Wake Up, Human
Wake Up, Human is an exploration of the native powers of the human being. This podcast examines the ways we humans have become disconnected—from our innate wisdom, from each other, and from the natural world—and explores practical strategies for reconnecting to wholeness. Drop in for information and inspiration to help us reawaken and heal ourselves, our relationships, and our planet.
Wake Up, Human
Ep.17: Barbie vs. The Matrix - You and Me and Manufactured Reality
What happens when we compare Barbie's journey out of Barbie Land with Neo's escape from the Matrix? In this exploration I dive into how these starkly different films both challenge us to question the manufactured realities we live within—and consider how me might transcend them.
Both characters face a pivotal choice—Barbie between the high heel and the Birkenstock, Neo between the red pill and blue pill—representing the decision between comfortable illusion and uncomfortable truth. Their journeys mirror our own potential awakening to systems that may be designed to extract our energy, attention, and labor while keeping us distracted and compliant.
Movies themselves present an interesting paradox - can these manufactured realities actually help us wake up from our own matrix? When Barbie first experiences anxiety and sadness in the real world, she's encountering emotions many of us take for granted. These human capacities - feeling deeply, empathizing, thinking critically, using intuition - are powers we often overlook but which connect us to our authentic selves.
The most striking parallel between these films is their examination of human potential. Both suggest we have extraordinary capacities that remain largely untapped because we accept artificial limitations as natural laws. In our screen-dominated world, we've become so distracted that perhaps we need our distractions themselves to show us we're distracted - constantly choosing the blue pill without pausing long enough to consider the red one.
Whether you're drawn to the philosophical depth of The Matrix or the surprisingly thoughtful commentary of Barbie, both films remind us that questioning what we accept as real is fundamental to waking up. Listen in and reconsider what veils might be covering your eyes - you might just find there's much more to reality than you've been led to believe.
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 17 of the Wake Up Human podcast. I'm your host, Shannon Wills, and in this episode I will be having some fun with a topic serious but not serious. I'm going to be talking about movies and what they can reflect to us or teach us about ourselves, about our relationships and about waking up. And these aren't just any old movies. They're two movies you've probably heard of, may have seen and may or may not love. Join me on the inside for Barbie vs the Matrix. Welcome to the Wake Up Human podcast. I'm Shannon Wills, a curious wanderer with a passion for digging into life's mysteries and mining them for wisdom to apply to our modern lives. This podcast explores the ways we humans have become disconnected from our native ways of knowing what we have lost and what we can gain by coming back into wholeness. Each episode will explore this theme of reconnecting with our innate human power in order to heal ourselves, our relationships and our planet. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let's jump into the latest installment of Wake Up Human. Hey friends, it's Shannon Just jumping in quickly before the episode begins to say something about why this episode about Barbie is coming out in December.
Shannon W.:You might be wondering why am I talking about Barbie in this episode as though it just came out? Well, that's because I recorded this episode at the beginning of August and just as I was getting ready to publish it, something happened in my life that really turned my world upside down, and I won't share what that was right now. I'll probably be talking about it in future episodes in some way, but I just wanted to say that when I recorded this, barbie was brand new and the energy I felt around talking about it was also brand new. So what happened was things got a little crazy in my life and even though the episode was really close to being done, I just didn't have the energy to put to it. It was so close and I just couldn't get myself to do it. There was so much else that needed my attention and my emotion and my care, and I knew I wanted to get the episode out eventually. I just didn't know when, and so here we are almost at the end of the year, almost at the end of December, and I made a commitment to myself that I'm going to go ahead and publish this before the end of the year. So I really hope it will be better late than never. I hope there will be some value in this for you and maybe something in it will be a little bit timeless it doesn't have to be attached to the release of the Barbie movie. So please enjoy, let me know what you think and many blessings to you at the turning of the year. May the new year be one that helps all of us to wake up together. May we finish the beautiful things that we start. May we be patient with ourselves and loving, and may we remember that we are strong enough and resilient enough to overcome whatever comes our way. And now for the real episode. Bye for now, hi everyone, and thank you for joining me for this episode Barbie vs the Matrix.
