I KNOW KUNG FU! The Matrix and Plato's Allegory of the Cave

The world today is actively becoming more globalized and technologically dependent as every day passes. This is a world where information regarding anything is a mere Google away and a world where people's opinions are so influenced by media and authority figures. Luckily those that seek the truth on matters with logic and reason are rather apt at acquiring credible knowledge on whatever it may be they wonder about. 

It seems that our society happens to be the opposite of the world in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, available here. However, the film The Matrix starring the ever-curious Keanu Reeves as the hero and seeker of real knowledge provides an excellent modern day example of Socrates's idea of the cave and its blinding affects on true perception. The Matrix is a film that follows a skilled hacker called Neo who is educated about the reality of the world he lives in by a group of mysterious and leather loving rebels run by a man named Morpheus. Morpheus is convinced that Neo is the key to ending the enslavement of the human race by the "machines," which are machines equipped with artificial intelligence and the power to control humans. After the machines won a cataclysmic war against the humans, the machines were forced to enslave the human race and use our bodies to harvest electricity while keeping us in an engineered alternate reality called the matrix, which resembles current modern day society. 

Red or Blue: Make a Pick, Change Your Life

The scene that best represents and most quickly explains the relationship of the world in The Matrix and the cave is the pill scene, seen here. Morpheus explains to Neo that world created by the machines, the matrix, is "the world that has been pulled over you eyes to blind you from the truth"; a constructed world  much like the cave where the inhabitants "have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads." Neo is very much like those sorry souls watching the shadows on the wall of the cave; Neo and the prisoners are as Morpheus says "born into bondage; born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind." Both Neo and the prisoners of the cave are perpetually imprisoned by their ignorance of the real world and are consequentially ill-suited in understanding the real world when they are actually given the ability to see it.

Once those kept in the dark are enlightened, a philosophical debate arises over the ethical obligation of sharing this newfound knowledge with those around. Those from the cave who see the real world and return are compelled to share their experiences with their peers in order to give their peers a sense of the amazement that is outside the cave. Also, it may be in attempts to further reaffirm in themselves what they just experienced. Socrates say that these enlightened few would "consider himself happy for the change and pity the others." However unlike those in the cave, Neo is unable to share his knowledge of the real world because the matrix is so effective in convincing everyone that the world they live in is reality. As such, Neo's only choice in resolving this is by putting an end to the machines' exploitation of the human race without being able to garner support through sharing his experience of the world outside the matrix with the uninformed masses. 

BOMBSHELL

Neo's choice to take the red pill and "stay in Wonderland" while seeing "how deep the rabbit hole goes" embodies Socrates's emphasis on the decision making process of enlightenment and how it affects other's views of those enlightened. In making this decision, as Socrates says, it is likely that "the men who get to that point aren’t willing to mind the business of human beings, but rather that their souls are always eager to spend their time above." Those who see the light of the real world are so amazed by the beauty and truth of their this world that their obligation to share it becomes compromised by the personal desire to be the only one experiencing it. This obligation is further complicated by the hypothesized reactions of those still in the cave as perceiving those who see the light "to come from acts of divine contemplation to the human evils, is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when...he is compelled in courts or elsewhere to contest about the shadows of the just or the representations of which they are the  shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice." It is awfully difficult to explain someone the truth when they are not willing or able to believe it.  

I agree most with what Socrates say about education and the availability of it in everyone. Socrates posits that "this power is in the soul of each, and that the instrument with which each learns...must be turned around from that which is coming into being together with the whole soul until it is able to endure looking at that which is." This view of experience and education is something I am inclined to agree with. I am content to know that we all have the ability to challenge perceptions and change paradigms. It is a personal responsibility to ask questions you want to know the answer to. Neo's ability to do away with his old conventions of his constructed matrix life and his aptitude of embracing the new reality he faces affirm his character as a redeeming researcher who comes to save the world from ignorance. The importance of sharing information, pertinent or not, is fundamental to the livelihood of a modern society. Knowledge truly is power, and those without knowledge in today's world are becoming increasingly powerless.