Episode 06: You Live in the Matrix

[00:00:00] Seth: I watched The Matrix recently. Great movie. I think it, I think it resonates with a lot of people. Clearly the sequels all completely sucked and I think it's because I think sometimes people create art or media that resonates with people but they don't really understand why it resonates. They made it, but they don't really, they don't really get why it's so popular.

And I feel like that's gotta be the case with the matrix. Cause every followup is just nowhere near as good as that first one. Anyways when you watch that movie, it gets you thinking and, and just like anybody else, it got me thinking. And what got me thinking about was the fact that we actually do live in a matrix.

I mean, We don't have an actual plug jacked into the back of our head, but, I mean, we're like straight up in a matrix. Our lives are practically dictated to us. We all watch the same news, the same TV shows. It feels like we don't, because we got all these options. But then you talk to people and you find out it's like, oh, they're watching the same thing too.

Not only that, but our life is kind of, we have our ups and downs, but it's In this day and age, it's kind of predictably smooth. You know, war and crisis always have the potential to break out and cause major problems, but in general, our lives, at least in America, are pretty cozy. We don't have very much Real crisis, I might say this isn't accounting for individual crisis and terrible things that happen to people individually, but by and large, we don't seem to deal with that much, but this world we live in, it's kind of become this digitally utopia.

We can get on our phones and partake of any media we want. We can sit. and have more or less anything we want delivered to us. We can sit now and put a VR headset on and go to bed. Pretty much anywhere in the world. I, I have one. It's pretty cool, but it really kind of keeps us, I mean, it's, it's quite literally like the matrix.

It's, it's almost identical to the movie with the exception that we don't have a jack in the back of our head. But when you're on your phone or you're, you're watching A streaming production or whatever. You're literally part of a computer algorithm. When you get on Facebook, you are part of a computer algorithm and that computer algorithm is designed to feed you stuff that you like, but in the process, it's also influencing you.

And so it's kind of a weird thing to think about. And I think that's, I think so many people, even back in the nineties. So many people related with that not even though it was less of a digital utopia at that point in time I think people already were beginning to kind of comprehend this sort of I don't know this this life That doesn't feel real and I think for a lot of for many people on a deeper level It's just sort of a life that feels a little void a little simplistic, a little empty.

I don't know. Maybe, maybe you have, or maybe you haven't watched or not watched, maybe you've read the book, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read that a few years ago. And of course in school, I read in 1984, which is fantastic. But you know, A Brave New World is kind of the, The exact opposite way of controlling you.

And this guy pretty much invented the idea of the Matrix long before the Matrix ever even existed. But in this, in this book, in the future, the people are controlled through their pleasures. They have pretty much everything at their fingertips. They all wear really cheap clothing so that it will break quickly so that they have to go buy new clothing.

taught to participate in orgies from the time that they're like toddlers and They're just they've created this world where everybody is so completely Controlled by their pleasures and it's not too dissimilar I mean I already drew the comparisons from the matrix to our to our lives today But I mean these phones they've kind of jacked up everything I mean, it takes an incredible amount of willpower for me to not look at my phone.

And I think I'm much better than a lot of people I know, but I'm still constantly checking this stupid phone. And when I have my kids with me, it's like the point is to, to be with my kids, to experience that time with them. Cause I only have them 50 percent of the time. So even then I'm still like, I'm catching myself looking at this phone all the time.

They have got me in. In the matrix, I'm, I'm part of it. I, they've made themselves such a part of my habits that I pick up this phone and I look at it and I'm just sucked into it all the time, way more than I want to. And so I guess what I want to discuss a little bit is like, how, how do we break out of this?

How do we break out of this mundane life where all we have is our. our simple pleasures and distractions. How do we take the red pill so we can find out what's actually going on? I think another comparison that we can draw is, is it's kind of like, in this, this matrix, so to say, it's showing us our lives through a window.

And that window is, you know, happens to be on the back side of the second story on this house. And we're seeing this, this limited view of the world. And that's what we're seeing. When in reality, we could walk outside. Both literally and figuratively, we can walk outside. And I think that's a big, that that's a big way of breaking out in the first place, is to actually participate in the world.

