I am reminded of the story of when Dr. Steven Strange goes looking for help in Kamar-Taj in Nepal. Dr. Strange expected to find his answer on top of some mountain or hill or at least high up in a skyscraper. Dr. Strange did not expect to find his answer on the same level of we ordinary human beings.
This is not surprising at first given that at the beginning of the story, Dr. Strange, a surgeon, is seen as living his best life in New York with many watches, a nice apartment in the city, and settled down with an attractive medical doctor. All that changed one fateful evening as Dr. Strange is involved in a car accident so terrible that it took away the use of his hands.
I won’t give away the movie other than to say that Dr. Strange goes through his own journey of self-reflection and self-knowing, a journey that we all face to varying degrees of difficulty and reflection.
I believe that for most of us the journey ends or at least is put on the back burner when we choose the typical path: school, marriage, kids, twice-a-year vacations. We choose, as Morpheus described to Neo, the Blue Pill and accept the path of a particular fate hoping that we end up with a spouse and kids who love us and enough of a retirement fund that takes us to a comfortable end.
For a few of us, we choose the Red Pill, or at least a path we think is opposite of the Blue Pill. The Red Pill is supposed to give us that open door to reality where we fight off Agent Smith and his minions, eat slop for breakfast, and seek out the next squad of unfortunates ready to join the battle against The Matrix.
Most choose the path opposite to the Blue Pill. The opposite path for most of us is nothing but rebellion with little to no insight. After a while, we are concerned with only the fight against those agents that seek to keep us locked down in the fantasy land that the Blue Pill provides. Those that stay stuck in the whirling dervish provided in the combative atmosphere of agents versus Blue Pill swallowers are, in my opinion, just as bad as the agents. Fear of moving to a higher plane leaves them choosing to just engage in combat and call the feud a win whenever they come out on top, at least for that few minutes.
The remaining few rebels with the Red Pill are seeking more, at least seeking a higher plane of reality or consciousness. There is more, they think, to just staying on the ground, no matter the color of the pill that one takes. But in their climb to a higher reality or consciousness are they not risking the same path of the taker of the Blue Pill? Are they not like the 30-year-old candidates for renewal in Logan’s Run, stretching out their arms toward an unrewarding fate?
One problem here is that we may see staying on Dr. Strange’s level ground as some kind of failure. Rather, some may choose to ascend to the higher level that Dr. Strange is standing on. That higher level that I see Dr. Strange standing on is his mind. While his mind allowed him to venture to other places, levels (a la Bruce Lee‘s Game of Death), and dimensions, his mind kept him, in my opinion, on a particular level, whether spiritual, energetic, and/or physical.
In most mindsets of 21st century man, we rather see Dr. Strange or Bruce Lee’s Hai Tien as ascending various floors of self-knowledge in order to reach a higher level of understanding. In my mind, I see either character on a level grass field, legs crossed, eyes closed, and palms extended seeking guidance from elements around them and seeing through their minds where they are going.
In other words, I can see both characters using some form of meditation to ascend.
Is there a problem, however, with just staying on the ground? Why do we have to ascend to anything or anywhere in order to solve a problem?
For some, staying on the ground is an admission of failure. They must research books and publications, attend conferences, meet other distinguished individuals, and spend their time writing so that they make it to the next level. All this in order to gain acceptance from their peers. The advent of artificial intelligence tells me that in the immediate future, artificial intelligence may make these efforts a waste of time.
For example, stories are percolating that an increasing number of students are relying on artificial intelligence to answer questions or write papers. Media is also reporting that some larger going concerns are mass firing employees and replacing them with artificial intelligence although some market observers see this action merely as a way to lay off workers and replace them with cheaper labor.
If individual efforts are being curtailed in the training grounds of academia, what happens when these individuals enter the workforce?
Alton Drew
2 July 2026
Contract Law. 