Blog 9: essay 2

Illusion, a force depicted in our mind which makes us visualizes and thinks that everything around us is maybe perfect. It can also be something we sight for desire. A hallucination can be best described as a type of an illusion, where people can foresee the future we appetite for as seen in the movie, “The Matrix”.

            Neo, the protagonist in the film, is first introduced to the Matrix phenomenon by Morpheus and Trinity. He seems to have no historical knowledge, so he begins his quest to find out the truth. Neo turns to Morpheus who states: “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” He perceived the matrix as living in the illusion theory, where the reality isn’t real and our eyes were being forced to assume that the illusion is reality.  But from Cypher’s perspective in the movie, the reality world wasn’t satisfying him because his eyes were craving for the illusion where he can be pleased with anything that he wanted. From the movies perspective of an illusion, the matrix is something we can portray with our senses, just like Cypher where his craving for money and food in the illusion world was known to him as reality.  This can be a great example from the “Allegory of The Cave” by Plato, where he describes his perspective on illusion as being ignorant.

In the “Allegory of The Cave”, Plato described how slaves were stranded in the cave from childhood. This led them to be able to never fully comprehend what reality was. They thought that reality and the world only revolved around and in that cave. For instance Socrates states: “the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be.”  But from Socrates perspective, the prisoners were to decide if they wanted to be scorned by others and live with the truth or to live in a lie and be ignorant. As well as to live in an illusion in which the prisoners had already decided to live with. This statement can be compared to the Matrix where Neo had to make a decision and choose to want to uncover the truth. Morpheus tells Neo to decide if he wants to drink the blue pill or the red pill. The blue pill will allow him to go back to the reality world in the illusion, where this can be compared to living with a lie and being ignorant in the illusion. The red pill would consent to finding out the facts about the Matrix, and this can be compared to living by telling the truth and being scorned by others.  Socrates also stated: “and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion,” In my opinion, this statement is that the reality is an illusion.

      Hallucination is what we define as an illusion and what we portray in our brain.  Neo sees that the real world was the illusion and from “allegory of the cave” Socrates also perceives that reality is an illusion as well. Illusion can also be a fantasy to allow us to see whatever we want to see, but in Neo’s case anything you plug into your brain is an illusion. The Matrix best explains the theory because it describes that an illusion is something we see, touch, hear, smell and taste.