Morpheus: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. … Do you know what I’m talking about?

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

—–

A few years back, Mike Wasdin wailed on Strike-the-Root that he’d had it. He was going to take the blue pill, enjoy his GMO factory-farmed steak, and forget this whole freedom business.

As I recall, that didn’t last too long, and Wasdin is still around. But I’ve never forgotten his cry of futility.

I grok the temptations of the blue pill. Don’t we all?

I like to think that if you take the blue pill you still have some future chance to take the red. But once you’ve swallowed the red one, that’s it. Done. Your reality is forever … well, real. You can’t go back.

—–

Cypher: I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn’t I take the BLUE pill?

—–

Wasdin was frustrated because he perceived other people weren’t receptive to freedom.

That doesn’t bother me much any more. Once in a while. Not often. Anyhow, I think that’s turning around, big time.

I still feel the blue pill’s pull. Not because of other people but because of me.

Because of the pain of seeing some horror “my” government has inflicted and feeling both a desperate desire to do something about it and guilt that it was perpetrated in my name even though I oppose it with all my heart.

Because of the angry shock of being smacked with the details of some injustice I already knew about and thought I was inured to. (I wrote an article for S.W.A.T. last year about the very sting whose grossness that link covers, but their version of the story roused me to disgust, sorrow, and embarrassment for “my” country all over again.)

I wonder what it would be like not to know. Or to know but think, “Well, that sounds terrible. But I don’t have to worry about it because the people in charge surely know what they’re doing. They’ll take care of it.”

—–

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

—–

You can’t unswallow the red pill. You can’t ever take the blue one now. So you adapt. And amidst the chaos and grief you find places of exhilaration, satisfaction, pride, friendship, and joy.

We’ve talked about it before; we’ll talk about it again. It’s so much a part of what living freedom is about.

And still, through everything — wouldn’t you rather look into the abyss and know you were looking at reality than look at a world full of baby dolls, teddy bears, and benevolent rulers and suspect, down deep, that you were deliberately embracing an illusion?

An illusion that’s about as honest and as useful as makeup applied to a rotting corpse?

—–

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?

Morpheus: You’ve never used them before.

—–

(I think it’s time to watch The Matrix again.)

—–

Neo: I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.