In the movie, The Matrix, Neo (played by sad Keanu Reeves) finds out that he’s living in this fake world that’s nothing more than a program designed to keep humans entertained while big systems suck their life force out like batteries (okay, when I type it all out, it’s a dopey movie, but stay with me here). Neo gets freed by these people who then train him how to go back into the program and fight the bad guys. The basic premise: nothing is as it seems: look for the pattern outside of the perception to see the “real” reality.
One way to interpret the movie is that we’re supposed to realize that there are lots of games out there, and many of them are designed to deceive you, to keep you feeling as if you’re running the show when you’re not.
Thinking that way, is it any wonder that in the US more people voted for American Idol than in the US presidential elections ( one source). It’s a trap. Why vote on politics, which we feel we can’t influence, when we can vote on singers, which we feel we can? See? The Matrix.
Job security= being employed by a stable company. Matrix or no?
C’mon.
After we watch movies, we tend to get a Matrix effect. We watch someone doing all kinds of action on the screen, and we feel all pumped up, forgetting that we were sitting still eating popcorn and drinking fishbowls of Coke. We feel like we’re more fit, more accomplished, but that’s just the movie leaving an impression.
I watch people get all bent out of shape on the net every day. They change their Twitter avatars in protest against BP, as if this will have any kind of effect. I listened to two people complain that I found the layoffs of 33% of Linden Labs to be “neat,” because my @broganmedia account says “found this neat” as a standard phrase before every story I share. I see people get mad at various things in Facebook all the time.
I see marketers come up with reason after reason to do things the way they’ve always been done, even when that way fails faster and worse each day (for most things).
How many versions of the Matrix are you stuck in? How many am I? Do you at least look for them?
There’s what we think is real; there’s what we observe as real: and then there’s what we can change. Avoid the many versions of the Matrix. Look for it everywhere. Make your own game.
Photo credit diametrik