Builders and Cheaters

The Final Level of the Matrix: You Still Have to Run the Bases

In The Matrix and the Cosmic Joke, we introduced a layered reality of modern existence leaning on the much-loved Matrix analogy. We traced a sort of psychological journey navigating the cultural “operating system” a person is born into as an initial blank slate (hardware) waiting for someone or something else to start uploading schemas, beliefs, and worldviews (all software) into it.

We started with the Unconscious NPC, someone blindly riding the tram line of inherited scripts. Then we moved to the idea of a Performative NPC, who questions things and may voice skepticism or cynicism yet remains paralyzed from fear and uncertainty. From there, we meet the Agent, who “steps off the tram” at an unusual or uncertain stop or perhaps no formal stop at all, breaking free to roam the city, but only to still rely on it for either real (money, needs) or perceived survival (ego, status). The final level, as we imagined, was the Architect — one who sees through all illusions and chooses detachment, or some form of mental and material minimalism far above the fray or “outside the city,” and focuses on the perceived basics.

There is a final level. Perhaps the rarest and even more difficult to identify: Builders.

The Builder doesn’t just “escape the Matrix.” They ultimately return to it but not to play the game again, not to “win” anything, but to reshape the world, which, whether they philosophize broadly about the nature of that world’s existence or not — it exists… with eyes open and ego dissolved. Builders are entirely free from society’s scripts because not only do they not apply to them, they are building entirely new lines of code — picking and choosing from existing lines and threading in new ones — and for reasons independently conjured and reasoned, totally detached from any coding they were uploaded with when they were a primordial “blank slate.”

They re-engage with the world not from delusion, but from deep clarity.

If the Architect is Neo at his peak as we suggested — seeing that fiery orange code in everything even outside the actual simulated Matrix itself — then the Builder is the one who walks back into the city… into the world… and rebuilds it brick by brick based on their own design and making — ignoring all extant coding.

Who Is the Builder (Really)?

You might find a Builder doing the same thing that any other person at any other point in the Cycle would be doing — founding companies, writing books, raising large families, even going to Church — but you won’t always notice them. That’s because Builders are not defined by what they do, but by why they do it.

They don’t act from unconscious programming or performative rebellion. They act from awareness and clarity — still skeptical of meaning itself — yet they choose a purpose anyway. They don’t do this because they achieved “clarity” that they do in fact need applause from others or they need a legacy. They do it because after walking the full arc of questioning, disillusionment, detachment, and ego loss, they return to engage with the world from a deeper place after having returned from transcendence.

Modern society praises outcomes — startups, wealth, credentials, books, innovation. However, Builders know that outcomes can’t and don’t prove intent. Yet intent is the only thing that matters.

This invokes one of Immanuel Kant’s central arguments centuries ago. That is, the moral worth of an action lies not in what outcome it produces, but in why it was done. Kant asked if it was moral if you helped someone but only because doing so would help you in some way, and not because you had an inherent duty to help them because they were in need. Similarly, two people can create the same thing — a company, a following, a life. On paper, they might look identical… but only one may have done it from clarity of conscience devoid of all baseline coding and having come back from a full circumnavigation of the cycle… to a post-ego commitment to their own newly constructed coding of reality, and not tethered to original coding (i.e., social expectations or perceived material or abstract rewards).

Therefore, it is impossible to identify a Builder by their output, by what they are doing, what they have done, or what they have accomplished.

A huge successful business exit, finally making it to the top of the corporate ladder, starting a company, founding a nonprofit, escaping to work on a regenerative farm, writing a minimalist newsletter, traveling the world — any of these could be signs of a Builder. But the same actions can easily come from other stages of the cycle — an unconscious NPC following “status” coding or even an Architect dabbling in work and society solely because they must begrudgingly engage for some form of mental and physical survival.

The difference is the pilgrimage that preceded the outcome.

Builders have questioned every inherited belief. Like a tower of bricks, they didn’t just imagine what it would be like if they knocked it down. They physically tore it down and have the cuts and bruises and squashed toes to show for it.

They’ve flirted with existentialism and nihilism and all other forms of philosophy, sat in the quiet rewriting as much code as they could and letting the rest atrophy. But then they return ready to write something new, even if it sounds the same as before — they wrote it this time free of preconception. This time, they aren’t playing a role. They’re building a new stage. It’s their intent, invisible to everyone else, that gives any work they’re doing meaning.

This is sort of the story of Odysseus — not just returning home from war, but enduring trials, humiliation, and ego loss before reclaiming his place. Without the actual physical journey, the return would have meant absolutely nothing.

