Escape the Matrix

What is “The Matrix?”

This is probably one of the most Googled searches right now. 

But it isn’t new. It’s only the most recent evolution of an old idea. 

In the 1960’s Pink Floyd called it “The Wall.” 

“All in all you’re just a-nother brick in the wall.”

Pink Floyd was right. With people moving to cities from rural areas to get jobs in factories, people were becoming bricks in the wall. 

But a wall is simple. It’s not so difficult to get around a wall or go over it. Escaping is still relatively easy. 

Then, in the 1980’s it became a Machine, and we had the band Rage Against the Machine to tell us all about how we were cogs in the machine. 

Things got tighter. It’s a little harder to get out of a machine. You’re one of the gears, and all of the gears have to work. Fortunately, with a machine there is the implication that you are a necessary component of the whole. You may be an easily replaced component or you may be essential. Still, you’re necessary. But that didn’t last.

By the early 2000’s “The Machine” had become “The System.” Bands like System of a Down exposed modern mechanisms of control with songs such as “Prison Song” and “Toxicity.” 

As opposed to a machine, everything in a system, no matter how big or small, is replaceable. The system itself is unchanged by the decision of the participants within it. The system is autonomous, the people within it held captive by its order. 

The autonomous nature of the system took one final step in the last few years, becoming “The Matrix.”

In a matrix, programmed rules cannot be changed. As opposed to a Wall, which you can navigate around or over, a matrix can be visualized as one thousand lasers criss-crossing around you, blocking even the slightest motion. 

“The Matrix” model of control has become so multi-faceted and complete that to even imagine escaping is difficult to comprehend. While “The Wall” referred primarily to education and the workforce, “The Matrix” refers to a coordinated system of control in education, media, government, corporations, healthcare, food, and energy. Essentially, every facet of modern life.

The levels of dependency have grown so great, and the programming has become so effective, that escaping requires a level of willpower and ingenuity that most people simply do not have. 

How did we get to this point? How did we allow a wall to be built, using ourselves as bricks? How did we allow that wall to become a machine and that machine to become a system? Finally, why did we allow that system to become a Matrix?

The answer is simple. 

As a species, our guiding value, our north star, is safety, ease, and comfort. 

We traded away every other value for more safety, ease, and comfort. 

Imagine any advertisement on TV for the last 75 years. What are they really selling?

They are selling a product or service that will make your life slightly easier, safer, or more comfortable. And we bought it all. We bought every single gizmo, gadget and toy. And then back to work to buy more.

The primary sacrifice we made for more safety, ease, and comfort was our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

While life has gotten much, much easier since agriculture and industrialization, it has also gotten incredibly more complex. It’s gotten so complex in fact, that it takes someone with multiple PHD’s to even begin to try to explain how it all works. 

Very few of us know how the internet works, or how computers work, or how artificial intelligence works, or how electricity and phones and satellites and robots and cameras work. Very few people know how the global economy works. And nobody knows how all of it works!

This leads to the single most obvious problem we all face in modern society and that is complete overwhelm. 

While life is physically much easier than 5,000 years ago, things are immeasurably more complicated. Psychologists have names for the various ways our brain fails to understand our increasingly complicated world. They call it anxiety, depression, stress, or fatigue. 

The reality is, “The Wall” became “The Machine” which became “The System” which became “The Matrix” and most of us just can’t keep up. It’s too overwhelming. Especially when no one can explain where we’re going or why we’re in such a rush to get there!

One thing is certain.

We chose Easy / Complicated over Hard / Simple. 

Because life used to be incredibly simple. You would hunt for food, build a shelter, find a partner, raise a family, and contribute as a member of your village. That’s it. Sometimes you’d fight other tribes. But that’s it. That was life. That was all of it. 

The animals you hunted became your food, your clothes, and most of your tools. You used the resources in the area for everything you needed during your life, and aside from surviving, you focused on your relationships. 

Now, it was hard. You could freeze or get eaten or die of an infection at 20 years old. But it was simple. Your to-do list each season was the same.

There are people who argue Progress = Good

There are people who argue Progress = Bad

Which is true depends on what you value.

Life is easier, safer, more comfortable, and longer than it has ever been. But it is also more overwhelming, over-stimulating, over-indulgent, and unhealthy than it has ever been. 

Our guiding value clearly has not been “what’s good for us.” We shovel chemicals and fake food into our bodies daily. Our oceans are full of trash. Our water has microplastics in it. 

Technology enables our vices and darker impulses to go into overdrive. We beg for attention. We feed each other’s narcissism. We are more isolated than ever before. 

Everything is owned, and not by us. No one is free. Governments and corporations are so enormous they cannot even be bargained with, much less controlled. 

We are programmed through our entire childhood to obey. We then spend the rest of our lives doing monotonous, repetitive tasks that bore us to death, just to survive. 

And worst of all, we don’t understand any of it. We don’t understand how it works, why things are the way they are, or where we’re headed as a group. We just put our heads down and slog through it. 

To be fair, it is comfortable.

It is easier

It is longer.

It is safer. 

These are clearly our guiding values as a species. Otherwise the world would look very different. 

If our guiding value was freedom, the world would look very different.

If our guiding value was equality, the world would look very different.

If our guiding value was “what is good for us,” the world would look very different. 

If our guiding value was love for each other, the world would look very different. 

But our guiding value is safety, ease, and comfort. 

If this trend continues. If we keep the same north star, we will probably end up like the humans on the spaceship in Wall-E:

400 pounds each with screen goggles, diapers, and slushie straws. 

On our current trajectory, that’s where we’re headed.

I, for one, am not interested in screen goggles, diapers, and slushie straws.

I crave intensity. Real intensity. The adrenaline of evading a bear or a lion, or being forced to swim across a river to survive. The thrill of a battle. The adventure of a seasonal migration. The mystery of the stars. The joys of parenthood. The sense of love and belonging you would get as a member of a village. The thrill of the hunt. Connection to the earth and to nature. 

In my mind, the cons of progress far outweigh the pros. We have fake thrills now in pills and powders. Fake connections online. Fake adventures on screens. Mystery replaced by science. Community replaced by conformity. The hunt, replaced by the job. The village, replaced by the public school. Our connection, severed. Prescribed pills by therapists to make us forget what we’ve lost. 

Walk the streets downtown in Seattle, LA, or San Francisco and you can see the sickness. The unease. The disease of modern life. Our world made sense and it was simple. We disturbed the natural order, and I want out. 

I want real intensity.

And more than that, I just want life to make sense.