The Reality of Reality

Despite thousands of years of thought and analysis, reality remains an elusive concept. As
early as fifth century B.C, Greek philosophers wondered whether the world they inhabited and
sensed truly existed or was a form of deception by a higher power. Throughout the next two
millennia, a broad range of philosophical and literary texts have voiced similar thoughts and
doubts. In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato takes his readers through a thought experiment that
demonstrates how ignorance misconstrues reality. In 1909, E.M. Forster, in his short story The
Machine Stops, introduces an agent humanitys own creation, The Machine - that seeds
ignorance into the minds of people, distorting their reality. The exponential growth of
technology and the internet in the twentieth century further blurs the line between reality and
illusion. The 1999 film by the Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix, intricately connects all these
different aspects to portray a dystopian world where humanity lives in an illusion fed to them by
the machines that hold them captive. It takes little thought to discover a similar undertone in all
these works a foreboding towards highly advanced technology and a question of the nature of
reality.
The primary connection between all three stories is the deception of peoples senses. In
the Allegory of the Cave, shadows define the reality of the imprisoned people as they have
experienced nothing else. The deception is more nuanced in The Machine Stops. The Machine
gradually makes people so dependent on it that the people refuse to believe in anything other
than the Machine. The Machine becomes their reality. The Matrix takes this to an entirely new
level. In a manner, it resembles Allegory of the Cave in a modern context and provides a
scientific basis of the concept of reality. Like Allegory of the Cave, the population of the
Matrix leads an imprisoned life. They are not held by chains and shackles but rather in a

computer software that deceives their minds. In all three, people believe the modified version of
reality presented to them and thus in trusting their senses, they deceive themselves and fail to
grasp reality.
However, the question arises about whether it is fair to say that they fail to grasp reality.
That would depend on ones definition of reality. As Morpheus in Matrix puts it: What is real?
How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you
can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. (The Matrix).
In both the Matrix and the Allegory of the Cave, when someone is told that it is not the real
world, it is met with skepticism and disbelief. To a person, his or her memories are real. Reality
is based on what he or she senses, and according to Morpheus, how our brain perceives electrical
signals. Hence the fake universe that the prisoners live in in both the worlds are arguably real to
them. The judgment of an absolute reality might as well lead to a wild goose chase. For example,
in the Allegory of the Cave, when the freed prisoner first witnesses the fire, he assumes that to be
the all that is real. His image shatters when he goes outside as he discovers that the fire was but a
minor fragment of all that is truly real. Similarly, Neo wakes up to the so called real world, but
how do we know it is just not another world in his dreams, or another step away from reality. We
associate reality with familiarity and to the casual reader, the worlds that the prisoner and Neo
finally witness are real because they are real and familiar to us.
Another similar aspect which is also enforces the argument of the futility of searching for
an absolute reality is the inflexibility of the human mind as shown in all three stories. When the
prisoner returns and tries to enlighten the others, he is met with derision. Morpheus states that
they never free people beyond a certain age as the mind cannot let go to that mind, the Matrix
is the absolute reality. In The Machine Stops, peoples absolute reality is the underground world

that they occupy and the outside is presumed to be a wasteland. Reality is carved my familiarity
as well as relevance. In the end, what humans have learnt all their lives is what matters to them.
The multiple realities in all three stories also beg one question is one reality better than
the other? What if that which is presumed to be truly real is not the one that a person wants to
live in? Does it even matter to that person which reality he is in as long as he is happy and
content? An analysis of the three texts reveals that in the end people tend to choose the reality
that they want as the absolute reality. Kuno was dissatisfied with the rule of the Machine and so
he sought a reprieve from it and found his way to the surface of the earth. It was the truly real
thing for him. The rest of the population were perfectly content under the Machine, and hence
that was their reality. In the Matrix, Cypher chooses to return to the Matrix and forgo his
knowledge of the real world because he is better off there. On the other hand, the freed prisoner
prefers the world outside the cave as it is more pleasant and rewarding. Even today, we see
people dabble in drugs and hallucinogens in search of an alternate reality that is more enjoyable.
A person therefore has the choice of his own reality.