The Crying Game

It was strange, a sort of deja vu. In the same way that Jake White had a sense on the field of the hard work, the reward and the relief, mixing together - in an overwhelming albeit momentarily deluge of emotion - I felt something similar, though no doubt on a different scale.

I was watching Matrix Revolutions, alone, on Friday night. I guess the backdrop is just that I have been facing a similar 'lack of belief' from some key decision makers around me; perhaps not for the first time. I guess I'm just more aware of it, and more sick of it now than ever before. I found myself really resonating with Neo's dilemma. Having to really risk all - a lot - for some pretty altruistic motives. No one understands you or what you're doing, although the few that do, those few glimmers of recognition, are what make the difference. It's possibly not worth it, on a calculated mathematic scale. But it's something one feels has to be done, whether people support you, understand what you're doing, or not.

So this endless calling out and reaching out to humanity to be conscious of the extraordinary dilemma we're about to face - a lack of fuel for our populations everywhere... It's a message generally meant to save us from harm, to perhaps mitigate the suffering when the panic, chaos and mayhem sets in. Most though, do not listen.

Interestingly, I learned over the weekend of an experiment conducted to gauge the impact of conformity. They would bring a young person into a room, having rehearsed with 9 other individuals on a scheme where they would agree to vote for a 2nd length of string as the longest. In the experiment 3 lengths of string are displayed, the first the shortest, second the second longest, and the third, the longest. They'd ask the group of 10 which string was the longest. 9 hands would go up to indicate the 2nd string (2nd longest). The 10th individual would look around in disbelief, and then raise his hand. When questioned afterwards, the test individual would invariably say: "I didn't want to make a fool of myself, and I wondered whether I had understood the question correctly." Naturally, by conforming the person does turn out to be behaving very foolishly indeed.

I remember as a young teenager being incredibly aware of the risks for our species where all people start to conventionally believe conventional wisdoms (all people think the same thing, believe the same thing, conforn to the same lifestyle pattern) but are later proved incorrect. History shows this has happened many times, with dire consequences. We've believed the Earth to flat, the centre of the universe, we've described the threat of Communism as imminent (the Vietnam War), an imminent WMD crisis in Iraq (The Current Iraq War), there's been endless talk of the Second Coming of Christ (Armageddon - I heard someone insisting to it was imment yesterday) and so on and so forth.

Our collective lethargy to face climate change and energy depletion - even the reltively simply issue of insufficient electricity capacity, and yet we're so busy and distracted by things that are simply not important. Entertainment now gets priority over issues of survival. Crazy.

But when the experiment was repeated, the same response. In 75% of individuals tested, group behaviour, even totally irrational behaviour, was imputed on the person, despite this person knowing the right thing to do, they chose instead to conform to the group. This is the tragedy of our race. The inability, the lack of courage, to face reality. Instead, we hide in conformity.

This is why, in Revolutions, I found myself with tears dripping down my cheeks as I reflected on this similar capacity in the fictional context - to courageously face reality, to believe in someone, in a course of action despite the odds.

Roland: This is asinine. If you want to kill yourself, go ahead, but do it without wasting one of our ships.
Neo: You have to believe me. I have to go.
Roland: Bullshit. I'm captain of this ship, *I'll* say where it has to go. And believe me, this ship will go to hell long before I let you take it anywhere!
Niobe: He can have mine.
Roland: Niobe! You can't do that!
Niobe: Don't you even begin to tell me what I can and can't do with my ship after your little speech.

Morpheus: You've never believed in The One.
Niobe: I still don't.
Morpheus: Then why are you doing this?
Niobe: [re: Neo] I believe in him.