The Matrix Has You

[StargazerParticipant 12505]

Here’s a little something I journaled back in 2013 after accepting that my oppressive family would no longer be a part of my life. We talk a lot here about the trouble with females but I believe MGTOW values are much deeper than just that. Let me know what you think.

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The Matrix Has You

In the movie version of The Matrix, humans were born into slavery and held trapped in an illusion that appeared to give their lives a sense of purpose and meaning as they unwittingly supplied their energies to sustain their machine masters.

The real life matrix is, of course, different in many ways but the essentials are the same. The actual matrix isn’t a computer generated simulation of real life run by energy hungry flying robots, it’s a simulation of an idealized life created by other people as a means to control you for the purpose of keeping you docile and productive.

The characters in The Matrix were inserted into their artificial reality as infants where they grew up nearly oblivious to the facts of their enslavement but, through great struggle and sacrifice, they could come to know the truth about their condition and free themselves. The same is true of the real matrix. As an adult, you may occasionally feel that something is not right and, in fact, has never been right for your entire life. Perhaps you feel that there is a deeper truth, a more real and natural world that you are in some way connected to… if only you could figure out how to dispel the illusion and reach it. You are right.

Your life as you know it is, in fact, an illusion… a set of ideals, values, goals and expectations that have been fed to you since birth in order to control you and turn you into, as I mentioned above, a docile and productive member of society. These ideals do not necessarily serve you, though they may appear to at times, but in fact serve the objectives of those individuals and institutions in positions of power over you.

The good news is that, just like in the movie, you have the ability to make a choice to break free of the illusions that bind you and connect yourself with the real world. There is, in fact, a red pill that will free you from the matrix… but taking it involves a lot more than a comfortable chair and some special effects.

If you are considering the choice of attempting to escape the matrix, you can begin by understanding what the matrix actually is and how it works.

A System of Control

The entire purpose of the matrix is to convert you from a natural state of freedom and self determination to one of complete acculturation and civilization (and keep you there) in order to extract the maximum amount of value you are able to produce with the minimum of effort and difficulty.

As an infant, you are completely unbound. There is no schedule, no rules, no expectations and no judgement. Your only objectives are to live, grow and explore your world. It’s hard to imagine a well ordered society made up of people as free as infants, though, so in order to advance and preserve the structure and order of society, people created civilization… the matrix.

You may think of civilization as technology… fire, language, agriculture, mathematics, architecture, science… these things are parts of and contribute to the advancement of civilization but they are not, in themselves, civilization. Civilization, by definition, means the process of refinement of thought, manners and tastes toward a more advanced level of development and organization.

On first consideration, this doesn’t seem so bad… and perhaps at first it wasn’t. People naturally desire to better their lives and, when given the chance, they naturally differentiate in their skills and interests as a way to create value for themselves and achieve that better life. The problem arises when some people begin to apply themselves not towards producing value for themselves directly but to creating systems and institutions designed to extract value from others. Whereas those people who developed their creative and constructive abilities have produced value for themselves and shared their excess value with others through trade, sharing and gifting, those who have developed manipulative and coercive skills have, throughout history, taken as much of that value as they could for themselves.

When we consider the matrix, it’s wise to recognize that we’re not looking to destroy the system entirely… some aspects of society, the creative and constructive elements, are valuable and need to be preserved whereas others, the manipulative and coercive ones, are corrupt and need to be eradicated. The challenge is to determine which elements are which.

External Values

As I wrote previously, the matrix is comprised of a set of ideals which are imposed on you from the moment of your birth by those individuals and institutions in power over you. They are, in the order you are likely to encounter them, your parents, siblings, teachers, schoolmates, clergy, friends, salespeople, officers of the law, bosses and managers, neighbors, lovers, public servants, medical professionals, psychologists, spiritualists and, finally, children (in the form of the parents of other children).

