Way down deep past anything rational, it seems my deepest fears are about not being able to meet my (let’s call them) Obligations.

I just had a shallow nightmare in which the worst happened on several levels at once.

I learned that my job was over and done with; that I would not be Renewed at the end of the contract year and that somehow there were no other jobs. (I’ve already lived through this exact dread in real life, and survived it, but the fear is still inside me anyway, and that might be the most troubling part.)

Then out beyond that, I couldn’t remember when I was supposed to show up at work, at the job that was ending anyway. It seemed likely that I had already missed at least one shift, or class I was supposed to teach, but I just didn’t know for certain.

Then, on top, it seemed like I had rented multiple places, but hadn’t been to them for a while, and wasn’t clear about when the rents were due or if they were current.

Finally, my important stuff was vulnerably scattered in a public place, and when I got it all stuffed back into bags I could manage to carry, I realized my wallet was missing and probably swiped. There was only a little bit of cash in it, and no money cards, but I no longer had possession of a driving license and was trying to remember what other papers had now gone missing.

“Making” money. Paying bills. Externalized memory and lists as compensatory behavior. Being owned by stuff at least as much as owning it.

These are the exact issues I spend most of my waking time working on, and the exact strategies I use to manage them.

And: almost none of it is real.

Donald David Hoffman is … a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science.

And, in spite of all those things, he still manages to be a brilliant and compelling speaker, to my ear. You could decide for yourself, but that’s not why I’m writing to you, either.

I’m writing to give a proper answer to that question about what The Matrix is, and is-saying.

Why am I doing that?

Clearly, I am motivated in large part by irrational fears.

But also …

The desire to transcend them, and the civilized matrix itself, in some definitive way, before my time is up.

This is the point where what looks like Physics starts to look a lot more like what the Buddha was laying down.

Not because any flavor of either science or religion matters, but because if there is any solution, it has to involve traveling a path up out of the illusion, and past the nightmare.

Transcending it.