Red Pilled People often accept what is presented to them as fact instead of meeting the information with skepticism. In “The Allegory of the Cave,” by Plato, and in The Matrix, by the Wachowski Brothers, both include public masses that are unaware of their blindness to the true reality of their worlds. Also, few people exist in both texts that have escaped the oppression of those who rule the masses, discovering legitimate reality for the first time in their lives. These people who have escaped are no longer slaves of the illusion of reality presented to them by their oppressors. Similar to those in “Allegory of the Cave,” Neo and other enlightened people in The Matrix escaped the brainwashing performed by their media or government. Neo and …show more content…
Neo, like many other people before him, began his path to enlightenment when he viewed his world with skepticism. Neo discovered that he was “not in control of [his] life” through his illegal endeavors on his computers (Matrix). He learned of people such as Trinity and Morpheus, which aided in the solidification of his knowledge that his world was an extraordinary mental illusion created by artificial intelligence. The discovery of these people who had escaped by Neo was strong evidence to support the idea that the AI was blinding him and his peers with the Matrix. When Neo came to understand that there was “something wrong with the world” created by the AI, which governed over everyone in the Matrix, Neo was able to escape from the grasp of the AI (Matrix). With the aid of Morpheus and his crew, the ambition of Neo to flee from the oppressing world of the AI and to view the legitimate conditions of the world led to the liberation of Neo from the brainwashing of the AI. Neo took his first steps toward full enlightenment by being freed from the Matrix and escaping the mental oppression of the …show more content…
When Morpheus and his crew delivered Neo from the womb of the AI, Neo was finally able to open his eyes to the real world. Neo fled “the world that [had] been pulled over [his] eyes to blind [him] from the truth” and became exposed to life outside of the Matrix (Matrix). Similarly, in “The Allegory of the Cave,” the prisoners “[suffered] sharp pains” when seeing the light from outside the cave for the first time (Plato 23). As the prisoners grew “accustomed to the sight of the upper world,” they were increasingly able to comprehend all of the new information around them and see the world for what it truly was (Plato 23). Like the prisoners, Neo quickly learned that in the world of The Matrix, there was only one reality. People in the Matrix believed that what they experienced was reality, but they were blinded by the overpowering AI government. The one and only truth that their minds were inside an elaborate computer program and their bodies were being used as batteries was hidden from them. They could not see the truth that the human race was at war with the AI and the only human city remaining was Zion. There was not a truth for the humans in the Matrix and another truth for the humans outside of it. There was only one reality, one truth which was inaccessible for the majority of
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
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...
In the movie, The Matrix there are many similarities with the book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One similarity is that of the matrices in both works. The movie has a matrix of dreams. According to the movie, humans are dreaming. Dreaming means that the reality humans think of, is not reality. The reality humans think of, is a dream. Confusing, isn t? An easier way of understanding this matrix is to think of human dreams. When humans experience dreams, it is not perceived as a dream until the dream ends. The movie exemplifies humans in the dream state of mind, similar to the dreaming stage. Neo is exposed to his real matrix. The matrix outside of his perceptual reality. He is able to perform with an incredible flexibility and high speed thinking. He is no longer dreaming, or as Neo called it, living. Neo has waken up. The book shares this matrix as well.
The matrix, as presented in the eponymous film, operates as an Althusserian Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The Matrix1 presents a world in which "the state [as] a 'machine' of repression" is made literal where robots rule the land (Althusser 68). It is true that they rule by force (sentinels and agents) and these constitute the Repressive State Apparatus, but their primary force of subjugation is the matrix, their ISA. The film traces the path of one man, Neo, in his painful progress from the ideology of the matrix to the "real world," or the ideology of the "real."2
Enlightenment is the main theme and driving force throughout the stories of The Cave and The Matrix. One slight difference between these two stories, however, is the attitude they have towards enlightenment. In the first acts of The Matrix, the audience sees Neo distressed over his computer once it begins to type and converse with him, which would be unheard of for a computer to do at the time this film was made. It is revealed that in his day-to-day life, Neo is a computer programmer. To go along with this he has an advanced ability to hack into areas of his computer and has been doing so for quite some time with the goal of unlocking the answers to something. He does not know exactly what he is looking for, but he knows something in the world is amiss and he has been actively searching for answers to confirm his beliefs. Later on in the movie, Trinity, a character who has already achieved enlightenment, tells Neo “It’s the question that drives us…” (The Matrix). This statement rings especially true for Neo as it was the question and feeling of, “what is wrong in the world,” which drives Neo to seek out the truth. Neo’s path to enlightenment begins with his desire to seek out the truth and see the world for what it truly is. This point is proven further after Neo learns of the matrix and the false world he has been living in. At this point in the movie, Morpheus, another enlightened character, presents
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.
