The Philosophy of the Matrix

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The Wachowski Brothers continually highlight in their film, The Matrix, the importance of choice. The Matrix follows Neo, a computer programmer who is drawn out of a simulated reality, the Matrix, and into "the real world". This journey of leaving the Matrix and discovering a greater reality parallels the plight of the fugitive in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. However, in The Matrix, Neo's experience diverges from that of the prisoner's because Neo has choices. That element of choosing what to do or what to believe provides the certainty necessary for determining reality, according to Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy. The defining moments of Neo's journey that detach The Matrix from Allegory of the Cave are Neo's three major choices: the choice to leave the Matrix, the choice to save Morpheus and the choice to believe that he is the One.
Up until the point of Neo's first choice, the choice to leave the Matrix, The Matrix follows Plato's script. Those living in the simulated reality sense nothing is wrong; to them, their reality is everything. However, there is one person who defies the rest. This person, the prisoner for Plato and Neo for the Wachowski Brothers, discovers the true reality. However, their finding out is very different. the prisoner is unchained and forcibly dragged, while Neo is pursued, yet both getting that final push to follow the truth. Yet, the prisoner "conceive[s] some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision". The prisoner is compelled to find the light and leave, he is never warned about the consequences that will follow this discovery. Neo is. Morphe...

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... makes three defining choices that distinguish The Matrix completely. After Neo makes the choice to leave the Matrix, the choice to save Morpheus and the choice to believe that he is the One, The Matrix is resolved with a successful protagonist ready to make a change in his reality, which differs from the prisoners who is forced to return back into the cave. Both texts are given meaning with Russell's definition of philosophy: "philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life" (Russell, 4). Both stories challenge the perception of reality through the portrayal of a protagonist, and while The Matrix has a happier ending than Plato's Allegory of the Cave, both successfully force their audiences think like a philosopher.

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