Shannon W.:I think this is going to be a fun one and, as always, I'm humbled and grateful that you have chosen to spend some of your time with me today. Most of us are familiar with movies, and we're really familiar right now with Barbie, because Barbie has just come out and been quite a bit in the news lately, and I thought it would be fun to do an episode talking about Barbie. And yet I really don't want to do an episode talking all about Barbie, so this is going to be a an episode about a lot more than that all about Barbie. So this is going to be an episode about a lot more than that. I'm going to be talking about movies in general as tools for waking up, and whether they can be tools for waking up actually, and I'm going to be doing this via a conversation about Barbie the new Barbie movie that's all over the place right now, and the 1999 film the Matrix, which I will reveal right now, is one of my favorite all-time movies. You probably know this, but, in case you're new to this podcast, wake Up Human explores themes of waking up from disconnection and moving into wholeness, and I want to ask a question in this episode Can movies be a vehicle to help us move from disconnection toward wholeness?
Shannon W.:And I want to ask a question in this episode Can movies be a vehicle to help us move from disconnection toward wholeness? Maybe, I suppose that probably depends on which movie we're talking about. Right, movies are a form of mass media entertainment, and it's also entertainment that's often bought and paid for by extremely rich corporate media companies that pull us into their stories and sort of take over our consciousness with this all-encompassing sensory experience, especially if we watch them in the theater me to ask if they sort of take over our consciousness with their sensory experiences. Can movies even wake us up, or do they by their very nature keep us asleep? So in this episode I'll be doing some comparing and contrasting of the two movies. But this is not a movie review. It's really more of a conversation about the real world, what we think or perceive to be the real world and what that means for us and for our lives, what we're willing to accept as reality, what we're willing to accept as possible or not possible for us as human beings. If you've seen either Barbie or the Matrix, if you've seen either Barbie or the Matrix, you know that they both touch on this theme of what is the real world, what is true and what happens when we find out that what we thought was real might not be real at all.
Shannon W.:I don't watch many movies. I don't read many novels either. I'm more of a documentary or self-help book, nonfiction kind of person. My partner would probably tell you that he has even stopped asking me if I want to watch a movie with him, because if he asks me, the first question I usually ask him is not which movie do you want to watch or what's it about? The first thing I usually ask is how long is it? And that's a little bit exaggerated, but it's true that I can easily prioritize, quote unquote productive use of time over a priority of entertainment and enjoyment, storytelling and fun. So when I talk about movies here, my tendency here is to feel like I'm talking about something silly. But the thing is it's really not silly to talk about movies.
Shannon W.:We humans are wired for stories and movies are stories. We're born to be storytellers and that's evidenced by our long oral histories of traditional our own traditional and indigenous cultures from around the world. We all came from indigenous ancestors from somewhere on this planet. All of us had earth-honoring ancestors who passed their knowledge down and their cultural histories down through narratives, through storytelling. So we're wired for these stories. We're wired for sharing our experience in the form of stories and we're wired for fun and enjoyment. We need all of these in our lives. They're part of our birthright as human beings.
Shannon W.:So for me or for anyone to believe or to say I don't have time for movies, I don't have time for stories, that's not the best use of my time. How long is it going to take? I think that suggests, when I say that, that I've taken on some of the programming of our culture that values productivity over rest. And valuing productivity over rest is not an organic human priority. I don't believe. I think it's an industrialized human priority, one that is about efficiencies, one that's not part of our DNA but that has been imposed upon us from the outside. So, needless to say, if I think I don't have time for rest, for stories, for entertainment, or if you don't think you have time, that probably suggests that we need space for more entertainment and stories in our lives. We're probably a little bit out of balance.
Shannon W.:Another reason I don't watch a lot of movies is because I'm cautious about the impressions that I allow into my consciousness, and what that means is, you know, I know that when I watch a show, when I watch a movie, when I take in news, when I take in any form of mass media information or entertainment, I am rather passively receiving that information that someone else has decided upon for me, and I'm pretty careful about what I take in. So certain movies I'm probably not going to see regardless. So certain movies I'm probably not going to see regardless. For example, movies that have a lot of gratuitous violence. I am not going to go and see. There's enough violence in this world already, all around us. I don't need my consciousness to be fed by more violence. I want to have my consciousness be fed by something more nourishing, by something strengthening, so that when I'm in the world, I'm not adding fuel to the fire of the imbalance of emotions that we already have in the world. And there's also this when we have these aggressive films or films that have a lot of masculine energy absolutely nothing wrong with masculine energy. However, the feminine energy of life has been so underrepresented in modern Western culture and also in our movies, and so if I can look for things to let into my senses, let into my consciousness, that are more balanced, with a less aggressive energy to them, that's what I want to do. So that's just another reason I don't watch a lot of movies, and I wanted to share that with you, because I think it's so common in our culture to just we all watch movies, we all watch TV, we all listen to music and we listen to what other people listen to and we watch what other people watch and we don't have to. We can be discerning about what we allow in and we should be discerning about what we allow in. That's certainly true for entertainment and it's probably doubly true for what we take in from the mainstream media news. Okay, are we ready to talk Barbie?
