In the 1999 film "The Matrix", the world as we know it is shown to be a computer simulation, created by a race of living machines, where all humans except the escaped ones are prisoners of the machines which exploit them as “living batteries" for their energy source.
There's a scene when Keanu Reeves's character, Neo, spies something in a corridor: A black cat appears, stops and has a stretch. Neo looks away. A few seconds later, he looks back: A black cat appears, stops and has a stretch … the second cat and its actions are exactly those of the first. Neo is unnerved. He can feel something is amiss, but does not know what.
Was that the same cat? If so, is the cat caught in some sort of time loop? Why would that happen? What does it all mean? He says to his companions: "Déjà vu ..."
At the time I was actually expecting him say 'whoa' or 'dude', but that was mostly due to the fact that Keanu said this at least once on all the other films I'd seem in in before, or maybe I'd just seen "Point Break" too many times. Anyway, Keanu jokes aside, this would be an inconsequential feeling to express under normal circumstances, but his companions are clearly perturbed. Later, we discover that the cat is a red flag, a warning sign that the Matrix has glitched.
But why would it glitch? Because the code has been sneakily modified by the villainous Agents who control the Matrix - they have altered reality. If Neo had not observed the cat, or had ignored it, they would have been unaware of the danger they were in.
Looking out for red flags is one of the human mind's best ways of alerting us to danger. Hence why so many of them are on beaches, and why a Formula 1 race waves a red flag in the case of a serious accident that poses a risk to the other drivers. Sometimes they appear insignificant or incidental and are summarily dismissed, but we do not need to be paranoid to see them. Often, they are right in front of us. By adopting ‘soft eyes’, we look at the big picture and be mindful of any possible cloistered motivations.
This strategy would be particularly pertinent in the current atmosphere extreme left-wing political antagonism of the working class, of Covid-19 and the Great Reset, especially when it comes to current news media and government press briefings.
There are recommendations for a winter lockdown in 2021; future climate change lockdowns; curfews for [in all but name, straight white] men after 6pm; a self-confessed Sinophile Prime Minister; a hate crime Bill passed in Scotland; the growing demand for facial recognition software in shops; the criminalisation of protests; the proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill; an NHS test and trace budget in the billions.
Maybe in 2021, we just like to say things like “We're living in the Matrix” - and that may be the truest and deepest influence of a movie whose high-flown paranoia has insinuated itself into the way we live now. "The Matrix" didn’t anticipate our world. But it anticipated - and probably created - a new way of viewing that world, granting everyone permission to refuse to contend with reality by deeming that refusal a form of hyperawareness.
So, are these red flags or just happenstance?
When Morpheus asks Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill, he essentially offers the choice between fate and free will. In the Matrix, fate rules, since the world is preconstructed and actions predetermined, all questions already have answers and any choice is simply the illusion of choice.
In the real world, humans have the power to change their fate, take individual action, and make mistakes. Neo chooses the red pill real life - and learns that free will isn’t pretty. The real world is a mess, dangerous and destitute. Pleasure exists almost entirely in the world of the Matrix, where it’s actually only a computer construct. We are most likely to reject reality if reality had somehow rejected us; we are most likely to suspect entire groups of people of being puppet masters if you hated or feared those groups in the first place. It was no great leap from there to “Soros controls everything.”
So for now, let’s take a cue from Neo. For if we fail to see the black cat, we will suffer the consequences. Still, if we all get to roam around in the future in cool leather trench coats and shades, at least it'll be reasonably fashionable.