Reflection Of Education In Plato's Matrix And Education

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Daniela Lopez
Per.5
10-26-14
The Matrix and Education It is difficult to know when you are being repressed until you experience freedom. Plato is able to show this with an allegory with prisoners within a cave, unaware that they are not experiencing true life and thinking that the shapes on the wall are true. Descartes explains how we are trapped within our senses, unaware as to whether we are truly experiencing what we believe to experience, no matter how realistic it feels. This is why he is skeptical as to whether we are awake or asleep. In the Matrix, all humans are under the impression that they are truly walking around Earth and wearing the clothes that they see and feel on them. In reality, everyone are just floating, unanimated bodies …show more content…

He had to be led by Morpheus and given the option to find the truth. Neo chooses to find the truth and his real body was woken up as he "used his eyes for the first time". It is made apparent that in order to get into the light, and to find the full truth, you must be led by another who is aware and has seen the light, but it is possible to educate ourselves by searching our unconscious, as Socrates had said in “The Allegory of the Cave”, (Plato, 390 B.C.) “Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being.” Clearly, having the truth shown all at once may prove to be difficult, and as the Matrix, The Allegory of the Cave, and Descartes’ Meditations show, many who are exposed to this extreme burst of knowledge may have trouble or refuse to accept it and turn away. Within the film, Morpheus states that (Wachowski, 1999 A.D.) “There is a rule that we do not free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It is dangerous. They have trouble letting go. Their mind turns against them.” Within the movie, one important character finds the truth unsatisfying and bleak, and disreguards the truth to be …show more content…

Neo and the rest of the Nebuchadnezzar crew go to great lengths and peril to reveal the truth and destroy the Matrix. As Socrates explains the process of adjusting to the new truth, he asks Glaucon that (Plato, 309 B.C.) “… when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the cave and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity

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