Shannon W.:So I went to see the Barbie movie. I wasn't planning to. I was not ever a fan of Barbies. Growing up, I had a friend who lived down the street and she loved to play Barbies and I remember telling my mom Mom, I don't want to go to her house, all she wants to do is play Barbies, it's so boring. And my mom would say Well, you don't want to go to her house, all she wants to do is play Barbies, it's so boring. And my mom would say well, you don't have to go to her house, just tell her. Your mom said no, and I think I did tell her. My mom said no a couple of times because I didn't want to play with Barbies.
Shannon W.:So I wasn't planning to see the movie until I was looking up something else online. I happened to be scrolling through some news headlines and the Barbie movie had just been released the week before and I saw a headline saying that Barbie was causing some kind of controversy due to its feminist point of view and its criticism of the patriarchy and I thought, huh, well, what's that about Feminism, the patriarchy? So I looked up the plot line for the movie and I saw that the movie is about Barbie kind of growing up in Barbie land and she's leaving Barbie land and going to the real world, and so of course anything that's about the real world catches my attention. So I watched the Barbie trailer and after watching the Barbie trailer I knew I had to see the movie, because I saw the scene where Barbie has to choose between the high heel and the Birkenstocks sandal, and choosing the heel will return her blissfully to Barbie land and choosing the sandal will send her to the real world to know the truth of the universe. So if you've seen the Matrix, you know that this is a clear nod to that movie. So immediately I thought, huh, they're playing off the Matrix, and the Matrix is not a superficial movie, it's a pretty deep and thought-provoking movie. The Matrix, I would actually say, is the quintessential what is real movie. So of course I thought, well, maybe this Barbie movie will be deeper than I thought. And then I heard that Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator, had actually burned a Barbie doll in protest of the movie, and that sealed the deal, because if Ben Shapiro or anyone is so angered by the movie that they feel they need to set Barbie dolls on fire in protest, I really need to see it. So I want to say thanks for the controversy, thanks for all the talk about feminism and patriarchy, thanks to Ben Shapiro and all of it, because you inspired me to buy my Barbie ticket and I'm glad I did go see Barbie. I thought it was my short answer.
Shannon W.:About what did I think of Barbie? I really liked it. I liked it in a lot of ways. I thought it was funny, intelligent, fun, entertaining, thought-provoking, but also culturally relevant. Just the fact that people are getting angry about a movie that offers a clear window into some of the roots of the social strife of this very moment and, whatever your political persuasion, I think it's worth watching.
Shannon W.:Personally, it's a movie that's clearly touched the hearts of a lot of people. Don't we want to know what's touching people's hearts, whether we agree with it or not? I mean, maybe we don't, but I do. If people are being moved by something en masse, I want to watch it. I want to know what's moving people, especially if we want to work for change. Knowing what moves people's hearts is going to give us a window into what will work to move cultural change in the directions that we want them to go toward more compassion, toward more care. How do people's hearts move? Let's find out, let's join the conversation.
Shannon W.:So I'm not going to give an overview of the plot of Barbie I don't think that's necessary here but I do just want to say that you know. What happens to her is that as she leaves Barbie land and she goes into the real world, a veil is lifted from her eyes, and it's not just from her eyes. A veil is lifted between superficiality and depth in her when she goes to the real world. Not only is the real world not what she thought it was and she's filled with surprises about how culture is all around her, but she also experiences an awakening within. So, whereas Barbie of Barbie Land didn't feel certain emotions or didn't have certain kinds of thoughts that are very human, barbie, when she goes to the real world, begins to feel, she begins to open to an inner world that had been closed in her before. The scene where she's first in the real world and she says something like I'm feeling this odd feeling that really feels bad but also strangely comfortable, like something isn't quite right I can't remember how she puts it and a woman comes up behind her and she says oh yeah, that's anxiety. I feel that every single day. You know everybody's laughing, because we all know what that means. It's like something is wrong and we can't quite put our finger on it, and yet it's a very human feeling. At one point, soon after that, barbie is imagining a scene that brings her sadness and a tear rolls down her cheek and she's touching her cheek Like.
