Large, Dopey Creatures on the Move

It’s perhaps an overly used movie for analogies, but The Matrix is pretty phenomenal as far as double (and triple and quadruple and…) meanings go. Looking beyond the grey metal pipes and cement floors and ceilings that have absolutely no color or beauty at all, the little world that they’ve managed to live in (the good guys) has always been the ideal world for me. For one, they can “learn” anything in an extremely short amount of time. Just sit in the chair, insert the plug, play the program, and WHAM! Instantly you know how to do anything. THAT is what I need. But another reason that I want to live in that kind of world, is because the people that live there know something that the rest of humanity doesn’t. They’ve figured the out system, and they’ve also figured out how to beat it. I think it’s from this constant desire to know everything and do everything right and move beyond current understanding that I love their world. I feel like I’m missing something in this life; that somehow I still have a shield over my face that is blocking enlightenment to the universe.

I realize that there is no such key; at least I haven’t heard of one that sounds remotely realistic. But somehow I have it subconsciously stored away that there is one, and I keep trying to find it. I want to understand theology and constitutional law and biology and chemistry. But really, I think I want to understand humanity more than anything else. I want to know why people work the way that they do; and not just society in general, but specific people. Why do you make the comments that you do? What has made what’s important to you, important? Why are you apparently an individual, and yet so obviously part of the larger race of humanity? This is what I want to know.

It seems that in order to understand something objectively, one has to be self-differentiated. But to do that all the time is impossible. We are always and continually connected with our past and with others. There is no escape; we continue to live in the “scars and ruts” of our lives, clinging to what we know, even though we also know that it only hurts us. Even if there was something called the matrix, we wouldn’t ever be able to figure it out, because not only do we not have red and blue pills to choose from; we’d be incapable of making them in the first place, because to make them requires previous knowledge, which we can’t have without first taking the pills. But fascinatingly enough, even though I hate being confined to anything, the idea of being perpetually stuck in curiosity and struggle isn’t such a bad thing. So I suppose we continue to tromp along, searching, and maybe hoping we’ll at least figure out the system of humanity someday. And in the process, being nothing but big, muddy trolls leaving craters in our circular path.