Philo means love whereas Sophia means wisdom. Therefore, philosophy means the love of wisdom. In actual practice, philosophy entails study of, pursuit, and enquiry into wisdom. A good number of great philosophers have referred to philosophy as the art of thinking. Others have only defined it as the systematic study of human feelings and thoughts.