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Money, fame, power, and status
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
By Lisa Fitzgerald

The concept of enough is, of course, a relative concept. We live in a very competitive culture, so we live in a culture of more. I don't need a Ferrari to get me home from the grocery store. Ice cream doesn't melt that fast. How big should a company be? How powerful of a computer do I need? How many items of clothing are enough? Are there lines to be drawn? In a culture of more, it's often hard to see or set limits.

This leads me straight to my next thought. Dissatisfaction in human life. There are two different forms of dissatisfaction in human life. One being the dissatisfaction of acquisition. This is when you're not satisfied with what you have. You want more stuff. More money. More power. A bigger house. Another house. A more luxurious car. Or a faster car.

The second form of dissatisfaction is the dissatisfaction of aspiration. This is when you are not satisfied with what you are and want to become something better. You want to be wiser, to know more, to experience more. You want to connect better with your world. You want to have a deeper impact in your community, or in your work.

Money, fame, power, and status can be good and useful as resources, but they are very problematic as focal goals. When they are pursued as focal targets, the concept of "enough" can't get a grip at all. Everyone I know who has a little wants more. But it's even more interesting that everyone I know who has alot wants even more.

So I ask you, "How much is enough?"

The Matrix
BLUE PILL - RED PILL?
By Lisa Fitzgerald

There's a natural, simple thought that the movie The Matrix encourages. This is that there's something bad about being inside the Matrix. That is, there's an important respect in which people inside the Matrix are worse off than people outside it. Of course, most people inside the Matrix are ignorant of the fact that they're in this bad situation. They falsely believe they're in the good situation. Despite that, they are still worse off than people who really are in the good situation. I said this is a natural, simple thought. When we look more closely, though, this natural, simple thought starts to get very complicated and unclear. Many questions arise.

First question: Who is the Matrix supposed to be bad for? Is life inside the Matrix only bad for people like Trinity and Neo who have experienced life outside? Or is it also bad for all the ordinary Joes who've never been outside, and have no clue that their present lives are rife with illusion? The movie does seem to suggest that there's something bad about life in the Matrix even for these ordinary Joes. It may be difficult to face up to the grim realities outside the Matrix, but the movie does present this as a choice worth making. It encourages the viewer to sympathize with Neo's choice to take the red pill. The character Cypher who chooses to reinsert himself into the Matrix is not portrayed very sympathetically. And at the end of the movie, Neo seems to be embarking on a crusade to free more people from the Matrix. What do you think? If you had the power to free people from the Matrix, would you use that power? We can assume that these people's minds are "ready," that is, they can survive being extracted from the Matrix without going insane. But let's suppose that once you freed them, they did not have the option of going back. Do you think they'd be better off outside? Would you free them? Do you think they'd thank you? Or do you side with Cypher? Do you think that life inside the Matrix isn't all that bad, especially if your enjoyment of it isn't spoiled by the knowledge that it's all a machine-managed construct?

Second question: Does it matter who's running the Matrix, and why? In the movie, the machines are using the Matrix to keep us docile so that they can use us as a source of energy. In effect, we're their cattle. But what if we weren't at war with the machines? What if the machines' purposes were purely benevolent and philanthropic? What if they created the Matrix because they thought that our lives would be more pleasant in that virtual world than in the harsher real world? Or what if we defeated the machines, took over the Matrix machinery ourselves, and then chose to plug ourselves back in because life inside was more fun? Would these differences make a difference to whether you regard life inside the Matrix as bad? Or to how bad you regard it?