The Matrix as a Totalitarian Government Parable (A short and sloppy and improvised essay)

By Dr. sipmac

When a modern media production becomes a huge success with a huge fanbase, anything can happen. That anything means “on the verge of becoming a (major) religion”. Futurama has already toyed with the idea before lampooning the cult-like following of Star Trek and Star Wars (Where No Fan Has Gone Before, Episode 411). Now, enter The Matrix, that world described as “Harry Potter with guns”, where the cool women wear leather form head to toes, the remedy of ignorance is immediately downloadable and the illuminati barely conceal the contempt they have for those sheep-like bluepills, the way a politician fights for the people’s rights.

Alright, alright. What I said is not true. Neo and his dark-glassed combo are supposed to fight the evil machines (and computer programs that operates them) and free the humanity, but the fight does have a lot of “collateral-damage”, as seen in the highway scene. Looks like they have to destroy the village in order to save it. I can’t remember if it was Orwell who said that “a war must be fought brutally or not fought at all”. And what the humans do (at least in the simulated reality) looks like a guerilla war.

And, if humans are guerrilla, WHAT IS THE MATRIX? Glad you asked. The Matrix is the perfect allegory of a perfect totalitarian state, Ingsoc with an not-human Big Brother: The matrix takes all the decisions for its inhabitants: The matrix decides how and when to feed you. Everybody eats at the same Soylent Green by imposition (in a true egalitarian way), and if necessary, it could trick you into believing you’re eating something when you aren’t eating nothing, just by twitching your brain circuits. The matrix provides a nice cubicle (cell) where you live and die while believing you live in the open. It gives you the illusion of freedom and well-being while you’re “thriving” in slavery and misery. The Matrix controls every single aspect of your live while giving the illusion of self-determination we expect form a normal human being. The first act of freedom of a redpill is choosing an alias for hacking. It becomes their real name when freed.

It is curious that people in Russia, when they saw the movie for the first time, they saw as an praise of communism. Not even ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and still blindfolded…

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