I am in the process of completing my re-watching of the Matrix Trilogy and I came to realize the whole thing is about choice. What do you choose to do? Why do you choose to do it? Are you prepared for the consequences of your choice?

I was talking with my woman, mother, and a friend last night about doctors. My mom was saying that doctors are forced to be either expensive or unscrupulous to live the life they want and pay off their bills from school. My point was that the system may be forcing you to be one way, but you have a choice. At one point you can either say that you will no longer take part in this or you will become a willing participant in a system of oppression and control.

Throughout the movie, the conundrum of choice continues to come up again. It comes to a head in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo decides to save Trinity instead of resetting the system of control. Think of it like your computer. You have an operating system that is working fine. Eventually you get some issues. You can either reset the system and start all over where you will eventually have the exact same problem again, or get another operating system.

Here is what gets a little deeper though. The Architect tells Neo that there have been 5 systems before this one. 5 “anomalies”, as the Architect puts it, before Neo. Meaning that each one made the decision to follow the system and continue the human race. Up until Neo, he makes the opposite decision. The Architect mentions that part of the equation of the system that spawned the anomaly that is the One is a set of circumstances in the Individual’s life that intrinsically ties them to humanity and that Neo’s is concentrated in Trinity. So that’s where his choice lies. However, this culminates in a system failure (I’m not going to get into the relationship between Neo and Smith in this post.) Yet, in a scene with the Oracle, she alludes to the fact that she has made this choice each time before as well and finally what she has endured has come to fruition. So Neo’s choice is a violent and rebellious ‘fuck you’ to the system that attempts to settle the yoke of control upon him by placing the responsibility for the death of the human race on his shoulders. He would rather fight and push past the limits in order to make his own decision based on his perception.

This leads me to something else. In the movie Zeitgeist I became aware of the fact that Yeshua ben Yosef was the most recent of figures that have had the same circumstances in their lives to come to a point and provide something timeless to humanity.  Yet, The Matrix poses the question of whether or not this isn’t also a form of control? I think it is if it is used as it has been. If we look at the lives of the individuals and learn the lessons to adjust the way we live our lives, it is merely the Universe giving us hapless fools a few hints. If it becomes strict, dogmatic structure, then we are simply encoding another version of the Matrix in which to trap our minds in a never-ending loop of in-sane ignorance and spiritual destruction.