Monday, October 3, 2011

Blog #3: The Matrix: Utopia, Dystopia, and Realities

An ideology is a set of ideas fixed on one persons beliefs, and expectations. Throughout history there has been various ideologies floating around from the American Dream to Slavery to the world being flat. However all these ideologies has become a painful yet accepted in the world of reality. The Matrix, a Dystrophy; the world where everything goes wrong is the illusion we step in after leaving the world we believe in. While In Plato’s excerpt The Allegory of the Cave, Plato explains that once stepping outside of the cave, the real world is more of a perfect world. Better than the cave they believed in. The Matrix is more of an accurate process we go through day to day as we step out of these ideologies we believe in.

Going back to historical events, race is among of many ideologies one has believed in. During the time of Segregation, Americans all over the world believed that Race should and could distinguish what jobs we get, what water fountain we drink out of, what bathrooms we use, etc. We allowed race to be a subject of tolerance rather than a subject of change. Throughout history, African Americans thought it was okay; have struggled and fought to be treated equal, along with rights. Race, has become something lawfully equal and tolerated but not equally man to man, women to women, race to race. Just as in The Matrix, Neo stepped out of his real world to step into the illusion of still the Dystopia he was living in. As in Race, even though in history African-Americans fought to have the same rights as Whites, the equal rights weren’t enough. Even stepping out of the glorification of getting equal rights, today in 2011, there are still race issues. From getting jobs or to even go from one country to another, there is still some type of hassle being thrown at a different race because of the color of their skin.

As Americans, we believed in change, we believed that there was something more than what we went through and could barely see and understand why it has happened. Some American had a fixed belief on racial issues/segregation but that was all apart of the reality we lived in. To step out of what we thought we could change, into the still messed up and wrong world is even more painful to grasp onto to. Throughout the years, we have learned to accept the painful reality of race. Throughout we improved the actual consequences of being a different color skin other than white. The violence and discrimination has been either wiped out or covered up involving the “race card” But even so, we still have to accept the fact that the race issue isn’t invisible or nearly gone. Just as in the Matrix, when Neo was exposed to this “new world” thinking it was going to be the opposite of what he believed in, he still ended up in a Dystopian world a post-nuclear apocalyptic , where humans were slaves which he learned to painfully accept.

1 comment:

  1. Erica, the race example is a well developed one and one that really lends support to your argument, but you probably want more than a single example as support. Perhaps another text/movie or another historical experience or even a personal one in another paragraph would help. It is, nonetheless, a good entry

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