preview

The Matrix Plato

Decent Essays

The Matrix (1999) presents to viewers a computer hacker known as Neo. By day, Neo (his alter-ego is Mr. Anderson) is a computer programmer, and at night he sells hacked software. Morpheus, a character who attempts to awaken humans from a dreamlike trance known as the Matrix, solicits the assistance of Neo.
Morpheus offers Neo the chance to see the truth about the world in which he lives. Neo, and other humans as well, are housed as biochemical food for the artificial intelligence that controls the planet. Neo wages a war in a secret underground, where he fights with Morpheus against the agents who protect the parasitic machines who live off the heat and electrochemical energy humans produce with their bodies.
Neo discovers that the machines …show more content…

According to the movie plot, humans long ago gave up their hold on knowledge when artificial intelligence becomes too powerful to contain.
The concept that knowledge is power takes on intriguing implications when juxtaposed against another of Plato’s teachings. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato taught that prisoners who been chained to a stone wall for their entire lives knew the only reality they had experienced. A puppet master could flash shadows on the wall, and if the prisoners could never turn their heads, their reality would consist of two-dimensional shadows because that is all they have ever known. Their knowledge and experience goes no further than the stone wall in front of them.
Neo’s first reality was a shadow world. His body lived inside a box, and like millions of other humans, and he lived in a world of shadows cast on the wall by puppeteers. In essence, the humans in the Matrix are prisoners chained to a wall. A former prisoner himself, Neo has been released from his bonds and allowed to step beyond the stone wall and the fire of Plato’s allegorical cave, where he could see true reality. He becomes empowered by his own knowledge about the thought experiment he had been subjected …show more content…

While it is unlikely that humans will allow artificial intelligence to develop a parasitic relationship with them, The Matrix gives the viewer pause to wonder what else in the world may not be real as perceived. Everything we perceive has the potential to be an illusion. It is only knowledge that will give us the power to be free.
Likewise, people who eschew experience and education are no better off than the prisoners chained to the stone. The uneducated have limited knowledge and less power. It is not until, like Neo, they break the chains confining them and are willing to explore new worlds, that they may understand reality.
From The Matrix we learn that it is realistic to be skeptical of the world; government is deceitful. Elected officials use their knowledge to make decisions on behalf of ignorant people. Leaders find it incumbent on themselves to make all decisions related to the health, safety and well-being of people whom they rule. Elected officials in contemporary politics view this decision-making as a necessity, thinking that because they are in control and have power, they are the ones who know more than the common

Get Access