Shannon W.:One of the things that came to my mind when watching this movie is oh, there's so much depth of feeling and emotion and experience that we have as human beings. We forget how deep we already are. And one thing that occurred to me I'm always thinking about what are human powers? You know, how can we empower ourselves? What are we capable of? Do we have the ability to perceive or understand or communicate in ways that we don't currently give ourselves credit for? But when I was watching Barbie, I was reminded that so much of what we already take for granted in our lives is power. We have the ability to feel an emotion deeply. Is a power the ability to cry when we empathize with someone else's sad experience is a power, and that led me to thinking about what are some powers that we take for granted, that we don't even realize that we have, and I made a little list here kind of a brainstorm, and this is just what came up. So how does this land for you, are these powers? These are things that Barbie may not be able to do in Barbie land and we may already be able to do in our own everyday, however broken it is, human world.
Shannon W.:The ability to feel our emotions deeply. The ability to empathize, like I just mentioned. The ability to think critically. The ability to sort through information and deduce answers through reasoning. The ability to use our intuition to sense danger or opportunity and our imagination to create art or objects or to imagine or envision new solutions to problems. The ability to send our mind elsewhere, into the past or the future or a place physically very far away from us within a split second. We have the ability to learn from our mistakes and iterate to improve. We can use words, language and symbols to communicate ideas and transmit information and cultural memory from one generation to the next. We have the ability to remember vast quantities of information with incredible detail. We can create myths and stories that connect us to ancestral lands across generations for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Shannon W.:We have the ability to philosophize. To philosophize Our bodies are tuned to the cycles of days, months, seasons and years. We have the ability to navigate without maps. We can make our own medicines. We can heal our own bodies with food and herbs. We can forage and hunt and climb and make what we need to survive from the abundance of the natural world around us. We can craft and create with our hands, make tools and use them to make shelter, utensils and even musical instruments. We can pass on our knowledge to future generations, knowing that that knowledge can be passed on again and again and again. And at least in that way, and possibly in others as well, we can live on beyond our physical lives. So that's just my brainstorm. Think about all the powers that we might have that aren't listed here. And there are powers we have that we don't even think we have. And it's not only we humans who have these powers. Non-human animals have them too, like bees, who can find their way across miles back to their hive or trees, who can communicate between one another through their root systems. All right, so I've been talking about a lot of things about powers. Let me talk a little bit about the matrix.
Shannon W.:I'm expecting that if you're listening to this, more likely than not you have seen the Matrix, but if not, I really recommend it. It provides an important cultural metaphor for our time. That was true in 1999 when it was released, and it is just as true, probably more true today. It's the story of a man who is living his day-to-day life in the real world when he's pulled aside and told that the world he has lived in his entire life is actually not the real world at all but a fabrication. So what he has believed to be reality all his life is really a computer generated program, which is the matrix, and that his physical body is not actually living and moving in the world at all, but actually sleeping, unmoving, unconscious, plugged into a sort of pod where he's wired in like a battery and being utilized as a power source to power the Matrix. I might have some of this a little bit off, so feel free Matrix fans to correct me.
Shannon W.:And we know that the title of the movie itself, the Matrix, has made it into our cultural lexicon as a symbol for something that's not real, or something that seems to be reality but is not so. There's an example of that way that art becomes culture by embedding itself into our collective conversation. So if someone says when we have a deja vu, it's a glitch in the matrix, we're referring to that movie. Or if there's a situation where powerful interests seem to be manipulating our collective well-being and our shared interests, we might say well, we're living in the matrix after all. When we mention the matrix, we're recognizing that there's something happening that's not the real world, but rather it's part of a manufactured world that's trying to pull a veil over our eyes to keep us compliant or happy or distracted, keeping us asleep, to feed on our energy, our attention or our money or our allegiance.
Shannon W.:Something else that's from the matrix that's wedged itself into our cultural psyche is this phenomenon of the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. So much like Barbie is presented with the high heel or the Birkenstock sandal, neo, our hero in the Matrix, neo, is presented at the beginning of the movie with a red pill and a blue pill and he's offered by Morpheus, his mentor and teacher. Morpheus says Neo can take the blue pill and stay content and asleep and return back to the world as he knows it and he will completely forget that this ever happened and he'll go on living his sleeping, complacent life. Or he can take the red pill and he can wake up to the truth Uncomfortable truth, but truth. And we know what Neo does, does. He really doesn't think twice. He takes the red pill, he wakes up from the matrix and the rest is matrix history.
