As Americans, what is our purpose? I’d argue to 1) eat a lot of food, 2) desire the latest and greatest products, and 3) go to work and make money in order to satisfy the first two purposes. To be fair, though, many modern societies (not just the USA) share a common goal to experience self-fulfillment through excessive material wants, rather than necessary needs. These excessive wants are engendered by the ideas of materialism and are encouraged by the ideas of commercialism. The problem with materialism is that it is NOT self-fulfilling, despite how commercialism creates the illusion that buying a certain product will magically lead to your happiness. I don’t see the bum on the street corner with the Budweiser getting surrounded by scantily clad women. I don’t see elders picking up their grandchildren on a beach with the buoyancy of a teenager after taking a certain medication. I don’t see young girls aspiring to be anything more than the grotesquely thin models they see on television. Point in blank, I don’t see genuine happiness. I see the deceiving nature of the American dream.

If the Matrix were a metaphor for the American Dream, my brief discussion of materialism and commercialism above fits quite well. Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity (all biblical references), are sick of the illusion that the Matrix (or by extension, the American Dream) has forced itself upon people. Under the Matrix, people have to go through boring and mundane routines that are not so different than our own reality. Go to work, come home, eat, watch television, sleep, rinse and repeat. And for what? So that by some divine miracle, perhaps they may get promoted at work and get one step closer to achieving the American Dream?

So, what is our purpose then? Well, it’s not rebelling against a virtual world that doesn’t exist like the movie suggests. It’s also not 1) eating a lot of food, 2) desiring the latest and greatest products, and 3) going to work to make money in order to satisfy the first two purposes. But wait a minute, didn’t I say those three were our purposes above? That’s exactly what the American Dream wants you to think. My purpose, as Missak (a biblical name, isn’t that convenient?) is to wake people up from their deep sleep and help them realize that the American Dream is an illusion. I don’t plan on dodging bullets (I wish I could though), but this blog is a good first step to wake people up.

My second step is to encourage people to watch an excellent documentary from PBS called Affluenza. It described how commercialism and materialism have negatively impacted our country from an economical standpoint (high debt, for example), and also from a social standpoint (anxiety, pressure, etc.). By watching this documentary, you will have chosen to take the red pill.