CHAPTER 5 Welcome to the Parallel Universe
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
In the film The Matrix, Morpheus, the character played by Laurence Fishburne, is trying to explain to Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, that the world he has been living in is a virtual world, where everything is programmed and controlled by machines. Morpheus wants to show him that the real world is a very different place. But first Morpheus needs to teach him to reject what he's been programmed to accept: that his virtual world is just “the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Did the Wachowski brothers intend this to be a metaphor for the world we live in?
There's the world we are programmed to believe in by the powers that be, and then there is a very different world we could live in if we're prepared to shake off the blinkers. In this real world we have far more choices than we previously thought we had. Many people find it very hard to reject the world they have grown accustomed to living in and to challenge what they've been taught; they'd rather live blindly. Some people live happily like this. Well, we want to expose a parallel universe, where so much more is possible, to those who are unhappy with what they think they have to accept as reality.
But just as Morpheus tells Neo, we can only show you the door—you have to walk through it.
The Value of Embracing Failure
One of the biggest ...Get The Wealth Dragon Way: The Why, the When and the How to Become Infinitely Wealthy now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
