It is quite clear that each individual can have his or her own notion of reality, but whether these “opinions” can come together to represent a group conviction is uncertain. After all, one’s true definition of reality can be idiosyncratic (not surprising, given the extensive gamut of values that humans can employ to interpret the empirical world).

From religion and morals to personality and emotions, the differences among people are simply too large to end in consensus even about important issues, namely, for example, our role in a seemingly “ideal” universe. The ideal assessment would be an adulterated version of the Allegory of the Cave, such as the premise of the Wachowski Brother’s film, The Matrix: Are we living a perfectly normal life in x city, or are our experiences a Machine-induced illusion, fooling us into serving as a 9-volt Energizer?

The average person would find our submissive existence a shocking revelation, and may refuse to acknowledge it even when unplugged from Machine’s contraption. Some people would even opt for the conservative pill and voluntarily return to the life fictitious: as false as life was in the pod, people would find it more desirable to “feel” as if they were living a regular life, rather than warring against the illusionist that “gave” them a dignified existence (complete with memories of this life) in the first place: a position in an unreal but decent, stable world, a habitat that perhaps could never be equaled, no matter how hard Zion’s “awakened” humans worked to revive our past civilization.

In the end, we are only human: our emotional strength puts us on another level, far beyond Machine’s perfect but systematically cold logic. Nevertheless, our greatest strength turned out to be our greatest weakness: handicapped by conflicting sentiments, a once organized human effort fell apart, individual by individual, personality by personality. There are far too many aspects in our character to have a simple agreement on a lifestyle as a happy alkaline battery or an endangered species; a perfectly normal outcome, if we sometimes can’t even agree on the most trivial, material things. And thus, Machine’s pragmatic approach triumphed over all, without pity or remorse, even less glory.