Would You Choose the Real World or The Matrix? (understand Cypher’s choice)

Watch this scene from The Matrix, where Cypher makes a deal with Agent Smith. Cypher will help Agent Smith to capture Morpheus, the most important man of the world’s last human city.

In exchange, Cypher wants himself out of the Real World and back into the Matrix. He wants to forget everything about his delve into the Real World and live a life of luxury in The Matrix.

Watching this scene made me think about my own life and how sometimes I desperately desire to escape reality and enter a fantasy world with no chance of coming out.

But feeling this way raises a psychedelic question! Why can’t I live in the real world and make the best of it?

Maybe because Cypher made me irrevocably feel this way. So if Cypher made me feel something, then on some psychological level I connected with him. So if he would happily betray his comrades to get the luxuries of life, would I do the same if given the choice?

Before waking up from The Matrix, Cypher was presumably living with the same disturbance as Neo. When Morpheus gave him the option to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, Cypher went for the red one. A part of him needed to escape The Matrix as he thought the real world might bring him psychological satisfaction. But later on in the movie, he confesses to Neo how he contemplates choosing the blue pill.

Cypher is frustrated with the struggles of living in the Real World, he’s been doing this for too long and just wants to end it somehow to bring up his living situation.

Even if he comfortably spends the rest of his life in the last remaining city, it won’t be able to provide him with the peace of mind he’s looking for. He wants something more and meaningful even if that’s not real and the only way he can get it is by making a deal with the devil himself.

The root cause of Cypher’s motivation to betray his friends is frustration with the real world. When he took the red pill, he was expecting the truth to be better than the lie, but it gave him nothing but disappointments one after the other and these disappointments lead him to make a morally wrong choice.

But once he goes back into The Matrix, he’s not going to remember any of it! The life he spent in the Real World, the journey with his comrades and the betrayal he’s decided to go for. Everything will be erased from his memory and it wouldn’t even matter to his conscious if he betrays his team or not. That is perhaps the biggest motivator behind his decision.

You wake up every morning, go to your job, come back and realize it’s not enough to build a dream that belongs to someone else. The next day you begin work on your own passion project, it goes well for a while and life seems pretty stable as if everything will work out just fine.

But then it crumbles!

You lose your job, your passion doesn’t work out and you look at yourself in the mirror as a big fat loser. If someone puts a scenario like this in front of me and gives me the same choice given to Cypher, would I still go for it? I honestly don’t know!

But what I do know is how I want your thoughts about the scenario I gave you and what would you do if given the same choice as Cypher?

Some people would argue how you shouldn’t be so morally ill to betray your own comrades and escape the hardships of life. They would put up a case how you should take a break when fail, get your thoughts together before getting back into the battlefield.

But I’m not currently addressing these people, I’m currently speaking to ones who have failed again and again so miserably, they’ve come to the point where all you need is a back door to exit from your worries and this exit is in the shape of the choice that is given to Cypher.

Would you take this backdoor or would you not? Whatever is your answer, think about it and leave a thought-provoking comment blow. Until then, follow me here on Medium to stay tuned for some storytelling goodness every now and then.

In the hopes of connecting with story lovers all over the world, this is Mr. Zeecon, in the making of a great story!