The Matrix, Revisited

The Matrix bent yesterday. I saw it. I saw how real it is. And how fake.

I know I live in the Matrix, and I admit I like it. I like watching sports. I revel in hanging my kids upside down and tickling their bellies. I spend too much time arguing current events with two old friends. And too often I convince myself that I’m too tired to do anything but watch documentary footage of the Making of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

But I do try, most of the time, to at least put these things in their proper places.

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Yesterday, the world gushed about the impending nuptials of future King William and his fiance Kate. Good for them. I love love. But then the Matrix bent. NBC anchor Brian Williams said his mother had  a Prince Charles / Princess Di commemorative coffee mug. “I think that describes a lot of households in this country,” he said, as if trying to justify why his network and others rushed to spend as much time as possible covering the engagement. If he’s right, then that’s sad.

Priorities. Our priorities are out of whack. The Royal Family is just the easiest bone to pick. The second easiest is politics. And politics is a subject less benign than watching “news” shows about the royals.

Look at the 2010 midterm elections. California republican Meg Whitman spent $160 million on her losing campaign. Do you know what $160 million could do in the world? Outside donations to politicians totaled more than $450 million dollars. All told the 2010 elections cost $3.7 billion dollars. That’s 3,700,000,000 dollars . . . for a midterm election . . . to elect people with agendas who will take money from huge lobbies that don’t have our interests in mind.

Meanwhile, there are more than a billion people on Earth who don’t have access to clean water. I’m not talking free health care or democracy or roads or digital television or Lady Gaga concerts. I’m talking . . . water.

The Matrix bends. But it won’t break.

Now, there are solutions to extreme poverty and other despicable realities we let fester outside the lights of TV cameras. The governments of the world could form a more unified confederation of nations that agrees on goals–such as giving everyone on Earth access to clean water–and then implements the means to turn those goals into realities. I believe this will eventually happen; this rabble of competing nation-states can’t  be the best we can do. But how will it happen? Therein lies the rub, doesn’t it.

I like to think the solution is as simple as it is elegant. Unfortunately, we’ve had the solution for a long time and have been implementing it only piecemeal. And most of us ignore it.

When a young man asked our hero, Jesus, how he could serve the Lord, Jesus said he should follow the commandments. The young man said that he already lived the right life. And then Jesus said, and I paraphrase, “Okay then. Sell all your possessions, pick up my cross, and follow me.”

The man did not sell his possessions. He did not pick up the cross. And he did not follow Christ. Why not? Because it’s hard.

I don’t mean to suggest that we should wear robes and sandals, sell everything else, and live lives of monasticism and extreme charity. What I mean is that we have not translated Christ’s message into the 20th century context. Our neighbors still live across the street. But they also live across the globe. To pick up the cross now means to be anxiously concerned for  a cause greater than ourselves.

But. Alas. We instead follow the Matrix. I’m guilty of it. I try to overcome it as best I can. I bet you do, too. A lot of us do. But I fear that most of us don’t.

The Matrix bends. But it won’t break because egotism and self-importance die hard.

Although we’ve made great progress over the course of history, what Gandhi said still rings true to me: until the hearts of men change, nothing will change.

And this is why I have to remind myself that while I’m hanging my kids upside down and tickling their bellies, my ultimate purpose is not to help them become happy consumers. It’s to help them pierce the Matrix, to pierce the veils of illusion that society casts down on us. And if my kids aren’t destined to be Neo, then at least they can pick up his cell phone and follow him.

Because there is no spoon.