Thanks for the responses. I get all that stuff about oppressors and so forth. But I could not figure out at the most basic level what was going on. When I first heard about the movie, I thought it was a cinematic take on the philosophical problem of "brains in a vat," so-called. That is, how can I know whether I am really experiencing what I think I am experiencing, or whether I am just lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a machine that sends all the electrical impulses to my nervous system that I would get if I were really out in the world receiving sensory input. Hilary Putnam wrote an influential article on the subject, as I recall.
But that doesn't seem to be the premise. I mean, when Neo or Morpheus is lying on a bed, is he simply imagining all the dramatic fighting stuff, or is he, or someone, doing it? And how can what he is "doing" actually affect the world?
Maybe I am just thinking too much and not going with the flow.
