"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes

to blind you from the truth," Morpheus says of the Matrix during one of the most iconic scenes in science fiction.

(Click here for the scene. The relevant part is from 2:17 onward.)

Why this particular scene might have stayed so firmly wedged in society's collective consciousness is this: it offers the character a choice to climb out of an entire life of illusion. While the Matrix does not directly acknowledge its own status as a story, Neo recognizes on a certain level his personal role as a character controlled by an outside force -- but only once he opens himself up to that awareness.

“What truth?” Neo asks.

“That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you can not smell or taste or touch. A prison… for your mind. Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

The fact that the Matrix presents itself as reality and doesn't draw attention to its medium makes these particular lines more profound for the viewer. For if reality is a prison, that means that the viewer is enslaved inside it as well — but unlike Neo, for us there is no simple choice between truth and lies that we can use to escape.

Besides this class, I am enrolled in courses in Sociology, Anthropology, and Economics. I spend pretty much all of my classes learning about the rules of human behaviour, the laws of interaction. I measure how people respond to certain incentives. I think about what roles both biology and culture have given us.

In a very weird way I identify with both Sam and Dean from Supernatural and Neo from the Matrix. As a human, when I study humanity I am reading about myself and the webs of my own reality. I am a character in the text I am reading, and I am controlled by outside forces that can still manipulate me even as I try to recognize them.

What is most frustrating to me is that as much as I study humanity, I am seeing the issue from the inside. Whatever the limits of human perception that I am reading about are, I have those too. So as much as studying humans and adding levels of awareness can make me feel like I am the author, I am also still only a character with no clue how the story ends.

Neo gets an incredible chance. By taking the red pill, he can supposedly free himself from the “prison for [his] mind” and escape the limitations of ‘reality’. After all, supposedly the only way to understand is to see from outside, to get a perspective that sees everything. If we could view life from outside of our own limitations of perception, just how different would it be?

And how dizzying would the power be that that would give us?

I am confined, of course, to the limits of my mind. My perception can only offer some degree of truth and some degree of lies. For us, there is no red pill and blue pill. It would be a little preposterous if there were, because even if the truth could be that clearly defined, would we even be able to perceive it?

As humans, though, as characters that can study in college their own medium of life, we still search for a greater awareness all of our lives. We search even without a confirmation that we are getting anything for it but deeper levels of deception.

“Remember,” says Morpheus, “all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”