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Truth or Happiness?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Most of us have seen the movie 'Matrix', which has given rise to a debate which I believe is a thought-provoking philosophical topic. In the movie, Neo, the main character, meets Morpheus via the internet and is given a choice between two pills--the blue and the red. He is, prior to this offer, informed that he apparently lives in a computer world, where everything is programmed and its inhabitants lives in ignorance to the truth of the real world (blissful?). This real world is taken over by robots which harvest energy from humans, making us their 'batteries'. It's a grim world in other words, no place to want to live in.
The choice Neo has to make is basically between the truth and the world he lives in. As the movie is a movie, he obviously chooses the red pill, meaning he will leave the computer program. However, would your really choose the red pill? Does the search for the truth outweigh a happy life? People who sympathise with Neo and debate for the red pill use truth being the only thing that matters as a starting point.
The conflict of happiness, whether personal well-being is worth more than the truth. Can one acknowledge the possibility and ignore finding out the truth willingly making life merely a shadow of what it could have been? You might also debate that everyone will eventually die anyway, and by fighting for the truth is far better than enjoying life as you are contributing to the struggle and conflict--after all, every single individual is slowly breathing towards their doom.
Personally, I still find myself dubious, but I would say that a happy life is more important than struggling for the truth, assuring yourself a dead-certain quick death. There's so much more to life than the truth, and I'd choose the computer program over the chaotic dystopia that is the real world.
The choice Neo has to make is basically between the truth and the world he lives in. As the movie is a movie, he obviously chooses the red pill, meaning he will leave the computer program. However, would your really choose the red pill? Does the search for the truth outweigh a happy life? People who sympathise with Neo and debate for the red pill use truth being the only thing that matters as a starting point.
The conflict of happiness, whether personal well-being is worth more than the truth. Can one acknowledge the possibility and ignore finding out the truth willingly making life merely a shadow of what it could have been? You might also debate that everyone will eventually die anyway, and by fighting for the truth is far better than enjoying life as you are contributing to the struggle and conflict--after all, every single individual is slowly breathing towards their doom.
Personally, I still find myself dubious, but I would say that a happy life is more important than struggling for the truth, assuring yourself a dead-certain quick death. There's so much more to life than the truth, and I'd choose the computer program over the chaotic dystopia that is the real world.
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Truth about the insight of the entire world outside and that the world one lives in is not the real world but is in fact a computer program which is run by malevolent machines...
Lol and that's the truth?
that specific truth yes. You don't need to over-analyse what i write. I find it clear that what i'm referring to is the truth of the hypothetical real world in the movie 'Matrix' and not the general truth i believe you've hung yourself up on, regardless of whether i specifically mention it.
Don`t mention the B(elief) S(ystem) that is nation states/countries. There are many who really can`t handle that truth.
Blue pills all round.
.. and the DvD releases
Hmm, blue pill or red pill? I choose the White pill!
WHo knows, machines might be doing that to us as we speak (or should i say, post (or should i say: or should i write etc etc))
As long as the things around me are real to me, i'd be able to neglect the truth. It depends though, if it wasn't futile to take the red pill.
It was first mentioned in Dostoevsky's book The Brothers Karamazov where, in an alegorical tale, generally referred to as The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, the protagonist, the Grand Inquisitor, asks Christ whether he thinks truth or happiness is better for mankind. The Inquisitor thinks that truth is an unnecessary burden and people will gladly trade it in, in favour of happiness.
This theme was really explored in the three great future/social parodies of the 20th century; Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984 and Evgenii Zamyatin's We. As I've been boning up on We all afternoon in the library today, I'm fresh with ideas about it.
Zamyatin, or rather the protagonist, D-503 states that:
All truths are mistaken; the dialectical process means precisely that today's truths are tomorrow's errors; there is no final number.
So by that rationale, there is no truth, or rather, the very nature of truth is flawed from the outset. I'm going to assume that truth is pretty much synonymous with freedom as in all three books and the film, they are. As we see with the proles in 1984, the savage reservation in Brave New World and the MEPHI in We, the lower down the social scale we go, the freer people tend to be. In a weird way, which I'm about to contradict, one could almost say that the people at the bottom, the people who are freer, seem, in part at least, to be happier. Winston Smith, in 1984 asserts that "if there is any hope, it lies with the proles." Does he mean because they are happier or because they are freer? I personally think the latter althought I'm not sure if he's right in saying that, and what with Orwell being a bit of a socialist at heart, all socialist change must be instigated from the bottom.
In all three books, happiness, and indeed the Matrix, happiness (in a mechanical and rationalised way) is associated with the people in power whilst freedom leads to being ostracised, punished and tortured.
An even better question would be, is there happiness if there is truth, ie. can you have the two co-existing or does the existence of one negate that of the other?
now what should i have for dinner..........
Who exactly are you asking, eh?
how do i know that my subconscience is making other people up for the crack? or are we all just facets of one person? hmmm?
Are you sure you mean your subconscience ?
You don't. You can never absolutely proove that your life isn't a dream or that the world isn't a construct of an 'evil genius' and we're just brains wired up to a jar. In the end all you can do is accept that the world is real and act like it is, otherwise you'd go mad.
Plato's Cave iirc
and then the question of what the truth is comes into question... and it's a tricky question, which i'm sure i would never be able to answer. the only thing we could do is to use what is around us and accept that the truth can never be fully founded as there will always be pieces missing out and 'what ifs', including unexplicable and intangible questions which mankind naturally tries to answer, e.g. with religion.
No.
Plato's cave was to do with the idea that everything on this earth, every object and concept is but a poor reflection of some divine ideal.
The idea is that people are in a cave, and the fire creates shadows of the people on the wall. These shadows, said old Plato, are representative of everything in the world. Just as these shadows are poor reflections of the people who created them, everything on this earth is but a poor reflection of some ideal.
For example, the chair I am sitting in at the moment is a poor human attempt to create the ultimate, divine, and perfect chair. From this idea that everything is a poorer version of an ideal comes the idea of aesthetics; searching for and trying to create beauty, so that which we create may bear a greater resemblance to the divine ideal; which, obviously owing to its nature, is unattainable.
I disagree. Truth=beauty=truth innit.
Happiness is a rather unsatisfying notion as far as I can see it because happiness, as well as being relative, is also comparitive.
That said, I don't really believe that truth exists any more than happiness does. It's a standard by which other things are judged and has no currency as a stand-alone entity.
Well I'm no philosophy student but I took it, and indeed, we discussed this is Russian yesterday, that the shadows are poor representations of ourselves. You can almost tie in a Christian dogma to that, by saying that since God created man in His own image, man is the ideal and the shadow is the poor copy.