Why Are We Here, Neo?

by Tom Shafer

September 6, 2021

Okay, so I am a sucker for memorable quotations, from the sarcastic and humorous to the thoughtful and perceptive, and I find myself collecting them like souvenirs as I wander through this life.  Fortunately for the people who know me, I don’t spew them unwarrantedly in my daily conversation – mainly because I inadvertently killed off the mechanism that once allowed me to easily memorize and retrieve almost anything I read.  Of course, that is a story for another day, but suffice it to say, indulgences of my youth have caught up to me in my oldth (another new word, and I like it!). 

And, those of you who follow me already know that I particularly love sage maxims (based solely on many old posts: Your Field of Dreams, The Scariest Thing in the World, What the X-Files Can Teach Us about Life, This Teacher’s Fav Books – To Teach!).  Though I could blame this affliction on my pedagogical training, that easy out cannot explain a notebook I kept for many years, one that was filled with my doodles, stray thoughts and writings, and, you guessed it, quotes that I had gathered from numerous books and movies. 

So here I am, once again, pitching a pithy passage (love the alliteration!) at you, this one from the Matrix movie franchise.  Of course, this collection of films explores the metaphorical good versus evil motif – with a philosophical twist.  Neo (Keanu Reeves) is a computer genius who knows that something is wrong with the world but can’t put a finger on it.  He is recruited by Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne), who shows him the truth he senses: that aliens are harvesting (for their energy) human beings who are completely oblivious, cocooned in liquid-filled “wombs,” living computer-simulated lives.  Morpheus is the prophetic leader of the Resistance, people who are free from the Matrix, and he believes that Neo is “the One,” a singular being who can free humans from their true existence and simultaneous computer simulation.  Though Morpheus gives him an opportunity to return to his easier “life” in the Matrix, Neo chooses to join the Resistance in their quest for freedom – and to discover if he truly is “the One.”

In the second film, The Matrix Reloaded, Neo visits the Oracle, a computer program designed to aid the Resistance, one that purportedly possesses knowledge of future events.  Neo, who now believes that he may be “the One,” instinctively knows that he faces a challenging and difficult decision and dilemma, and what follows is just a segment of a very deep, philosophical discussion:

For the whole of our conscious existence, we human beings have been seeking the answer to one central question, why are we here?  Yes, we have other important queries: is there a god?, what happens after death?, are we alone in the universe?, what is our purpose?  But, “why are we here?” is the most pragmatic one because it is the least theoretical – at least for my purposes.

And the Oracle’s response is the most pragmatic ever.  It is not coiled up with religion – or politics – or history – or even philosophy.

“We’re all here to do what we’re all here to do. I’m interested in one thing, Neo, the future. And believe me, I know – the only way to get there is together.”

This is the essence of human life, of our existence, of our reality – for the knowable now and the unknowable future.  What’s even better is that this statement of purpose demands no further explanation.  It stands on its own.

And I believe it to the depths of my soul.

Many times during my life, I have admitted – both aloud and to myself – that I despise the time period I’m living in, that we as a species are not evolving as we should be, that we might even be experiencing devolution (see my entry, I’m a Universist — and You Should Too!).  But when I find that I have fallen too far down that rabbit hole, I always hearken back to the words of wizard Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of The Ring.  Frodo, a hobbit from the Shire, has willingly accepted the task of returning the evil Ring of Sauron to its origin, Mount Doom, and is lamenting the difficulty of the mission:

Again, such practicality.  Of course I am disappointed with human beings en masse, and though not a fatalist at all, perhaps I am here now to do my little part “with the time that is given us,” to continue my attempts at pointing out our frailties and faults, to encourage us to do better and be better, to strive toward an evolution worthy of our ancestors who had to endure so much more than we have.

Because it IS about the future, all of it.  It has always been that way and always will be.  It is sometimes hard for us to remember this when we get bogged down by the trivial intricacies of today’s world, especially when those “intricacies” seem so trite, even silly, when compared to the magnitude of our future.

Because at the end of the day, I don’t really want to live in the Matrix.  Do you?

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