"THE MATRIX:" HOW MANY WOULD COME OUT IF THEY KNEW?

"The Matrix" despite its violence remains the single best picture of our existential choice yet created in art:

1. Do we choose Pleasure at the cost of Divorce / Detatchment / Disconnection from our World Family / Truth / Love / Life?
2. Do we choose Live / Love / Truth / Joy / Solidarity at the cost of Pain and Sacrifice?
3. There is no 3rd choice.

How many of us will come out of this "Matrix" when we know of the choice? How many of us will choose to be "Saved?" FRODO DID NOT.

Dickens saw the same problem. I suspect he wrote "A Christmas Carrol" entirely to try to show us, and bring us out. The "Ignorance" Dickens speaks of I am sure is our Blissful Blindness to, Divine Divorce from the "Want" of others:

`Look here.'

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

`Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.' exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

`Spirit. are they yours.' Scrooge could say no more.

`They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. `And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. `Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.'

`Have they no refuge or resource.' cried Scrooge.

`Are there no prisons.' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. `Are there no workhouses.' The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.