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Think about this.
Imagine that there’s a prison. It’s always been there... four stonewalls, as impenetrable as they look, bars on the windows and the doors. It isn’t locked, but all of the gray-wearing prisoners inside truly and absolutely believe it is, because it was that way when they were put inside it, and they’ve been told both directly and indirectly that it’s been the same ever since.
These prisoners live the same monotonous routine, day in and day out — that is their life. They wake, work, sleep... and a large few of them are dissatisfied... even if they don’t quite consciously realize it. They were raised inside this prison, and none of them have ever seen the sky. And some of them wonder, just sometimes, what it would be like to step outside and look at the stars. The pull of the cosmic, of something larger than or beyond themselves, is far beyond their awareness or comprehension. They’re sure they could learn to comprehend it, if they could only take a breath of clean air and be free.
Some of the prisoners, though, like being within these walls. They’re comfortable with the routine. They like knowing what will happen, they like knowing they have tangible goals, nothing more than they can handle. Knowing their immediate needs are covered, they want for nothing. And truly, deeply, want nothing else.
On the roof of this prison is a helipad. Isolated as the building is, this helipad is the only place for a thousand miles that can handle the landings and takeoffs of the single Med Evac plane that the local resources have. The building is the only one solid enough, large enough, stable enough. Thousands of lives have been saved by the proximity of this helipad. It’s used all the time. It’s the heart of the emergency response.
If someone were to look within this place, see the prisoners gazing longingly at the bars, and then simply blow the prison apart; destroy it, explode it into so much mortar and dust... well, sure. All of the prisoners inside would be free, that’s right — all of them, whether they like it or not. But what about the people who were safe inside the prison, the people whose lives were defined by it, within it, those for whom it was the only reliable shelter they would ever have?
And if you blow up the prison, the helipad is reduced, too, to so much rubble. Aren’t you condemning to death, by proxy, all the lives that might yet have been saved simply by the fact of its existence, by its function?
The point, there or here, was never ever to destroy the Matrix, to destroy the System. I wish, wish, wish, that people would see that and hear me say that so desperately, before they go forward and judge my words based on the PC films... even Morpheus was wrong... God forgive me for saying so again. “As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free...” No. Wrong. The Matrix, the Construct, the System, is not evil. Blowing up the prison isn’t the point. They’ll just find another one, as they must. And even within its walls and its bars, as within its pods and programs, the System sustains life for those who cannot live without it.
Opening the door, showing those who want to see the sky that they certainly can, if only they look this way, shed their fear... giving them the choice to make that decision, to define their reality, for themselves, and letting the System CHANGE AS IT MUST as more and more of them realize that the door’s not locked after all...
That’s the point.
That’s what I’m here for.
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