Hi all :) , I guess a lot of you have at one time or another seen the movie called ‘The Matrix’. Released in 1999 it stirred quite a bit of thinking both in myself and others. I was only 14 at the time I saw the movie for the first time, so I was still pretty young and was more into the action and special effects than in the actual storyline and concept. It was only a few years later when I bought the dvd version of the movie that I really started thinking about the ideas of the Matrix. In the end it had a pretty significant influence on the way I looked at the universe (see my ‘Game of Life’ post).

For those of you unfamiliar with…

…the Matrix story line, let me give you a brief summary. Somewhere in the future humans have developed an Artificial Intelligence so smart and developed that it wants to rid itself of its enslavement. The AI machines start a rebellion and in the end defeat the humans. One of the last measures taken by the humans was to scorch the sky in order to seperate the machines from their most important energy source: the sun. In order to keep their energy supply level, the machines resort to ‘growing’ humans and cultivate their body energy. To keep the human bodies under control, they designed a control system called ‘The Matrix’ that creates a virtual environment for the human mind to ‘live in’, unaware of its real existence as a human battery, its mind controlled by the electrical impulses provided by ‘The Matrix’.

Now… you can pose some interesting questions about all this… Could this be real? Is there any way that we can be certain that what we are seeing, sensing, tasting, hearing is actually real? Let’s assume that everything we see is real. Could we still be under a system of control? Could the rules of science be this system of control? Could there be a limited set of rules that determine this system and thus are lives? As you all know, quantum mechanics says that some things are not certain, so claiming that with a fixed set of rules the whole future of the world would be determined is not likely. But still… if science determines the system, can there be such a thing as choice? How about conscience? love?

The Matrix lead me to think of the world as a system/game (cfr. the ‘Matrix’ and ‘the interdependent web of all existence’), that was started by some deity/thing (cfr. the ‘Machines’), governed by a limited set of rules, which we call science (cfr. the algorithms for the ‘Matrix’). Where my views differ from the movie is that I don’t consider this deity/thing to be an ‘evil’ concept and maybe not even a ‘conscious’ concept, it’s just… something… I also consider the ’system’ to be real, not virtual like in The Matrix.

Now… I’ve been fine with all of this for quite some time… It gave me a purpose in life (to unravel these rules as an astronomer for the sake of curiosity that is part of all of us and humanity in general) and it didn’t conflict with my beliefs as a (to be) scientist. Now… what has been disturbing me though, is that I don’t know how or where I can fit my own concience in all this. If science determines our existence, aren’t we just literally stardust and nothing more? Is conscience and humanity just a coincidence? It could very well be, since if the coincidence wouldn’t have happened, we wouldn’t have been here to ask the question and this would therefore not rule out the possibility of coincidence. But what about compassion? love? Are these concepts just a matter of hormones? If it is something more, how can I fit this in with this ’system’ and my scientific nature?

“Questions, questions that need answering.” - Gandalf the Grey

Anybody who wants to share any thoughts they had concerning The Matrix or the way humanity, conscience and love are intertwined in our existence? My views on all of this are still in motion and it doesn’t look like the current will die down any time soon, so I’m open for new thoughts :) .