The System is owned by Satan - I mean that the whole world of System (bureaucracy, legalism, totalitarianism, the Ahrimanic - abstraction and impersonality...) is intrinsically demonic in its ultimate nature and tendency.
Many, many have reached this insight over the past 250 years - but there is a problem...
If Not, Then What? If we recognise The System as evil, from where do we make this recognition? If we recognise The Matrix - then where might we escape to that is Not Matrix?
Is every-thing, actually, really The Matrix?
The answer depends on ultimate assumptions. Is there God? Yes is a first step: is God a God of System?
For many Christians (although not, apparently, for Jesus) Christianity is a System called Church. Yet a deep and honest analysis always leads to the conclusion that Church is also System - and not accidentally, but intrinsically.
Church is Not outside System - it is a part of it. So that really - in actuality and ultimately - Church is Not opposed-to System, is Not distinct-from System - and is Not an alternative nor an escape-from System... except in a sort-of, relative, quantitative (and therefore ultimately un-satisfactory) sense.
(Church which is merely and necessarily Not-so-bad-System is inadequate; Church which is bureaucracy, abstraction, legalism is impersonal - hence System - hence rejected by the heart as ultimately part of the demonic scheme.)
We can imagine an escape from System into childhood, Original Participation, the Luciferic, the Old Magic... but Childhood is innocence and un-conscious, from adolescence we are conscious and sexual beings - so that if, as such, we attempt to return to childhood, we take our sexuality and consciousness with us.
The result is as we saw in the late 1960s - a dishonest, selfish, despairing hedonism. Not the child-like; but a horribly sexualised and manipulative child-ish-ness. We are back to the demonic by another route.
So our escape from System must be into that which is distinct from System*, precedes System; is personal - is a matter of individual and unique Beings and their unique and Loving relationships.
This is not abstract nor wishful - it is there-to-be-recognised as actual personal experience; as the true-and-proper basis underlying marriage and family: deeper and realer than the institutional arrangements by which The System tries to sometimes reinforce and sustain, but nowadays capture and subvert, marriage and family.
There is therefore a real and primary world outside of System, enclosing System (below, all around and above System) - and that is of-God, and of-our-selves.
It can (in principle) be touched and inhabited by any person at any time and is the destination of those who choose to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected life eternal.
Escape from the Matrix is to dwell in this world of objectively-loving-relationships (in Heaven).
Albeit our lives in this mortal situation are about learning - therefore, it is not possible (nor desirable) for us to dwell-in Heaven now, constantly: that comes later.
The fact we may go into, and out-from, Heaven - during mortal life - is a vital exprience for our learning.We look at life 'from both sides' - and that is intentional and necessary.
What we do need to do now (in mortal life) is each to learn from our dwelling in a mortal world that pretends to be all-System, and nothing-but System; in all its mixed, but ultimately Satanic, nature. This is termed (variously) theosis, deification, sanctification and spiritual progression.
Each person's proper path of theosis is unique and bespoke-tailored. It uses The System, to teach us lessons (which we may, or may not, learn) while remaining apart from it.
* All (without exception) mainstream politics, all secular (not-religious) political theory, all actual and possible non-creator-god ideologies are ultimately just-another-Matrix. This is why nobody is sufficiently motivated to do anything substantive - high risk, long-termist, self-sacrificing, requiring-of-courage - towards a more common-sensical, more 'efficient', more peaceful and prosperous world... i.e. Why the secular Right just loses and loses and loses. Who wants to risk, probably sacrifice, themselves for a different version of the same thing? Indeed, en masse, secular populations cannot even be motivated to have enough children to replace themselves, cannot be motivated to prevent them-selves being demonised and replaced (at their own expense!) with millions upon millions - unceasing - of assorted hostile outsiders... Because, who wants to commit his life to just-another-Matrix? Nobody, really - or a mere handful of powerless, low status types. Courage comes from a genuine and better hope - which is why hope (and faith and love) is a virtue.