Despite the fantasy ideas put forth in the film, there is a “real” Matrix that we all live in. Though this might not exactly be a robot controlled virtual world, it is no less real. It colours your world, it limits what you can and cannot do, it alters how you think and defines how you behave.

This Matrix is the collective model of the world that we all share. All those decisions that you “think” we make will be biased by the social model in which we live in. The large majority of it is is known and understood, there are easily identifiable reasons for the rules it defines. Why do we queue at the till to pay for groceries, when we could just walk out with them. For the majority the rule is clear… it’s stealing. Underlying this rule is the notion that we would not like it if a stranger just walked into our homes and took whatever they wanted. The stuff that we have worked hard to acquire. This is a morally backed rule… do as you would be done by. A rule that has its roots in our evolutionary past as a social species. For others, who lack this inner morality, there is another rule that society overlays. If you steal, you will be punished.

For some in society, the internal moral  rule is weak, possibly from a harsh upbringing. Where those they grew up with as a child, also had no inner morality and stole anyway. Or, perhaps stealing was a necessary survival tactic for those who had to steal in order to eat.

The “natural” inner morality, is not something that is necessarily understood. It’s just a feeling. Other species show similar internal morality. They don’t understand the logic of “for the good of the whole” behaviour, they just have a sense of “wrong doing”, guilt.

Any social species had to develop such feelings in order to survive. Unable to survive as individuals, the social species learned such altruistic and social “rules” as part of the evolutionary process.

Man has seen fit to superimpose social “laws” over these innate feelings and removed the requirement for empathy.

This is what the Matrix is… at a fundamental level. Since then it has continued to add many, many more “laws”, some of which have no basis in this underlying empathic system, yet are enforced with the same fervour.