Is “The Matrix” a Prophetic Vision of the Borg?
Neo: Right now, we're inside a computer program?
Morpheus: Wild, isn't it?
In the Watchtower Matrix many of us have learned that our reality was false and our nightmares were true by actual life experience. In the popular film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (Neo) begins having doubts about reality. He has lived in the year 1999 until Morpheus contacts him and leads him into an alternative reality. Neo soon finds it is 200 years later, and the world has been laid waste and taken over by advanced artificial intelligence machines. The computers have apparently created a false version of 20th Century life to keep humans enslaved, while AI machines draw power from their bodies.
It is not really difficult to match the WTS ideology and our own life experiences with this movie. If you substitute Neo for someone who is trapped inside the false version of the world the Witnesses create and add the contact from someone in the “outside” who shows them that the WTS has created a false reality, and is using their energy to power and propagate a massive artificially produced meme, then you can follow through the remaining parts of the movie and notice even more poignant comparisons along the way.
None of this is likely new to you if you watched the movie but the point of this thread though is to outrageously suggest that quite possibly something more exciting can be gained from the comparison of the Matrix with the Witnesses version of it. I’m going to constrain myself below to present the outline of the movie but I invite your personal views to see if you can guess where I’m going with a prophetic preview of what may actually happen in real life.
In the movie Anderson is subsequently both perused relentlessly by "Agents" (computers who adopt human form and infiltrate the Matrix) and hailed by Morpheus as "The One” destined to lead humans to overthrow the machines and reclaim their existence. In the movie this computer/neurological simulation allows the AI to enslave humanity, within the Matrix however there exist certain possibilities for escape. Morpheus and his cyber-terrorist crew are located on the "outside" of the computer-simulated reality grid and have liberated their bodies from the energy farms. As a result they are able to enter the Matrix and function therein with superhuman potential.
Neo – as the One – is expected to turn the tide in favor of a human rebellion, an "Awakening", by shifting the balance, by making a leap, literally and metaphorically, from game player to game master.
Morpheus: When the Matrix was first built there was a man born inside that had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was this man that freed the first of us and taught us the secret of the war; control the Matrix and you control the future.
Morpheus: When he died, the Oracle at the temple of Zion prophesied his return and envisioned an end to the war and freedom for our people. That is why there are those of us that have spent our entire lives searching the Matrix looking for him.
You no doubt remember that in the film this is accomplished when Neo attains the level of “realization” he needs to be able to stop the bullets with his mind, since they are virtual, and project himself into the holographic image of the enemy and explode it from “within.” Then Neo appears invulnerable. He becomes "The One" in the sense of the first to realize a "true" nature and so becomes a person who can mold reality subjectivity.
Part of what helped Neo realize his ability was realizing that he is in the "world", but not of it. This realization cannot be attained, however, without first confronting his doubts. In this respect, the "Oracle sequence" is pivotal. Before meeting her, Neo pauses in the waiting room witnessing a brief magic lesson from a child with a spoon.
Spoon Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead…only try to realise the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon Boy: There's no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon Boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
This spoon-bending incident prepares Neo for the mental manipulation the Oracle subjects him to. She lets him believe he is not the One, adding that Morpheus will not accept this and will probably die defending his belief in him. Neo is placed in a Catch 22 situation where he has to fight for Morpheus and for what he believes in even though he now regards this as false.
The Oracle appears to see time laid out before her like a map, she presumably knows that Morpheus will not die, and that Neo is the One, but that both facts/possibilities depend upon Neo's believing the opposite. In order to become the One, Neo must primarily be freed of the intolerable burden that this entails, until he comes to his own self-revelation. Hence, he has to prove his identity, not to someone else, but to himself.
Morpheus: Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did . . . there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
Do you get it?
Skipper (the Matrix Class)
