How Morpheus Sees Reality “What is real?
How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Morpheus, The Matrix Despite this rather opaque comment, Morpheus actually relies on a pretty straightforward understanding of what it is that makes something real as opposed to unreal. He relies on this understanding when he classifies his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar; deserted and devastated cities on the surface of the Earth; and the populous and thriving (at least until the end of the second film) city of Zion near its centre as real. And he relies on it when he classifies the world of the Matrix; what he calls ‘the Construct’, the white world in which he first explains the nature of the Matrix to Neo; and the virtual arena in which they first spar as unreal. He relies on it to make sense of his general mission as being to wake people up from unreality and into reality. And he relies on it to make s
