But I’ll take it because it’s just far too interesting a riddle, to give up.

But, I did find another clue!

In my quest to live offline, I’ve drawn greatly on the movie The Matrix.
The living in a simulation from the movie lines up exactly with us living in our mobile phones.
And the harsh reality, once Neo is awakened from his pod, equalizes how our lives would look, if we’d manage to quit the habit of being online.

Just like in the movie, we too have to choose between a life of comfort and illusion online, or a real life in stark contrast to that.

Reality will never meet artificiality.
Not unless you start including its realness and complexity, as value.

But now, I have found an extra layer to this. One that might explain my relentless poking around in this concept of living offline/ living in the past.

What if what I am really escaping from, and what Neo escaped from, is the collective bee hive mind?
Our shared code?
The social construct with all of its unwritten rules, that has been keeping us unconscious and enslaved, but also in check, for thousands of years?

What if numbing ourselves scrolling, binge watching, and letting ourselves be brainlessly consumed by the online world, is nothing new?
But our collective cage, finally visible to the naked eye.

What if the pull of the online world, and its deception, its ability to take over our lives, is actually a blessing in disguise?

This could be the first time in history, we can escape a Matrix that was there all along.