“The Matrix” Zoom-Out

We think we see the true reality, but everything we experience comes through the “VR headset” of our mind’s eye.

Virtual reality

After graduating from university and landing my first salaried job as a Software Engineer, my first contract was working in central England, inside a hi-tech warehouse with no windows. Now I was seasoned at writing code in my bedroom with the curtains closed and into the early hours of the morning. But I had not been expecting this. So began my immersion (pun intended) into the world of Virtual Reality (VR).

I was working for Virtuality, a VR games developer and manufacturer.

Jaron Lanier, an American computer scientist, artist, and musician, coined the term virtual reality in the 1980s. His company was one of the first to sell VR hardware and software.

The virtual reality experience centres around stereoscopic vision of a 3D computer generated world, usually via a headset (aka goggles). This provides a sense of being immersed in a virtual world. This sense of immersion is increased by movement tracking in the headset, so as the head is moved the virtual world viewpoint changes to match the new head position and direction of gaze. The effect is of having the real world replaced with a virtual one. Gloves and other peripherals add to the sense of immersion in, and sensing of, the virtual world.

The Matrix

Virtual reality was popularised in cyberpunk novels such as Neuromancer by William Gibson (1982) and the film The Lawnmower Man (1992). In 1999, at the close of the millennium, the film The Matrix hit the big screen.

In the movie (spoiler alert!), the virtual reality inhabited by humans since birth is so compelling that the human inhabitants do not even realise it is virtual. To them, it is just reality. The one and only reality.

Reading Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism Is True, I discovered his link to the movie as an Evolutionary Psychologist (Keanu Reeves being given one of his books to read by the movie’s directors/producers) and that some Buddhists referred to the movie as the “Dharma movie”.

Why? Because as many others have pointed out, The Matrix is a powerful metaphor for the subjective reality we inhabit. We think we see the true reality, but in fact everything we experience is through the “VR headset” of our mind’s eye.

Taking the red pill

Just like Neo, we can “wake up” to the presence of our own Matrix by taking the “red pill”. We can then enhance our skills in navigating the Matrix and bypassing some of its constraints. This takes patience, persistence and practice. Zoom-Out is here to assist and to provide signposts for navigating our own subjective realities.

So it appears that VR has been with us all along. We are all creating our virtual reality every single moment.

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

Morpheus, “The Matrix” movie

For more on how we see the world through a default view, see Default Reality Browser.