Shannon W.:So when we hear someone say, are you going to take the red pill? Are you going to take the blue pill, it's a reference to this choice between waking up whatever, whatever sacrifice that means, or staying asleep and complacent and plugged in, possibly very happy, but asleep. And of course, that's where the scene in Barbie where she's made to choose between the high heel and the Birkenstock, comes into play. And that's why it's so funny and clever. And it's also funny because Barbie doesn't want to take the red pill, aka the Birkenstock, she wants the blue pill. She's like just give me the high heel, let me just stay here in Barbie land. And fortunately her guide and mentor we could say weird Barbie doesn't let her get away with that. Barbie is forced to choose the Birkenstock, she has no other choice and off she goes on her adventure into the real world herself.
Shannon W.:So this is one of the most powerful aspects of the Matrix and what Barbie is piggybacking on, which is that there's something believable in it, in the sense that many of us can recognize or sense that we are living in this world that's sort of manufactured all around us, and that we may feel that something is not right, something is off. There may be an urge within us that tells us like, is this all there is? I don't believe this is all there is, and that's what Neo was feeling in the real world before he was presented with the red pill. He was feeling that there was something more for him. How many of us can relate to this feeling that we're sort of trapped in a world that is not allowing us to fully be ourselves, fully live the life that we were born for, whatever that is. It's like this pull inside.
Shannon W.:Was I only made to work a nine-to-five job? Was I only made to move through this system and this system and this system and then die? Was I only made for my decisions to be made by other people on my behalf for most of my life? Was it my decision for my labor and my energy to go toward someone else who takes my labor and my energy and uses it to power their own world. Labor in my energy and uses it to power their own world.
Shannon W.:We are living in this world that's sort of manufactured around us, and the idea that our choices and our lives are dictated by entities outside of us that have control over us doesn't feel that far from the truth. And we're all witness to entities such as governments, financial markets, corporations, corporate media, social media, that literally filter our choices, literally manipulate our time and energy for their benefit. It's all over the place. We experience it firsthand in our educational system, which straps us into desks and feeds us all identical information designed to funnel us into the economic system you know, and then we become workers that keep the economic system running. This is not far from what the matrix is suggesting. It's just that the matrix is suggesting it with the metaphor of pods and machines, rather than desks and transnational entities that want to keep us fueling their empires. So the matrix is powerful in that it gives us a metaphor to see our world. In this light, I think that's really helpful to ask whether we're in control of our lives or not, and this reminds me of Orwell's 1984, if you've read that or seen a movie version of it.
Shannon W.:The characters in 1984 are living in a manufactured reality, told who to love, who to hate, who to be at war with, who to be at peace with, who they're allowed to be in contact with, where they're allowed to work and where they're not. They're being watched through their TVs. As they're watching TV, they're being watched back through their TVs. How is this? You know, this is kind of shockingly similar now to what we're doing on our phones we're being watched. There have been a couple of times when I have Siri on my phone and I'll be talking about something to someone and I'm not even talking to Siri, and she'll say, as if I called her and I didn't call her, which tells me that she is listening all the time. Siri is listening all the time. How is that different from Big Brother watching us through the TV? So the Matrix and 1984 are sort of like fingers beckoning us to come here, lean in, listen, look, ask. What is real? Am I being lied to? Am I being misled? And, of course, even just asking that question. Maybe we're not being lied to, maybe we're not being misled, but even just asking the question is a form of waking up, because we're not just receiving and swallowing and digesting what we're given without some critical thinking about it, and the presence of someone who might cause the masses to question the status quo is also a threat.
Shannon W.:We see this in Barbie. Now shifting back to movie land. We see this in Barbie when Barbie escapes into the real world and the executives at Mattel find out she's there. And it's an absolute freakout that if people know about this, that Barbie has made it into the real world, their entire empire will be at risk. Why their empire? Their entire empire will be at risk. Why? Presumably because Barbie, being in the real world, may be the source of a leak, that Barbie land isn't all that it's cracked up to be, or that the real world isn't all that we're told that it is. So the Mattel executives threatened that their empire might be at risk. For them, it's imperative to find Barbie and put her back in her box. Isn't that funny? Let's get her back in the box. She's spread her wings too far. She's getting out of line. Let's make sure she sits back in her desk. So, fortunately, barbie doesn't get back in the box. She is smart enough to know better. So she tricks the Mattel executives and she runs away, and the further into the real world she gets, the more she wakes up.
Shannon W.:I think it's imperative that we ask these questions about what's real and who's in control. What's our Barbie land? What's our matrix? Who are our Mattel executives? Who is our Morpheus? Who is our Neo? Who is our artificial intelligence machine? Mr Smith in the matrix? Because our world is sick in so many ways and there's so much suffering, and whoever and whatever is pulling the strings is clearly not fixing the damage. We could argue that they're making it worse or, at the very least, continuing to allow it to be destroyed least continuing to allow it to be destroyed. But, like Neo in the Matrix and Barbie in her own world, we as individuals might have some power to heal and transform our world if we're willing to unplug from our pods, if we're willing to drive our little Corvette car out of Barbie land. Corvette car out of Barbie land.