Each of these categories of people constitute their portion of the matrix through the exercise of their expectations, either explicit or implicit, as to how you should behave… and you can judge them by whether they encourage you to pursue your own interests and values or expect you to sacrifice yourself in order to produce value for them. That is the simple truth of the matrix. Those elements which support your freedom, your ideals and your values and real and true whereas those elements that attempt to manipulate you into giving up that freedom and work toward bending your ideals and values to their own purposes are part of the illusion… the illusion we are about to dispel.

A Concrete Example

Imagine you are a young man born into a culture where family, religion and manliness are highly valued. From the time you are an infant you’re trained to be masculine… to play sports, be tough and never show your emotions. You’re brought up in the church which, along with your strict, traditional parents, raise you to fear and obey the rules while, at the same time, clearly breaking those same rules themselves. Your peers and potentials lovers are drawn to your power and your self esteem comes from being perceived as a strong man who receives the success and respect you feel you deserve. This, I believe, represents the cultural upbringing of the vast majority of young men today.

Now, given this reality, what types of choices are this young man likely to make as he enters his adult life? One can guess he might might go to college, join a fraternity and spend his life chasing wealth and power if his family is well off… or enlist in the military and work toward benefits and a pension if his family is patriotic and somewhat economically stressed… or hit the streets and become a fighter or criminal if he’s from a severely poor family.

Perhaps he can do well in any of these scenarios. People do. There are successful executives, career officers and crime kingpins in the world… just there’s not very many of them. A more likely path, however, ends with an aging, ex-party girl wife, a couple of unexpected kids and a whole lot of debt. Lets walk through it.

Our man’s upbringing has taught him that he must project an image of strength and success if he ever wants to be strong and successful so he spends money he doesn’t have on a fancy car, nice clothes and food and drink to impress his peers and his potential mates. His culture has also told him that a man is tough and never backs down from a challenge… so he will spend time and effort developing his body and competing for dominance with other men which, naturally, leads to conflict. Likewise he has observed older men of his family and community pay lip service to faith, law and decency so he freely commits sins, breaks laws and treats women and other men with disrespect in order to achieve his goals.

All of these behaviors are driven by ideals imposed on him by other people… his parents, his faith, his peers… and he acts on them at great cost to himself. His time, energy and youth are spent attempting to project a reputation of a perfect example of what everyone else says he should be and, all the while, he declares his loyalty to his ethnicity, his place of birth, his family and the values of his upbringing in order to justify it to himself.

This is what the matrix looks like. Not once in his entire life will this man stop and think “Whose ideals am I pursuing and to whom does the benefit of me pursuing them accrue?” Not once will he ask himself “Is this what I truly wish to do? Is this the best choice for me and for my individual happiness?” Rarely will he even question the absolute truth and validity of the illusion in which he has been enveloped. The mere suggestion that his parents may not be infallible, that his faith may be based on lies, that his masculine toughness is a front to cover his insecurity, that the respect he craves amounts to little more than other men of his ilk biding their time until they can step on him on their way to the top of the same pile he is trying to climb… to even hint at these things will provoke a violent response as he fights to protect his illusions and justify the time and effort he has spent in the matrix.

And what are the end results of his efforts? To whom does the value of his work actually flow? It is sadly obvious… corporations reap the profits of his labor and his spending, a woman and her children who would otherwise have to pay their own way get to live for free off of his efforts, his parents get to justify their own life choices by seeing him follow in their steps, the church gets his patronage and his donations, political leaders get his votes and collect his tribute and his friends get the comfort of his company as they complain about the injustices of life… safe in the knowledge that none of them will ever do anything about it.

