The Matrix Lives Your Life

July 5, 2007 · Comments

There’s an interesting read over at Hugh MacLeod’s blog about the blogging A-list being dead. It’s interesting to me in that it’s one of those conversations that distracts people from the real stories of their lives. Similarly to most conversations and entertainment and systems in our day to day, the goal is to keep you passive, distracted, and far away from the prize. This, to me, was the real story being told by the first Matrix movie, by the way.

In Seth Godin’s The Dip, he talks about systems that are set up to cull the best from the average, about how many of our constructs in life seem innocuous, but that they’re screens for determining who really has what it takes to succeed. It’s there, but you have to look for it.

One personal experience I had with seeing some of the edges of the Matrix came from reading Winning by Jack Welch. Before that point, I felt strongly that everyone at a company mattered, and that we all had a strong value for that company. Not true. The people who do the best for that company have a strong value for that company. Everyone else might do better elsewhere. There are plenty of great people out there in the wrong job.

Once I understood this, several things made sense about little aspects of my job. Have you caught yourself saying, “I have no idea why we’re not doing _____. It just seems so obvious.” There’s usually a reason, and the reason doesn’t follow the linear thinking of “what’s best for the customer” or “what’s best for the company as a whole.”

For instance, the reason we’re seeing reports of air travel passengers enduring 7 hours on the tarmac is that there are several systems in place to keep passengers controlled during travel. When they work appropriately, everyone benefits, because anarchy and air flight don’t do well together. But when they misfire, we have people sitting idly in their default job positions and default passenger-on-plane positions because that’s what we do.

It Comes Down to Action

The difference between reading something like my declare your independence post and actually DOING SOMETHING about it is vast. The reason we love action movies is because we feel emotions and adrenalin that substitute for us actually doing something physical and rewarding. The conversation mentioned above about the “death of the A-list blogger” is an “inside baseball” conversation that throws energy at an internal squabble instead of keeping our eyes focused on the prize of doing meaningful things with our personal media.

If you learn one thing in life, it’s that all is not as it seems, and that there are countless distractions built into your daily life to take your mind off several aspects of the environment around you. I just did it now, this very minute. My 17 month old son wanted to eat his mother’s glasses. I brought him a Weeble instead, something to distract him from his original goal. Same thing happens to you daily.

Break out of the Matrix

First, think in terms of incentives. Always. Ask the question: “What’s the incentive that drives this person?” Or this interaction. Or this organization. Then ask yourself the smaller incentives that drive the same thing. If you don’t understand what I mean, think in terms of “what’s in it for him?” It’s not a perfect explanation, but it’ll do. For instance, the incentive that drives you to pay your taxes is that fines and potential prison terms aren’t as attractive as enduring the headache of filling out that paperwork. Your incentive to show up on time at work is that it gives your boss one less thing to complain about with regards to your performance.

Second, pay even closer attention to the systems that drive your daily interactions, built by others and built by yourselves. Some of your habits are there to reinforce the systems that others have put in place. Why do we all watch popular TV shows? Because it keeps us passive and weak and unfocused on larger issues. Why do some of us sneak off to the Internet and feel smarter for making that choice, only to Twitter and shop and surf porn, and do whatever? Because we think we’ve slipped away from the Matrix of TV, and now feel safe in the Matrix of the Internet.

Examine your life and ask yourself repeatedly whether YOU are making decisions, or whether you’re following along with an unseen script? Make choices. Take actions. Go against the grain, and see how the Matrix becomes more and more obvious to you.

Or not.

Have you sensed this, though? Does this make any sense to you whatsoever? Your comments are appreciated.

Photo credit, smedlipotsky made a screen capture of a Warner Brother’s film. Am I impinging WB by posting smed’s work?

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  • Hi Chris and all,
    It's so nice to hear someone talk of looking before we buy into every new thing that is offered for "networking." We seem to be actively giving away more and more of ourselves without thinking about who we're giving it to.

    I see people saying things on Twitter that I wouldn't necessarily tell someone I just met. Yet it's there for anyone to read. I wonder about that. I think it's important to look behind the curtain when you visit OZ. Too often the offer is so romantic we forget. :)

    Thank you for writing this.
  • Just a bit more on the passive/active thing: one of the recurring themes for me has been confronting fear of the unknown. I just wrote about this using learning to ride a motorcycle as an example. I love the idea of riding a motorcycle but I'm also a little freaked out by it (no thanks to some of the gruesome photos on the Internet). I'm doing it anyway. I could excuse myself from that in a million different ways, but I've come to realize that the knots in my stomach actually represent opportunity.

    Not to, you know, totally take the conversation in a different direction. Or whatever.

    Hi!
  • I don't know: with all the talk about the importance of "conversation" how can MacLeod's blog be fairly judged to be less relevant than those of any other self-proclaimed social media pundits?

    I will say this, though: I am sort of sick of hearing about all of it. Wake me up when the Age of the UberMeta finally passes. I'm reminded of your fishbowl analogy.

    As far as the Matrix metaphor (which I don't wholly subscribe to), personally I think everyone's pitching their own version of it.
  • It comes down to "making choices" and "taking action." The question I've asked myself after reading this post is, Am I putting action towards my choices or am I in the never ending rat race of always taking action to someone else's choices?

    The challenge isn't whether we won't to act. The challenge is whether we want to make a choice. Especially if it goes against the grain.

    Thanks CB for thoughts and insight!
  • You can see life as a giant funnel or filter, and at different stages, people get excluded from the "exudate" to get all science-y about it.

    Let's look at people hoping to be doctors. Filter #1 is graduating from high-school and getting into college. Filter #2 is the pre-med classwork, and famously, Organic Chemistry. Filter #3- The MCAT's and getting into a decent Med School. Filter #4- Getting through Gross Anatomy... and on it goes until you reach your destination. After each filter, fewer and fewer people remain. Each filter is there to wean the talented, serious and dedicated out from the rest. The filters aren't perfect, and can seem arbitrary, but they've been set up as checkpoints along the road to "Doctorville".

    Sometimes I think we fail to do the cost/benefit analysis when we approach these filter points, to figure out whether we want what lies on the opposite side of this wall, and what will happen if we get there? This is the "being equally prepared for success as for failure" question, and so many times, we get caught up in the getting to the location we forget about the Why part of the question, or the "What if".

    I'm currently confounded by setting a 2 year goal because I made so much progress this past year, two years out seems very difficult to predict. Yet if I don't choose a direction or goal, I could end up anywhere. I have several things I would like to see happen, and perhaps the point of all of this is to start focusing in a more single minded way towards a unified goal, rather than on many shorter term goals.
    Much to think about- Thanks, CB.
  • Hmmmm. I shut off the TV years ago. But now I have the internet. How do I know if I'm being distracted or if I'm really doing something? There's no red pill to take for this.

    Even more interesting that Jack's book is Flight of the Buffalo by James Belasco and Ralph Stayer. Good stuff about teaching your organization to make the right decisions and break them out of the habit of making the decisions they think you (as the CEO) would make.
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