We're not really meant to be these stationary, robots that we've become, but I think in regard to just how we view the world, we need different perspective. And in the case of the window analogy, we need to walk outside or at the very least we need to walk to another part of the house and look through a different window.

I think sometimes we, we sort of cheapen the idea of, of taking a different perspective. You know, a lot of times the way people view the world is, is kind of put into this dichotomy, this political dichotomy, no matter where you are at any given time in history, there is almost always two more or less coalescing sides of, of thought in our world today.

We've got conservative, we have liberal and, and those are kind of the, the major ways of thinking in the world today. And so when you say take a different perspective, you know, I think a lot of times people take that just as, as I think people kind of simplify it sometimes and to them, that means. Well, I need to stand in their shoes and understand their perspective, whatever, or maybe they don't do that, but there is this whole idea of, well, you need to stand in someone else's shoes to get their perspective.

But the kind of perspectives that I think are more valuable to us, because in that dichotomy. Of, of a given period of time. And you could try to view things from, from the other perspective, the other side, but you're, you're focused on the same problems, you're all looking in the same place. So in a way, even though the, even though there's two sides, you're all looking at the same place.

You're just, you're kind of symmetrically different. If you really want to get different perspective on life, different perspective on things in general, I've found the best way is to take a time machine and the best way to take a time machine. It's to read books about or during past periods of time, because you get to those people and they have wildly different perspectives and, and it changes from generation to generation from century to century.

Their problems are different. The French hate the English, the English hate the French, the let's think, oh yeah, the Germans are the enemy. Now the Germans are the friends. Russia was an enemy. They were a friend and they're an enemy again. I mean, it just, that, that time perspective changes everything.

And also the cultural values of people are wildly different as well. We're all focused on the same problems partially because that's the matrix we live in. Everything in our life kind of points to the same problems. I mean, for heaven's sakes, if you, if you watch like any, any thing produced by Hollywood these days, they make sure you know what.

What's on their mind politically. So breaking out of that is just to see it through different eyes. I mean, some of these issues that we are concerned with are so far different from what previous generations were concerned with. And we have this sort of narcissism when we look back at history and just assume That everybody is dealing with the exact same problems that we are, or that they're all concerned about the exact same problems that we are.

Cause obviously these are the only problems that could ever exist. These are the only things that could be that important to people. It couldn't be further from the truth. Another way of breaking out of that matrix is to spend significant time. In a place that is nothing like where you live, getting out, living in another country, living in another, even to some degree, just a different region sometimes gives you a different perspective.

I mean, if you went and lived, I mean, there's still some tribes in the Amazon, I think, but if you went and lived with them, you would have a wildly different perspective.

experience from your day to day life. They would see problems in a completely different way. Now, the benefit I think of doing this is it simply just breaks your own mind out of, out of the current focus that the world tries to keep you on.

Whether that focus be like a political one, or even just like an entertainment one even just focusing. All the media that everyone's trying to pitch to you, breaking out of that, just being able to break out of that just breaks you out of the dichotomy. You no longer have to be tied to the same thoughts and the same ideas as every other person.

And also you can relieve yourself of some of that cultural narcissism where you think just everybody that was older than you is just didn't know what they're talking about or, or were stupid. One of the biggest shockers to me when I started, so years ago, I started reading classics. One of the biggest shockers to me was how incredibly intelligent some of these writers were.

I mean, some of these ancient writers changed my life. Their perspective on the world was so deep and so enriching, and it wasn't until I was well into my adulthood that I started reading these and actually comprehending them. But I understand now why some books are called classics, and I feel pretty confident in telling you which books are and are not classics, and it's largely.

Does this book change your life? Does it, does it completely change your, the window from which you look at the world? So about that a little bit. This is one way that I feel like I've been at least marginally being able to break out of my own matrix here. My father always had five or six books sitting on his desk.

