What is the Matrix?
"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself..." - Morpheus
The matrix is all around you.
It's the "cash" in your wallet.
It's the fear you feel when you see cops and hit the brakes so you don't get fined.
It's the sugar in your food that rots out your teeth and gives you cancer.
It's the chicken in a factory farm that's been selectively bred to be so unnaturally big it can't walk.
It's the human in the apartment complex, running on a treadmill like a mouse on a wheel.
It's the flag waving in front of schools.
It's the browser tracking your activity.
It's the pride you feel when "your" team "wins".
It's the talking head on the media telling you what to fear next.
It's the video game you play all day long that obliterates your time and sense of self.
It's the fluoride in your water, dumbing you down.
It's the hatred you feel for your neighbors because they look different.
It's the teflon on your clothes, slowly making you infertile.
The matrix is layers upon layers of complex systems that serve to enslave, rather than to liberate. To corrupt, rather than to enrich. To confuse, rather than to enlighten.
"The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." - Morpheus
Almost every one of us is actively helping to build the matrix - the prison that keeps us confused and siphons our time and energy. We build it for ourselves, for each other, and ultimately, for our children and grandchildren.
Every time we fail to question illogical, compulsive, censorious, violent behavior by "the system", we make it stronger. Every time we look at the corporate news, we make it stronger. Every time we pay our taxes, we give it stronger teeth with which to bite us.
“The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.’… Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Every time we go outside, take a deep breath of fresh air, and work on our garden, we make it weaker. Every time we operate outside of the system, fixing something ourselves, or paying someone with non-government money (gold, silver, crypto) we rob it of its lifeblood. Every time we resist the temptation to scapegoat others like us for the sins of the political class, we make it more irrelevant.
The matrix is not just the system of enslavement around us, it is us insofar as we aide it. We maintain it every day, and we can dismantle it, simply by no longer giving it what it wants.
Also, sub stack makes it weaker too.
Excellent piece.