Shannon W.:So there's a quote I saw on Instagram before Barbie came out and it was a repost by Syra Rao, and I will find the original poster and I will link that in the show notes. But the quote says this not really sure what happens when the oceans start boiling and our politicians are like I hate tree huggers and the biggest thing in the average person's mind are movies about toys. Lol. If this is the end, it's so much stupider than anyone imagined. The whole quote made me laugh for obvious reasons. It makes me laugh even now and it does reflect something pretty ridiculous. The world is literally burning and we're all talking about movies about toys, aka Barbie.
Shannon W.:But for the purposes of this conversation about waking up, that Instagram quote really touches on an irony of the situation we're in that we are all so distracted by things like movies about toys slash Barbies. And because we're distracted by things like movies like toys here I am talking about movies like Barbie and the Matrix that kind of show us how distracted we are. Because we're so distracted, it appears that we now need our distractions themselves movies to punch us in the gut and show us that we're distracted. It's like we're so into the TV and the movies and the media that if the message about us being distracted doesn't come through TV and movies and media, we might not even get the message because we're not looking anywhere else. It's ironic, isn't it? So, regarding the red pill versus the blue pill thing, or the high heel versus Birkenstock sandal.
Shannon W.:The level of distraction and choosing of comfort over awareness reminds me of what we do all the time in our world when we let the media and the screens and the shopping and the clothes and the gadgets and the technology dictate our lives. It's like we're constantly choosing the blue pill, the blue pill, the blue pill. We never even stop choosing the blue pill, the blue pill. We never even stopped choosing the blue pill long enough to even be offered the red pill. Or the Barbie scene might even be closer to the worldly experience that we have, because Barbie is actually being offered like do you want your comfortable life or do you want to know the truth? And she's like oh, I want my comfortable life, no question. That feels to me more like what we're doing in our modern lives.
Shannon W.:What if, every time, we were offered the opportunity to be involved and engage with the fullness of life, to break out of our comfort zone, to fight hard for something we believe in, to be willing to sacrifice for something greater ourselves? What if, every time that happened, instead we said well, instead, no, I'd rather choose Netflix or Amazon or Walmart or Costco, or the movies or the toys, or I want to play a video game, or I want to watch my cooking show. I mean, name your distraction. I'm not beating up on everyone else, I've got my distractions too. But what if someone was standing there every time we did that and said nope, you can't choose that. Nope, you can't choose Netflix. Try again. Wow, what would we do? Where would we go? What would we see? What would we experience? How would we grow?
Shannon W.:This is important to think about, because if we default to entertainment and screens every time we have a free moment, think like you're standing in an elevator with a group of people and everybody's staring at their phone. It's like we're plugging ourselves into our own matrix. No one even has to plug us in, we do it to ourselves. We wake up in the morning, pull the phone out, turn it on and we're plugged in. So the matrix of our world is, at least in one way, even more brilliantly designed, in that nobody even has to put a computerized veil over our eyes. They just create it and make it so tantalizing that we can't say no to it, so that we continue to choose it every day.
Shannon W.:And for many of us, we can't even imagine what we would do differently. For those of us who remember what life was like before smartphones and internet, we can imagine. We can remember. But even we have been living so long with these technologies and our lives are so embedded within their design, we really can't imagine how we would do it differently now. That is a matrix, I mean. One reason this is dangerous is that we start to think that the matrix is where the truth is. If we spend enough time in it, we start to think that that is what's important. We start to think that what is common is what is natural, like what we see every day is what is natural, rather than what we see every day is just what is common.
Shannon W.:So, for example, if the matrix whatever we want to call that put a pink sky over us and we had a pink sky, one day we woke up and there was a pink sky over us and we had a pink sky One day we woke up and there was a pink sky and we were totally shocked to see that there was a pink sky. But let's say we had that pink sky for days, weeks, months, years. Let's say we had that pink sky for decades, at some point we would probably forget that the sky was ever blue and we would say the sky is pink. Or if we remembered that the sky was blue, we might have people who said no, I promise you, the sky really used to be blue. And we would either say they were misremembering. They would say we would say they are misinforming us. Um, we would say they were crazy. And there would be science coming out saying the sky is pink and here's why. And or the sky used to be blue, but now it's pink and here's why. And all the people who just woke up one day and saw the sky as pink would one day die and be replaced by other people who had only ever seen a pink sky.