When I was growing up there were his favorite books and they happened to all be classics. They're all I think Remember, there's Charles Dickens on there. There's last last of the Mohicans. They were all books that just really Impacted him and when I was a kid He would kind of push me or encourage me to to read the books and and you know I read a few I remember reading Some of the Charles Dickens books and reading lots of the Mohicans and to appease my father primarily and frankly like it didn't I didn't really understand any of it.

Didn't make much sense to me, but raid, I mean, my late twenties, maybe around the time I turned 30, I just, you know, that stuck with me. And especially cause I had a friend that told me one time that those books sitting on my dad's desk really sort of. Was something that he wanted to do and he talked about because my dad actually got several of my friends that didn't like reading he got them interested in reading because you know, he just gave him good books and I remember it really influenced one of my friends at the time and and he actually really liked that about my dad was those books He had and later in my life.

I remember thinking about that like I know that was actually kind of interesting I want to I want to be kind of knowledgeable. I want to know what people are talking about. I want to understand these references. So at the time I had a job where I was commuting for a pretty long time every, every day.

And so I had the opportunity to do some audio books and Oh my gosh, it changed everything. I started listening to these classics constantly and they are life changing. They see the world from an entirely different perspective. And you've grown up seeing there are people from different times, different eras I can still remember probably the, the one that really kickstarted everything as I came across this, this old Robinson Crusoe book.

And I don't know, I started reading it because it was just intriguing. This was actually a paper book that I actually started reading and It didn't actually, for whatever reason, this book was, it was printed the way I guess it was printed a long time ago. And there was no chapter divisions. It was just simply, like, just writing.

It just went on and on. And there was no clear end or beginning of any, of any section. And it was just, it was It was a weird way to read a book, but that's how I read it. And I found myself sucked into it. Cause if you don't know anything about that book, it's, it's basically the original story that has been retold a hundred times in the book.

An example of, of a retelling of this is the Martian. The Martian is basically based on Robinson Crusoe Castaway is pretty much Robinson Crusoe. There's been a bunch of retellings, but it's just a journal of this guy that's stranded on an island and he just talks in incredible detail about how he survived and the things that happened and the cannibals that came on the island and the pirates that came on the island and how he managed those and how he dealt with those.

And some of this guy's perspectives just completely changed my life. And it was written, I believe in the 1700's is when this book was written. And at the time I heard that people actually thought the story was real. It was so convincing. And I'm pretty sure. You try to remember the. The name of the author, DeVoe, something DeVoe.

Anyways, I think he just took a bunch of stories from like a million different sailors. So, so in a way the story was quite true because shipwrecks were so common at the time. There, I think any sailor. that had been doing it for any long period of time, had experienced at least some sort of a shipwreck.

It was common enough for that to be the case. But long story short there is, those books will change you. They'll break you out of your way of thinking. They will put your mind into the place of that protagonist and you will understand. You will see things through their eyes. And one of the things that I love the most about it is they just do not See things the same as you do.

One of my favorite books that I've ever read is it's called Polybius named after the guy that wrote it and it's actually history. It's a history of Rome. So this guy was a Greek and he got captured or something and anyways, he, he ended up in Rome and, but he was influential somehow. I don't, I don't remember his, I can't remember a scenario exactly, but he was a historian and he decided to write, he was quite favorable towards Rome.

He actually admired them quite a bit and he decided to write a history of Rome and how they came to power. And that was like watching a movie that book was incredible and one of the funniest things to me Was just the way he viewed the world. This was pre Pre christianity. This is before christ and It was funny He'd, he'd talk about, and then, then they conquered this and then they raped and pillaged and blah, blah, blah.

And like rape and pillage was basically an expectation. I mean, if you got, if you want to battle, it was your right to go rape and pillage. He's complaining that young boys. were being sold at the cost of like, an acre or two of land, and he was annoyed because he thought the young aristocratic men that were buying these young boys were wasting their time.

