The Matrix
It’s been almost a decade since the original Matrix movie introduced popular culture to the idea of reality as an illusion. Not that it’s new idea at the time – millenia worth of philosophers have been saying again and again that reality as we know it, reality as we sense it, cannot exactly be thought of and regarded as real. Our senses can deceive us, after all, and in the end, we cannot truly rely on the material as a gauge what reality, and thus meaning, is. It is the general consensus of the multitude of intellectual fans of the Matrix franchise that the 1999 film had managed to modernize the idea well enough for even the common man to grasp it.
The idea that reality is an illusion was wonderfully solidified by the fact that around that point, technology had advanced enough to create cyberspace and other forms of telecommunication – in essence, we had by then developed a separate reality in which we can function.
We can call it virtual reality or any other name, but the gist of it is that we have proven that a viable “reality” can be created by mere mortals with the help of technology. What this means, as the Matrix movie had expressed so wonderfully at the turn of the millenium, is that reality can be manipulated in the context of the mind. A real-time conversation with an acquaintance over a chatroom is just as real as a face-to-face conversation one has with a dear friend.
One can have a real friendship with someone without having to meet – without having to be in the same continent, even. It was therefore proven in a practical sort of way that the philosophers were indeed correct in claiming that reality is fluid.
It’s been almost a decade since the original Matrix movie introduced popular culture to the idea of reality as an illusion. Not that it’s new idea at the time – millenia worth of philosophers have been saying again and again that reality as we know it, reality as we sense it, cannot exactly be thought of and regarded as real. Our senses can deceive us, after all, and in the end, we cannot truly rely on the material as a gauge what reality, and thus meaning, is. It is the general consensus of the multitude of intellectual fans of the Matrix franchise that the 1999 film had managed to modernize the idea well enough for even the common man to grasp it.
The idea that reality is an illusion was wonderfully solidified by the fact that around that point, technology had advanced enough to create cyberspace and other forms of telecommunication – in essence, we had by then developed a separate reality in which we can function. We can call it virtual reality or any other name, but the gist of it is that we have proven that a viable “reality” can be created by mere mortals with the help of technology. What this means, as the Matrix movie had expressed so wonderfully at the turn of the millenium, is that reality can be manipulated in the context of the mind.
A real-time conversation with an acquaintance over a chatroom is just as real as a face-to-face conversation one has with a dear friend. One can have a real friendship with someone without having to meet – without having to be in the same continent, even. It was therefore proven in a practical sort of way that the philosophers were indeed correct in claiming that reality is fluid.
