Continuing from here: Living in the Matrix
I’m going to start off with the last paragraph from Living in the Matrix:
Once you untie your identity from your thoughts and desires and admit that most of them aren’t yours, you can start to fight the battle for your mind. On one side, there is you, and on the other side, there is everyone and everything else — the system, society, your family, the salesman who just knocked on your door, etc. The prize is your time, energy, and attention, and the goal is to redirect as much time, energy, and attention as possible towards actions that are good for you and the people you care about (what you actually want) and away from benefitting “the system”. In essence, you’re a battery, and you’re trying to unplug yourself from the Matrix. This realization and the ensuing battle is the red pill that is Morpheus is holding in the movie.
Being a battery in the Matrix is a metaphor for spending your resources on things that benefit the system. Taking the red pill is a metaphor for finding a way to stop this.
The thing about being a battery in the Matrix is that as a battery, you think your thoughts are your own thoughts and your desires are your own desires. When you act, you do so feeling as though you have complete agency. You aren’t aware that your resources are being drained because you are giving them away willingly.
The mechanism for creating Matrix batteries is simple. First, you feed people a diet of carefully crafted messages through a variety of mediums (TV, movies, magazines, books, radio, billboards, etc) as they grow up. They say you are what you eat, and the same is true when it comes thought and media consumption: you think what you see. People who grow up on this diet will naturally develop a certain worldview. This worldview gives the person an identity that they will seek to broadcast and reinforce. In exchange for reinforcing their identity, the system receives this person’s time and energy in return. For a great example of this, read Hipsters on Food Stamps, Part 3.
I know this sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory. There is no mastermind behind the scenes that planned this all out. This whole process developed organically and is too complex for any one person to fully comprehend. If anything, this process is a great case study on psychology, not evidence of a deep state.
Taking the Red Pill, or Escaping the Matrix
The third thing to understand is that all of this is going on inside of your mind. You cannot physically break out of the Matrix with a hammer or with a pill. The Matrix is your perspective, your worldview, and all of this red pill blue pill stuff plays out in your mind. The Matrix is your map of the world, the red pill is the choice to update the map in the presence of new, conflicting information, and the blue pill is the choice not to (or put it off until later). You can only take so many red pills because you only have so much energy to update your map in a day.
The first thing you need to do is accept that you are in the Matrix. Once you realize that your thoughts are not your thoughts and your desires are not your desires, you can take the first steps on your journey.
Tending to the Garden, or Increasing Information Quality
Most of your worldview (your map) was built from information from dubious sources (TV, movies, magazines, social media, etc). Determining what is dubious and what isn’t requires judgment on your part. Generally, the older the source, the less dubious it is. By that metric, Anna Karenina is less dubious that Becoming by Michelle Obama. Look at intention: why did the author or artist create the work? Were they trying to make money (e.g. ads), promote something (e.g. NY Times Bestselling books), or push an agenda (e.g. news, magazines)? Lastly, look at who the source is targeting. Generally, as The Last Psychiatrist says, if you’re seeing it, it’s for you. If you are the target demographic for a source, it’s more dubious. Lastly, the more edited, scripted, or processed the source is, the more dubious it is.
Let’s come from the other direction and identify sources that are solid building blocks for your worldview. The best source is first-hand experience. For second-hand experience, look for sources that are as close to raw as possible. Think LiveLeak instead of news or books instead of book reviews. And, of course, the older the source is, the better, simply because time is the ultimate filter on quality.
Purge this information as you come across it or tag it for removal at a later date. Start replacing the sources that you consume information from with sources of higher quality. You can swap out sources with less dubious sources until you can’t find a less dubious source. For some sources, you can get might be able to get rid of them altogether.
Identity
A lifetime of consuming TV, movies, ads, magazines presents you with a collection of identities to try on. Once you pick out an identity, you will work to reinforce it in the minds of others. For example, if you identify as the funny guy, you’ll try and make people laugh in order to validate your identity as the funny guy. If your friend thinks someone else is the funny guy in your group that’ll upset you because it’s a threat to your identity. Your reaction will be to restore your identity as the funny guy somehow, whether that’s by making your friend laugh harder than that other guy made him laugh, or by sulking and getting him to assure you that you’re the funny guy, or anything else that will validate your identity as the funny guy.
This is an ass-backwards approach to identity. If you’re wondering what the term for this is, it’s narcissism. You don’t start with a full-fledged identity and work to enforce its validity in the mind of others — you start with your actions, reactions, and interactions and slowly build up your identity as you tease out the patterns in the data. The ass-backwards approach is the “I am” approach to identity. It starts with who you are, and ends with you dedicating all your time and energy to maintaining this image of who you are. If you can get someone to adopt a full-fledged identity, you can also get them to direct their time and energy in the service of your enterprise as long as them doing so reinforces their identity. People write articles for the New York Times for free because it validates their identity as a reputable writer. Women will work long hours in executive positions to validate their identity as a powerful female business leader. So on an so forth.
Decision Making
Both increasing information quality and building identity lead up to decision making. Decisions are the greatest leverage points in determining where you go in life. If you’re trying to unplug from the Matrix, you need to focus on making decisions that all work in that direction.
We can break down your time into two categories — time spent doing, and time spent making decisions. Time spent doing is simply time spent on carrying out a certain task. Time spent making decision includes time spent gathering information, processing information, asking for advice, and weighing pros and cons. The time you spend making decisions directs what you end up doing, but not really the other way around.
There are some periods of time when you have a bout of clarity and focus, when your judgement is at its peak. These are the times when you should be making decisions. The more important the decision (i.e. the greater the long term effects of the decision) the more important it is to make the decision in a clear state of mind.
On the flip side, most of the time your judgement is impaired in some way. You might be horny or tired or hungry or pissed off about something. During these times you need to follow the instructions set forth by yourself who was in a clearer state of mind. The best instructions are simple, straightforward, feasible, and require as little thinking as possible to follow. Do not make important decisions when your judgement is impaired, but if you must, default to the most conservative option or give yourself more time to make the decision.
In summary, make decisions when your head is clear and follow instructions when your head is not. Understand that there are limits to your judgement and recognize when it is impaired. Increasing your decision quality is the best way to prevent your resources from being drained off.