There are many different types of people within this world. There are those whom we know well of today and others who we don’t know at all, whether they were real or fictional. This includes Ta-Neishi Coates and Fredrick Douglas to Socrates and Neo, the main character from the film The Matrix from such a list of individuals. They are all different individuals compared to each other, and as with different people, they all had different beliefs towards what they know. For Douglas, he was able to gain the knowledge of reading in which led to his bright future, breaking free from the shackles of slavery. For Coates, he knows that the Dream was but an allusion and that we must take charge of our own future path. For Neo, he was able to accept who
In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato describes the cave as very dark with chained people inside and a wall where they can only see shadow illusions, which they believe is reality. Outside the cave, there is “light” and “truth.” One chained person is released into the “light,” which is uncomfortable at first, because of how bright the “light” or “truth” is however, once he adjusts, he realizes the outer world is the “truth” or reality and the cave is a shadow of reality. He pities the ones in the cave, still lost in the darkness yet, when he tries to make them see reality, their ignorance overpowers them and they kill the enlightened one out of fear and confusion. This is the kind of society, full of puppet-handlers, the narrator Sylvia in “The Lesson” dwells in and the author, Toni Cade Bambara, depicts Sylvia as being freed from the chains of ignorant society. Bambara’s released prisoner, Miss Moore, is the one to free Sylvia and the other chained prisoners and exposes them to the “light,” which is the unequal distribution of wealth and the “truth,” which is educating youth on economic inequality so the freed prisoners can learn to change their society’s shadow of reality.
Plato's Allegory of a Cave, Wachowski's Matrix, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time
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 Allegory of the Cave," prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows as people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality -- "To them... the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. One prisoner, however, is released, and stumbles into the real world, containing more depth and complexity than they had ever known. At first, the prisoner will be pained at the bright, piercing light, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then obligated to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the shackled prisoners left behind of the real world. The prisoners, however, will not believe the freed prisoner, and may even go as afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality." The pursuit of the truth is, therefor, a painstaking but rewarding process. According to Plato, the physical world is a world of sight, one that lacks meaning if left alone. Only those who manage to break into the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. The prisoners in the shadows only know of the dull physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight learn of the spiritual world, and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and of the truth, where "... souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell.." The pursuit of goodness and of the truth, then, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for the self and the soul involves freeing the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "... world of knowledge... the universal author of all things beautiful and right... and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul yearns to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of
Neo is the main character of ‘’The Matrix” and is captive in a false reality created by the Matrix a computer program, which has taken over the world. In Plato’s Allegory, the prisoner understands reality experienced in the cave and the real reality outside of the cave. Another similarity that “The Matrix” and the Allegory have is the acceptance of the truth of what Neo and the prisoner must go through when that happens they will acquire a deeper knowledge. In order to obtain such knowledge, both the prisoner and Neo need to experience that their senses have deceived them. Another similarity shared is that both characters stories are controlled by a higher power. One example is that Neo lives in a world controlled by the Matrix and Plato's prisoner is in a cave controlled by their captors. Both prisoner
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 identity and reality that Neo faces all begins with the famous choice given upon his encounter with Morpheus, “the red pill or the blue pill?” This question poses a very difficult decision for Neo. Should he take the blue pill and live without knowing the truth and who he actually is, or should he take the red pill and discover the truth and figure out what his life is really all about. The film as a whole and especially this particular scene is deeply compelling. On one hand you have everyone you love and everything that you have built your life upon, though being fed with false sensory information by a giant virtual reality computer called the Matrix. On the other, you are promised only truth. Is it better to live in a harsh reality or a comfortable fantasy? How could a choice possibly be made? In essence, the choice is one that is between truth and happiness, and Neo hungered for the truth. Neither living as a hacker nor working for a company would suffice. Neo wanted to find his “true” identity, and he does so through...