It's the question that drives us

The Matrix (1999)
Trinity: I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.
Neo: What is the Matrix?
Trinity: The answer is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.

Morpheus: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is 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.

Morpheus: I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.

Morpheus: I know *exactly* what you mean. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo: I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

Equilibrium (2002)
Father: Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great.

DuPont: In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel.

Mary: Let me ask you something.
[Grabs his hand]
Mary: Why are you alive?
John Preston: [Breaks free] I'm alive... I live... to safeguard the continuity of this great society. To serve Libria.
Mary: It's circular. You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?
John Preston: What's the point of your existence?
Mary: To feel. 'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it. But it's as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... ticking.

Partridge :But I being poor, have only my dreams, I have spread my dreams under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (reading "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" - W.B. Yeats)
I assume you dream Preston?
It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt.

DuPont: It's not the message that is important but our obedience to it.

The biggest issue I have with not feeling and becoming as cold, cruel, and uncaring as this world would like me to be is where will that leave my dreams. Will I even have dreams if I can teach myself not to feel. Not to grow attached to anyone or anything. I fear the future. That fear is indeed human, right. No one can tell the future but isn't it human to be afraid of what may come. What has already happened repeating itself. What's to be learned needs to be learned for that bigger better future. I question myself what's been learned. What exactly have a learned about A. having feelings that involve the environment around me, B. Are those feelings reciprocated?, C. What exactly is that risk? Which brings me to the matrix. Whether there is or is not a matrix that we're plugged into literally or just the social control norms of being in one is gonna be hard to prove or prove not. But regardless like Morpheous says, I believe it to be true. Someone can show you the door but only you can decide to walk through. For me I think this door is a personal question can I let go of hope, honor, ethics, morals, that are bi-products in my disney, catholic, boyscout head. I don't think these social norms that I learned when I was younger are in fact benefitting me. But I still fear very much walking through the metaphorical door of no tommarrow. If I did that everything would change. I still think I can make a difference in this world. Excepting that I can not and everyone is 100% out for themselves and only themselves makes all this look so ugly.

Like in equilibrium, without these feelings, breathe is merely a clock tic tocing your existence away. I think the closest I could come to not caring is accepting that no one else is gonna care. But I chose to still care but at no point should I expose that to anyone else which seems extremely problematic when thinking about a concept of truth. Now if you take out the concept of truth it would work like clock work. I lie so badly, perhaps I should practice more. Positivity, right isn't that essentially brainwashing yourself. Your emotions are there to tell you something, aren't they. Like your needs, if u totally disregard them and start feeding yourself confidence and this positivity is it really genuine?

When I watched the Matrix again last night I was trying to pin point all of the lines and plot points that are metaphors for our existence. Equilibrium even more so cause in the matrix once neo is out there's a solid separation between it, the people who are still plugged in, and the agents (control) now in equilibrium Cleric is always there and the only point that changes is his life from his perspective when he stops taking the medication prozium that stops people from feeling. Come to think of it I think we're gonna stay with this topic for a bit. This kinda control duality is totally what my trilogy is gonna be about, on a much different unifying element that dies a little more everyday. Jumped past myself for a bit there. Neo and cleric both have a change, I think Cleric's is much more apparent. I wish just for a bit, me, the blog writer, could go through the opposite change, and I might at some point I heard Wellbutrin, ritilin, and prozac do wonders for over emotional people. There's one scene in Equilibrium where Cleric wakes up after being a day or 2 off his prozium. He hears rain on his covered window and out of curiousity goes to the window and starts scratching the plastic off to expose the beautiful sunrise on the city which is like most sunrises for any of us, fucking breath-taking. And he's like oh fuck I'm feeling and rushes into the bathroom to get his fix when he realizes damn I'm good looking and he accepts that these feelings aren't about wrong or right they just are. Kinda makes you wonder whose been going around labelling all this shit for so long. Some of it just is, ya know. Most of them are I like this or I don't like this and sitting thinking about them might help. But like that one scene in the Matrix 2 where the meravingian is talking about that chick whose eating chocolate cake. And she cums from it, he says everything in the universe is just totally out of control.

I embrace that out of control. If you know when things have gotten out of control it's really simple to see who and what has control or who and what. And that scares me as well to keep thinking the way I have. I really don't like control. I will buck almost anyone who tries to put a saddle on me and ride my wild ass around. Just sitting here thinking, there's no answer for contrast. These are big ideas. Control, right and wrong, ying and yang, is there in actuality balence? Ever? There's moderation, you can moderate yourself in attempts to create balence but I ask is that feeling. It'll keep that whole out of control thing in check but will it keep that whole feeling and having a fulfilling challenging experience full life in check. Doesn't our charachter or soul get tested by out of control experiences. Furthermore can you moderate out of control? Lots of questions in this blog. "It's the question that drives us". Still unsure about giving up my controls. I'm gonna look at this door for a bit before I walk right through. Purpose, will walking through this door get me closer to purpose? For the moment I'm good and premising whether in fact hope has helped or purpose should be the driving force from now on. He steps toward the door and puts a hand on the knob.