Shannon W.:There's a type of groupthink that happens when we're all consuming the same information as the people around us for a long, long time and we all start believing that the same thing is true and we don't have to go to the movies to see this. Okay, so I find myself really hoping that, if you're listening to this, you have watched Barbie and the Matrix, because I haven't dug too deeply into the plot lines of either one of them, and I hope you've got some of your own context for this. But at this point I want to answer the question who wins? And I was originally not going to pick a winner for this episode, even though it is called Barbie versus the Matrix. I'm just not really into winners or losers and I think our society is competitive enough without adding more competition to the fire. But in the process of recording the episode, I've changed my mind and I'm going to actually choose a winner, and here's why I think it's important to be able to take a stand for things we believe in, and one of the things I'm still working on in my own self is taking a stand and being firm in an opinion.
Shannon W.:It's very easy for me to say, oh, there's not a winner or a loser, oh, I liked them both, oh, they both have value, which may be true, but sometimes it's the easy way through and I want to question the times when I truly do have an opinion. I want to question the times when I truly do have an opinion, but I use the phraseology around oh, I can see the good in both of them almost as a means of avoiding giving my opinion. I don't want to do that, and right now especially when we've been infected by cancel culture quite a bit, especially when we've been infected by cancel culture quite a bit, there's an extra fear around being canceled if we say something that might offend someone, so the fear is legit. It can be existentially scary right now just to give your honest opinion about something, and I want to be someone who doesn't shrink back from sharing my opinion and I want to support others to do the same. I don't support cancel culture and I don't want to be a part of it, and I don't want to cancel myself proactively by not giving my opinion. So I know it's just Barbie versus the Matrix, but for that reason, if no other, I am going to pick a winner.
Shannon W.:So if one of these movies had to die and only the other one would be left standing, I would choose the Matrix for the win. Why? Well, first of all, because the call to wake up is so clear in that movie. It's very specific about what it's asking to consider, about who we really are and what we're capable of, and that's what I'm interested in here. That call to wake up is central in the matrix. It's not buried under any parallel plot lines and it can't be missed by watching for something else from a different vantage point. Barbie definitely contains a wake-up call as well. It's just not as clear and so it doesn't serve the same purpose quite as well. And another reason I'm choosing the Matrix for the win.
Shannon W.:I think that movie has a real potential to open up kind of a wormhole in our consciousness. It's an action movie and it's a sci-fi movie, but it's also a spiritual movie about life and death and love and power and the power of belief. And if we explore into the matrix deeply we can really be inspired to explore the question of what we accept as real and the veils that might be pulled over our eyes. So all this is not meant to dismiss Barbie as unimportant. She definitely isn't a loser.
Shannon W.:I think the fact that Barbie appeals to a huge, wide audience with this, what I believe is a quite an empowering message, especially for women, especially for people who have not heard a feminist message before. You know, when I watched the sort of the feminism basics 101 speech that America Ferreira's character gives, gloria gives to Barbie when Barbie is feeling inadequate and unworthy and not enough, and Gloria basically gives her this touching monologue where she's explaining to Barbie like this is what it feels like to be a woman in this world. So much is asked of us and so little respect is given to us, so little power is given to us, so much perfection is demanded of us and, at the same time, in so many ways, we're shown again and again that we're not worthy, and I was crying. That speech made me cry, and it's not that I don't know these things or that I haven't heard these things, but I was crying because I was like, yeah, that's it, that's it. And I was sitting next to my partner and I was like that's it, because I had just been talking to him before the movie about something that was bothering me about, about women growing older and being seen as lesser, and he was hearing me, but he was, I think, not quite able to put himself in my shoes and when Gloria gave her speech to Barbie was like that's what I'm talking about. And when we got out of the theater, he actually said to me something like so do you feel seen? And I was like, yeah, actually, I do, actually, I do.
Shannon W.:So I think that, whether we're going there for that message or not, little girls are going to see this. Middle-aged women are going to see this. Elder women are going to see this. Middle-aged women are going to see this. Elder women are going to see this, teenagers are going to see this, Women of all ages, men of all ages.