The Intellectual Mine Field of Self-Deception

Few ever reach Builder, but many will try to get there dishonestly. This is because along each step of the cycle — as it gets increasingly more difficult emotionally, mentally, spiritually… financially — there lies a minefield of self-deception.

This is where we introduce the concept of Cheating the Cycle. This is when a person more or less pretends to progress through the “NPC → Builder” Matrix cycle without legitimately undergoing any internal transformation. It’s a kind of spiritual fraud, an intellectual shortcut designed to appear like personal growth for self-amelioration.

3 Forms of Cheating the Cycle:

1. False Completion
   Claiming and pretending that you’ve already reflected deeply on all of this, without ever questioning your inherited code — your indoctrination — and never taking a meaningful risk.

   
   An example would be a corporate executive who says, "I’ve thought this all through and I’m happy where I am," but has never attempted to actually go through the motions of the cycle.

2. Performative Progression
   This is when someone “takes risks” — like pursuing digital nomadism or quitting a great job — purely for social credibility and optics and they fully intending to revert back to the same path once the applause fades in the hopes of gaining new status as “rebellious” or an “enlightened” person in some way.

   A good example would be a management consultant or investment banker who leaves their job to “find themselves” abroad, starts a travel blog or podcast about leaving the rat race or pursuing freedom…. but behind the scenes is prepping MBA applications and networking their way back into the corporate world. Their “escape” was just a performance versus a real personal transformation.

3. Selective Engagement
   This is when you pick only the parts of the cycle that are comfortable or socially rewarded… avoiding any real risk, sacrifice, or identification and dismantling of any cognitive-dissonance you’re experiencing.

   
   An example is a tech bro or gal who embraces minimalism, cold plunges, meditation, and posts about “intentional living” but avoids confronting the emotional cost of a strained marriage, resists having children due to lifestyle risk, and rationalizes continued high-paying work in a morally questionable company as a means to ironically fund their “freedom."

Not everyone who “escapes the Matrix” ends up building anything.

And not everyone who appears to build is truly a Builder.

Another analogy to bring it home: You still have to run the bases

Even if you hit a home run. Even if you know, deep in your bones, that the ball is sailing out of the park — you must still round first, second, third, and touch home.

This isn’t just a rule of baseball. It’s a law of transformation.

Use any phrasing or imagery you want…

The path must be walked.

The transformation must be experienced.

Even when the destination seems guaranteed, the pilgrimage cannot be skipped.

You think you know you’re going from point A to point B. But you have to walk there. You can’t just declare by fiat you’re at Point A. You might see a Point C or D or E on your way. Or you might not make it and thus weren’t truly prepared to reach Point A.

As I wrap this up, I’m of course realizing now that this entire mental and spiritual transformation framework is not new or even remotely close to any newly original idea. It is essentially The Hero’s Journey found in stories and myths across all cultures from all places — from Gilgamesh to Odysseus to Luke Skywalker. Every hero must pass through exile, temptation, and death before they can return. Mental clarity isn’t enough. You have to live it and experience the transformation — the pain — yourself.

You must go through the motions. You cannot proclaim that “I could go through the motions, sure, but I know I’ll end up back here because I’ve thought through it really deeply.”

Even if you wholeheartedly believe you’re on the path you should be on, you can only know this for certain if you walk others. You need to see the existence or non-existence of alternatives and return to that path on your own effort and accord.

Even Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, had to abandon comfort, lose himself, and sit beneath the Bodhi tree in complete surrender. Enlightenment wasn’t a theory. It was a fire.

You don’t get to shortcut meaning. Even if your mind grasps the ideas, your life must embody them in reality, not in the abstract.

Final Destination

Again, the cycle — from NPC to Builder — is not new. It’s The Hero’s Journey. But neither is the concept of “Cheating the Cycle.” It’s what French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described over 80 years ago with his concept of “bad faith.” Sartre argued that people deceive themselves by denying their radical freedom, clinging to roles, expectations, or inherited scripts or “coding” as we’d say — to avoid the burden of making authentic choices. Sound familiar?

It’s inauthentic to claim your path is the right one simply because you’ve thought it through deeply. Prove it. Demonstrate authenticity. Very hard to do — that’s the point.

Our Builder archetype embodies Sartre’s call to live authentically — having confronted the void, dismantled the coding of their social conditioning compounded upon their original “blank slate,” and chosen to re-engage with the world from a place of self-defined reasoning. Essentially their own version of reality, not from a place of delusion — but from clarity. To cheat the cycle is to live in bad faith — to pretend the bases have been run without ever stepping onto the field or to hit the home run and refuse to run around the diamond.

True freedom demands the pilgrimage — pain, doubt, and all — because only through lived experience can one build a reality truly of their own design.