Living Outside the Matrix

What is “The Matrix”? What’s outside it, and how can we escape?


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What is a Matrix? What does the word mean? What are people referring to to when they talk of ‘the Matrix’? Why use the story of the film as a metaphor? Let’s shed some light on the topic and see why a science fiction story can serve as a useful illustration of modern life.
Firstly, let me say that I do not propose we live in a computer generated virtual reality dream world. The metaphor usefully illustrates the relatively unconscious mode of existence of the vast majority of humanity. For example, few people are aware of the philosophical convictions that underpin their attitudes, their mindset and their thinking, and therefore their choices, their actions and their lives. Few are aware that they are not politically free, or of the way in which they are economically exploited through taxation and inflation.

The Oxford English dictionary informs us the word originates in Late Middle English from the Latin for ‘breeding female’, or ‘womb’, from mater, matr- ‘mother’.
Oxford English dictionary definition of Matrix

The cultural, social, or political environment in which something develops.
A mass of fine-grained rock in which gems, crystals, or fossils are embedded.

* Biology The substance between cells or in which structures are embedded. ‘the lipid matrix of olfactory cells’.
* Fine material used to bind together the coarser particles of a composite substance.


‘the matrix of gravel paths is hoed regularly’





A mould in which something, such as a record or printing type, is cast or shaped. ‘her two duets with Isobel Baillie were never issued and the matrices were destroyed’.
A rectangular array of quantities or expressions in rows and columns that is treated as a single entity and manipulated according to particular rules. ‘this formula applies for all square matrices’.
An organizational structure in which two or more lines of command, responsibility, or communication may run through the same individual. as modifier ‘matrix structures are said to foster greater flexibility’.

We can see from this and other dictionary definitions that the commonly agreed meaning of the term ‘matrix’ is the cultural social or political environment in which something develops. It is also is a kind of a mould shaping the outcome. It can also be a rectangular mathematical array of quantities or data treated as a single entity and manipulated by the same rules. And it can be an organised structure where two or more lines of command, responsibility or communication run through the same individual.
Bear these aspects of its meaning in mind during what follows.
In the context of referencing the film and using the term as a metaphor for modern life, I use the following definition. The matrix means the context of the control of ideas and propaganda and its subsequent resulting mental framework for the interpretation of events and understanding the world that predominates in the mainstream narrative irrespective of and separate from the diversity of interpretations that exists in active and independent minds.
The Matrix film
The title of my Podcast refers to the 1999 Science-fiction film “The Matrix” that depicts a dystopian future in which a slave race of humans are unconscious of the greater context of their lives. They ‘live’ in a computer generated reality dream state made by machines (or Artificial Intelligence), or at least this is where their consciousness has experiences. Meanwhile, the heat and electrical energy from their bodies is harvested. The lead character, Neo, meets a group of rebels who have broken out of the dream state and he joins them by choosing the Red Pill (singifying wanting to know). Once on the outside they then struggle for freedom against the AI machines in the grim ‘reality’ of a devastated a...
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Living Outside the MatrixBy Nigel Howitt

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