The Matrix - What is Reality?

"What is reality? Is it what you can see, hear, touch? If so, then 'reality' is no more than electrical signals to your brain." - Morpheus

One of my all time favorite movies is The Matrix.  Yesterday I was watching it on TV and it really made me start to think about life and what we perceive as reality, especially since I have been reading a book about cyborgs.  So how do we know what is real and what is not? How do we know that what we are doing and who we are is real and not just a figment of our imagination or software loaded to our brain? What is reality? What about when we dream at night? How do we know that it isn’t real? Who’s to say it isn’t imaginary impressions in our brain? Why do we assume it isn’t real? What is the difference between the “real world” and a dream? At night when I am dreaming it feels real to me. Sometimes it feels too real. So what is real? Is Morpheus correct? Is it simply our interpretation of electrical signals transmitted to our brain? Morpheus states that our senses are electrical signals interpreted by our brain, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is real. Your eyes can see a chair, but there might not really be a chair present. When you say you see something, you actually see the effect created in our brains which is a transformation of the light waves meeting the eye into electrical signals. The same concept applies to the Matrix. Neo doesn’t actually see the objects. They are merely an interpretation of the brain’s signals reaching it. No matter how real the world may seem, it is just an illusion in our mind. What is real to me may not be real to you. Why do some people prefer chicken while others prefer steak? Why do I like green yet my best friend hates green? Why do I love the smell of yet others find it repulsive? What happens if we lose our senses? How do we perceive reality then? If I can’t smell vanilla or see the color green does it still exist? Is it still reality? Maybe we are just living in an illusion.

Never mind whether our brains are in a vat, being controlled by an outside machine or not, I still believe we are all trapped inside a matrix. Maybe we are controlled by a god, maybe by a demon, maybe by a crazy person who is brainwashing us, or maybe by a network on a machine. I don’t know. In any case, I believe our minds are what keep us in a matrix. We can’t always distinguish reality, but we do create our own reality. Remember the famous quote "I think, therefore I am" from Descartes? What is real to me may not be perceived as real by the next person. Perhaps it is all an illusion. I can walk side-by-side with a friend and see a golden opportunity while she may see a disaster. I might look at a difficult life situation as a challenge, an opportunity to succeed, and a reason to work even harder and make something of myself while someone next to me in the same exact situation sees it as misfortune, an excuse to complain, and a roadblock to success. Despite what Warwick or anybody else thinks, I believe our minds are the most powerful computer ever made, and they can bring about good and bad…it all depends on how we program them. We create our realities, our heaven and hell, our experiences. Some of us are like Neo in that we take control over our minds, our thoughts, and our reality. We have control over our lives and some look at us like we have super-human powers. Think about all the modern day and historical figures who have overcome the greatest odds and have risen above the rest and succeeded despite their obstacles! Just like Neo was able to rewrite the program, they were also able to rewrite their program…their lives. Neo learned to gain control just like our heroes, and they knew they had control. Whether you are in The Matrix or your own matrix, the bullets or the “Agents” are nothing more than your imagination. Like Neo and our heroes discovered, once you gain control over your imagination you won’t have to dodge bullets. You will be the one in control of your imagination! You will have the freedom to control your own dreams and imagination. We all look at the world subjectively rather than objectively for the most part. Morpheus summed it up best when he said that “it is all in your mind.” We all create our own reality.

But here is where it gets tricky! Let’s say some of our overachievers create a robot or intelligent machine, a machine much more intelligent than humans. Let’s also pretend that humans destroy our planet Earth. Given the two circumstances, the intelligent machines could outwit humans and certainly take over, especially if humans and the earth are being destroyed. The machines need us and they know it. Who is our worst enemy now? Are we are own worst enemy suffering from our own fate that we brought upon ourselves? Did the machines do this to us or did we do it to ourselves? It may seem an unlikely scenario but anything is possible. If the robots choose to enslave us and turn us into cyborgs and control our minds for their own well-being and survival could we not still beat them at their own game? After all, by using human intelligence combined with a machine’s intelligence we could very well have an advantage over the robots. Could we really beat them? Should we beat them? Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe ignorance truly is bliss.

“Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.” – Morpheus
 
BTW I found an interesting article by Kevin Warwick on The Matrix:
http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_warwick.html