Anyway, there was no, there was no moral concern over the fact that rampant pedophilia was, was Accepted amongst, amongst the Roman aristocratic elite at the time. It was just, why are you wasting your time with that? It was unbelievable. And, and just, you know, seeing, seeing the world from these different perspectives, I mean, that it's one of the best educations I think you can get.

It just breaks you out of the simple world that you live in. It breaks you out of this, this confined world of ideas that you see every day. That matrix we live in is just so curated to us and we have no clue how trapped we are in our views and understandings of the world. So I just want to conclude that to break out of the matrix, I've already mentioned books, I've mentioned going someplace, living someplace different, wildly different for a period of time.

But lastly, if you really want to break out of the matrix, you've got to You've got to start taking some options off of the table. If you're addicted to cocaine, it's going to keep you from having more options, as an example. You're going to be so hooked on that cocaine that you're, you're just not going to be able to do the other things in life that might actually bring you more satisfaction.

Likewise, if you're addicted to watching TV every night when you get home because you're just tired. You're not going to start doing something more productive or more interesting until you actually remove that TV time in the evening. And contrary to popular belief, self denial actually has the potential to open the world up to you.

And I think it's important to start discerning whether or not your hobby has become a distraction or if it's actually benefiting you. If you're just hooked on those video games, if you're just hooked on those, on binge watching the next stupid TV show that they come out with if you're, you're hooked on Anything you got to remove some things.

I just want to share another example. So I Have been making an effort to reduce my time watching Movies and TVs for the last I don't know probably four or five years. I was feeling like I was in a matrix I was feeling kind of trapped. It was like every day. I'd go to work. I get done. I'd come home At the time my ex wife would want to watch TV.

And so we'd watch TV and it's and then we'd always end up unsatisfied I Because of course, you know, the point in TV is to get you to watch the next episode. It's not actually to really entertain you. It's just to keep you in there long enough for them to sell you something or keep you hooked on the platform.

So for me, I just, I was feeling so manipulated by every TV show I ever watched. And so I just decided to, to cut it out. So I stopped watching TV. And you know what I found myself doing? I started reading the news every night and I, I'd read it for like an hour or two every single night, I'd just go from one site to the next site, to the next site, to read all the new articles for the day from this guy, from that guy.

It became. So I got rid of TV and then it became, then it became my phone. So I eventually I just cut out the news and then it became, I think I might've started doing Facebook for a minute. I didn't last long. I get tired of Facebook pretty quickly. So even though this is actually still an ongoing thing for me, I still am getting on my phone more than I'd like to be getting.

When I am successful at putting the phone down, I have always been surprised at the cool stuff I start doing. Stuff I never really imagined myself doing before. I started to pick up some more hobbies, some more interests. I started to write. Weird. I actually started writing because I had nothing else to do.

Because I, I removed it from my, from my options. And it made me start doing cool stuff. I started goofing off on a guitar. I'm still terrible, but I started doing that. I start, like I said before, I started doing the writing. I started you know, I start going, I do a little projects in the garage sometimes.

It's amazing how many options you have that actually make you happy. To some degree, when you cut out some of the easy ones, and a lot of the easy ones are your phone, your TV, your computer, your video games, those are just so easy. It's just an escape, and that escapism, that escape that you make every night is keeping you in that matrix, is keeping you in that other world.

Where your eyes are not fully open and when you can stop looking at that other world and your eyes actually do open You'll start to see that you actually have interests outside of these boring things in life That you actually have some capacity to do some cool stuff. So stop looking at self denial as this This torturous thing that you do to yourself because it will literally set you free decide which which things are worth refusing And get rid of them, at least for a little while and try out life.

Let yourself get bored. I tell my kids all the time. I say, you know, they say something like, Oh, I'm bored. And my parents used to say something like this too, but they'd be like. I'm like, Oh, good. Well, that means you're going to think of something really cool to do, but it's, it's actually true. If you let your kids stay bored, they start doing really cool things.

Unfortunately, a lot of times it means they make big messes too, but just take away options and you will increase your options a thousand fold. So think about where you're at. Think about where you want to be. Think about, or don't think at all and just remove some things and watch and see what does happen.