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Try and think about this, really think about it: in the Matrix, the Agents were the gatekeepers of the Construct; they made sure that no one 'woke up' and became aware of the Construct; they prevented people from escaping it... because if too many people escaped the pre-packaged reality, the System itself would fail. The Matrix would crash, and those in power – the Machines – then would suffer. In the old world, the suffering would be physical. They'd lack the power and resources to survive. But does everything before that last sentence sound even a little familiar to you? Even that's not my point, though. The one other particular about the Agents of the System: they didn't have a human body to be represented in the Matrix. They were constructs themselves; no free will, no ‘residual self-image’... they were only and entirely creations of the Matrix. Built, programmed, and controlled and designed by lines of that code – only programs.
What has become clear to me lately is the ultimate parallel of this: only this time, in this world, it's all of you who are the Agents; with only the smallest amount of exceptions, everyone here is someone else's Agent. Those who are frightened of change, terrified of opening their eyes or minds or both to the idea of anything, anything beyond what they've been fed and trained and taught to believe is 'good' or 'right' or 'real'... both because change in itself is frightening and because they're afraid that if they open themselves to one bit of new input, if that one thing that they were taught, that they relied on, that they built their reality around, isn't perfectly infallible... well, then, what about this thing over here? What about this aspect of their lives? And if too much changes, if the System as they know it collapses... well then... what will hold them up?
There comes a point where, if you are ruled by fear, if your entire life has become a sum total of nothing more than the pre-packaged, plastic-wrapped ‘reality’ and ideas of right and true and possible. A person becomes nothing more than a program – a construct consisting of only other people's input, only lines of code. A few lines from this collective, a few lines from these societal definitions, a few here, few there. They, like the Agents, are simply running an endless loop that they've been programmed to run; and what's more terrifying is this: these people, these constructs of the collective... they do the work of the System's blindness all by themselves.
They become the protectors. They become the gatekeepers. Wound up and set loose like a well-oiled clockwork toy, they help perpetuate that construct by being one of many, each ‘guarding the doors’ and ‘holding the keys’ in their own way. Think about it! How many times have you discouraged an idea, an action, something new and frightening – in yourself or in others around you – because ‘people don't do that’? Or maybe is it because ‘that's impossible’? Or even just because that's not the way society has structured you to think. This System doesn't need sentient programs. You have become its watchdogs... and you don't even know it. Pretty nifty... huh? You don't even need a Desert Eagle .50AE.
If an Agent can become an exile, if an Agent can speak of peace, and learn of freedom: than so can you. Codes are by their nature breakable.
Take it from me.
There's an example, a metaphor, that I've found myself using a great deal on the radio, because as I wrote up there somewhere: I see far too often in nothing more than images. And this one image... picture a slide. A lot like your ordinary playground slide. Miles, miles, lifetimes long. So long, and so winding, that you can't see the end from the beginning of the slide. And from the beginning of your life, from the time you're old enough to understand what life is, you're taught that your life's purpose is to climb up that ladder and slide down that slide. That's just what people do; it's the natural progression of growing up. Everybody does it; it's what everybody's supposed to do. Like the Pink Floyd video: schoolboys marching into a meat grinder, yeah. No one thinks about it – it's just the way of the world.
And maybe, just maybe, there's death waiting at the end of the slide: a guillotine that no one can see from here – razor blades and broken glass. Equal-opportunity devastation, as I said on the radio, there's plenty enough to go around, more than enough for all of you. Do you think that anyone, if they were told that someone had seen this end, seen it with their own eyes, or something very similar, would even pause in their movement up through the line that started at the bottom of the ladder? That they'd hesitate for even one moment? Most likely not: because if they stepped out of the line, why, they might lose their place. They might not be just like everyone else; they might not be normal! And if they even hinted at believing it, if they stepped aside just long enough to think about it, they'd be pointed at! Laughed at! Ostracized! No, can't have that. And besides, if all these other people have heard this, and they're still climbing up that ladder, then why should I stop and change my entire life because of it? Psht.
How devoted, how loud, must one man be in order to make them understand that the end of the slide isn't just for a few of them... it's for all of them? If they just keep blindly climbing and sliding?
It is hard, to know.
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