You Only Know that You Are, if You Do Not Know that You Do Not Know, if You Are or Are Not

The concept and abnormalities of reality aren’t a particularly new phenomenon.  Almost every form of popular media, ranging from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, to Darl’s statement (aka the title of this post) in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, to modern movies such as Inception have explored the conundrum of our current perception of reality may not actually be reality itself.  One of the ways in which this is expertly presented in The Wachowski Brother’s film, The Matrix.  In one of the defining scenes of the movie, Neo is presented with the choice to take either a blue pill or a red pill, one leaving him in the world that he knows and the other revealing the truth about exactly where he resides.

The question that is inherently imparted upon the viewer of this scene is that if you were given the choice, would you take the path towards the truth or would you be content with the world that you currently live in?  Some reason the ignorance is truly bliss, and would happily reside with their current known status.  Taking this risk aversion principal taught in almost every macroeconomics class, they reason that the known is better than the unknown, and the risk of a potential horrible reality outweighs the utopian that has a chance for existence outside of its walls.  There are still others who value knowledge as the most precious commodity of all, and would happily accept the walls outside The Matrix.  For them, the artificial simulation, no matter how accurate, can ever satisfy, and only through the truth, no matter how dark it is, can they gain any freedom. 

The question then parallels this one:  If you could obtain and understand all knowledge, all information, all events in our universe, would you?  Would you be willing to accept the bad, evil knowledge that would come along with the good?  Would you happily give up the joy of the pursuit of enlightenment to have all you ever wanted to know and so much more spread out on the table before you?  If I was facing the choice Neo had to make, I feel I would follow his decision and abandon the womb of The Matrix.  I don’t know if I could stand not knowing what lied beyond those digital walls, no matter how bad it was.  Plus, even if there was a future as bleak and grim as portrayed here, at least it would come with a cool black outfit and bullet time.