Shannon W.:So, just setting aside the question of waking up, the Barbie movie has the opportunity now to facilitate conversations about empowerment, feminism, questions about what is the patriarchy, what does it look like, what is the problem with this? Conversations between mothers and daughters and fathers and daughters and sons around some critical issues around equality that affect us in real time. And it's not just equality among genders that needs to be explored in our society. There's a lot of other issues around equality, as we know, that need to be brought to light. So anything that brings this to light is very powerful in my book. So Barbie's a bit subversive in that it kind of entices us into thinking that we're just going to go watch a fun and lighthearted movie about a doll and it lures us in and it serves us up something deeper and more relevant. So yeah, of course it could go deeper, but as it is, it goes pretty deep and it does it in a way that is fun and funny and entertaining and empowering.
Shannon W.:Barbie not only made me cry, it made me laugh out loud, neither of which the Matrix ever did, and it made me feel like I'm not alone. So in the end, man, I just really appreciate both movies. They both made me think, both twisted my mind around in a way that I enjoy and I think is valuable. I think if you put both movies together, in the end you get something really useful. They prove that there's more than one way to get a wakeful message across, like it's wise to consider the big picture and the long-term potential for what may happen to human beings if we don't maintain our wakefulness. And it's also necessary to live in the world as it is and to know how to live with compassion and grace and courage to confront the everyday problems, small and big, that we face in our world right now. In the end, barbie could have stayed in Barbie land, but she chooses to go back and be real.
Shannon W.:And finally, when we're talking about winners, I just want to talk about entertainment and fun as a win in themselves. You know there's something really sweet about entertainment for the sake of entertainment. It just feels so good to laugh. Laughter is built into our biology and people who make us laugh feel great to be around, and leaving a movie that's entertaining makes us feel good. That means that's valuable, and it also feels good to cry and to be afraid and surprised and to feel other emotions in the somewhat controlled environment in a movie and really connect to human emotion, shared emotion and put ourselves into somewhere else's story. And that comes back to what I was saying earlier about stories also being sort of part of our makeup as human beings. Sitting in a movie theater with other people and watching a movie together, it is a modern form of storytelling and story sharing. And even though I might not be talking to the person next to me during the movie, we walk out of the movie having shared something together, having lived through a story together, and we're both carrying that story back out into the world.
Shannon W.:As I also mentioned earlier, some of us can be extremely serious about our lives and me included and it can feel almost like an unnecessary distraction to go to the movies. Or, worse yet, it can feel like by going to the movies we're taking our attention away from those really serious issues and that we're dismissing the pain and suffering of the world. But remember and I remind myself of this as well we were not born into this world to only feel the sadness of the world. We're made to feel joy and pleasure for a reason because it is part of the human experience, it is part of the DNA, and I would say that there is so much sadness in the world, suffering needs our joy If we care deeply about the world and we want to work for change.
Shannon W.:Over time life can start to feel very heavy Laughter. And entertainment can be a balm for the soul. They can uplift our spirit, they can feed all those happy chemicals in our bodies and it really keeps us fit for the long haul fight. If we have a fight to fight, taking back our pleasure and our joy and our willingness to rest and take in entertainment without asking first how long is it? We owe that rest to ourselves, whether we care about waking up or not. Focusing only on what's wrong will break us down and the world needs us to be whole. World needs us to be whole.
Shannon W.:So let me just end by saying if you feel within yourself a calling, a pull, an urge, that there's something more for you, that there's something more to this life that's meant for you as a human being and you want to know what's real and you want to know what's true, keep searching. Know that you're not alone. I believe it's part of the human condition to want to seek our source, to want to know where we're from, to want to know where we belong, to want to know what's real, to want to know what's real. This is what Barbie's wanting. This is what Neo is wanting. They're just wanting to live their own life. They don't want to live a lie.
Shannon W.:Reality isn't always beautiful. It isn't always pink. It's often really messy and really hard. But you don't have to do it alone and if you're struggling, get some support. If you're struggling with mental health, ask for support. If you're struggling, feeling just alone, like you can't figure this out, talk to people. You're going to find other people who feel alone and you can't figure it out. We're not alone.
Shannon W.:There's a quote from ecologist paul shepherd which I quoted in episode two, which is the introduction to the podcast, and here it is. The grief and sense of loss we often interpret as a failure in our personality is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered. So, please, if you feel empty, reach for the beautiful and strange otherness, because it's out there. It's waiting for you to seek it. It's on the other side of the veil. That's it for this episode of the Wake Up Human podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for sticking by me. If you like this episode or you like the podcast, please leave me a review. Reviews can really help me get the word out about the podcast or, better yet, share it with someone you think would like it. This podcast is still a labor of love for me and I'm thrilled if it can be of benefit to someone else. Thanks so much for listening and Happy New Year you.