Is that most people in The West, or above a certain level of socioeconomic status, would hail Cypher as a hero if he succeeded in undermining The Resistance. He would be a symbol of “every freedom we stand for” like Seal Team Six or the dude from American Sniper.

That’s my argument of the day. Change my mind.

There is a bitter irony that we love rebels when they’re presented to us in film or literature or somewhere within the context of art or entertainment. We revel in the idea of men and women bucking authority. We live vicariously through their fortitude and self-sacrifice. Yet presented with it in our real lives, where the rebel presents any loud and resonating call for genuine change, we clutch our pearls and recoil. We search high and low for some alternative to change that would mean any sacrifice of material wealth or lifestyle for ourselves. Even something as simple as Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem makes many of the most “liberal” minds uneasy, as he is “betraying” our own sense of security. We will verbally support Black Lives Matter, but not really vocally, because many have just enough of that sense of fear that the apple cart will be upset. So how much do black lives really matter if we’re not willing to give all that much to make it more than words? That’s just a single example. Most of us don’t even spend a large part of our days thinking about it. There are too many other distractions, mostly focussed on maintaining our status quo comforts. We would rather talk about Game of Thrones, where once again we vicariously celebrate the victories of the rebel outcasts and those who go against power.

It is a bitter irony that so many of us individually celebrate the rebel or the resistance in our entertainment, but the heroes we celebrate as a people, as a group, as a nation, are those that kill in support of never changing a thing. Not changing a thing includes not undoing a system of endemic or institutional oppression, inequality and murder. So ultimately, this is how The Matrix fails. This is a life of our choosing. It’s a blue pill life. The Matrix isn’t an external, oppressive force. The Matrix is us.

We don’t have real freedom because we actively choose something else, or are willfully indifferent to the plight of those who are not like us.

We, as a whole, are dead set against ever waking up.