There is no spoon.

Since the movie came out I've been a fan of the Matrix. Leaving out the unnecessary sequels, I could easily write a book on the fodder it gives me.

To keep this blog-length, I'll cover only one concept. My favorite stuff in the movie comes from Agent Smith when he is waiting for the drug to take effect with Morpheus. He makes 2 main points (3 if you count his rant about how things smell), one where he attempts to classify humans as viruses, and another where he hypothesizes that humans relate reality with misery. I'd like to talk about the latter.


In short, I agree with Agent Smith. I think that humans crave misery like dogs crave their own poop. It's vile, unhealthy, and kinda smelly, but for some reason we can't stay away. No one particularly wants to feel miserable, but some part of all of us feels that we have to.

Take, for instance, the feeling of happiness and the feeling of misery. When you are ecstatic, when good things happen, you can't believe it. You're walking on air, head in a dense fog of happiness. Like walking on a cloud. Or- more relevantly- like being in a dream. Good things can't happen to you, because good things never happen to you. You're still trying to wake up. Misery is like getting hit with a truck full of reality. That's when you feel every wrinkle in your clothes and feel every subtle change in temperature. Unless it's catastrophically bad, you have no hard time believing that it's happening to you.


Now, I could take a rather dark turn here and say that there is no reason to fear hell because we're already there, but I'm not going to do that. There are certainly ways to battle this- stoism, or a somewhat related theory I'll be posting eventually, called the statical theory. But the majority of people will always relate misery with reality. Budism is even based on that principle. Suffering is caused by desire. Desire is simply a human reality. Suffering is caused by reality. Suffering is reality.

I may have taken some artistic licence with that.