When you try to compete with your peers by playing a sport or acting cool, that is the matrix. When you look at a girl and think “she’s the kind of woman everyone wants”, that is the matrix. When you work hard at school and pursue a job because your parents expect you to succeed (or fail) and you want to make them proud (or prove to them that they’re wrong) that is the matrix. When you buy a shirt or a phone or a car because you think it will make you look rich or cool or more desirable, that’s the matrix. When you take a girl to a fancy restaurant and try to impress her so that she’ll become your lover, that’s the matrix. When you return to your home town for the holidays while dreading the stress and unhappiness that go with such a visit, that is the matrix. When you buy a consumer product because the people in the advertisement looked cool or sexy or happy, that’s the matrix. When you commit a sin, break a law or treat another person like they’re beneath you in order to exercise your autonomy and power… that is the matrix.

So what, you may ask, does a person do when they want to escape the matrix? If all of these things are part of it, what is there that isn’t? Is there any hope of escaping when it seems like every single person in the world, as the movie goes, is potentially an agent of the matrix? If you truly want to free yourself, there are three questions you must consider. First, how does one actually escape the matrix. Second, how does one live outside of the matrix and Third, what responsibility does one have to attempt to rescue others who are still caught in the matrix?

[RoyDalParticipant]

Here’s my take.

First, how does one actually escape the matrix

How to escape is summed up in the famous ancient Greek prescription: “Know yourself.” I interpret that to mean observe my mind’s attempts to govern my actions from established habit and emotions.

Second, how does one live outside of the matrix

(When I’m on top of things) I say to myself, “my emotions want me to do things this way — but there is a better way. I will do the better thing this time.”

Third, what responsibility does one have to attempt to rescue others who are still caught in the matrix?

Primarily, I live as responsibly as possible. I do not let my emotions or the habits ingrained in me rule my life. Only by being free myself, can I hope to lead anyone else to their freedom. If someone I meet is receptive, I try to explain my actions and views. I never force it; that always backfires. They need to learn their own lessons at their own pace.

Society asks MGTOWs: Why are you not making more tax-slaves?

[KeymasterKeymaster]

Loved this. It should be made into an article. Doc can we publish this on the front end attributed to you? We would create support images and clips and do a complete “red-pill / blue pill” Matrix piece with video clips and such… including references to Alice in Wonderlands’ “skewed reality” which was a direct inspiration for the film. Haven’t seen a Matrix piece done properly yet but it would be fun.

We have also created a “wake up neo” SELF-DEPGROMMING “program” where the user interacts and reads it while typing. Pretty clever and this would be the perfect context to release it. Please let us know!

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[StargazerParticipant 12505]

Absolutely, I would be honored. And I have two more follow ups where I attempt to answer my own questions at the end which I’ll post down the road a bit.

[KeymasterKeymaster]

OK do that! and shoot us a note when your ready. And maybe make any alterations based on the idea that it’s not just for the forum. In your own time whenever your inspired. No rush or pressure please. We will make a piece out of it. Just let us know or perhaps send a final draft when you’re happy with it. Thank very much! Would be so great!

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[AFTParticipant 2722]

First, How does one escape the Matrix?
In order to unplug and escape the Matrix, you need to identify it, the manipulative, coercive and corrupt aspects of society which you mention, together with all the imposed values and ideals, need to be rejected. You need to form your own values and ideals, which is a hell of a lot harder than it sounds. You need to know what is in your best interests, and only let that be your reality.
Second, how does one live outside the matrix?
Focus on your own reality, even if you’re the only one thinking that way. You need to figure out how to extract yourself from the rat race, once you have financial freedom, you will have the ability to determine your destiny.
Third, what responsibility do you have to free others?
I firmly believe you cannot forcibly extract anyone from the matrix, I don’t believe you have an explicit responsibility to help anyone, however it is in every bodies best interests to help extract as many that want help as possible and cooperate towards a mutually beneficial alternative.

When the war cemeteries are half full of the corpses of dead conscripted women, only then will women have earned the right to speak of equality. Sidecar “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

[StargazerParticipant 12505]

Will do. I’ll put in a few hours at the keyboard this week to refine and update the idea and fill in the remaining points. And thank you for the opportunity to contribute.

[Author]

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