“At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest. ”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

very true... the matrix is not the end, just one of the tools employed to achieve the end. as for when and how to fight back... yes, a difficult thing to reduce to a simple formula. even defeat can be feigned in order to ultimately prevail... in the end, i guess you have to go with your heart. but i do recall an old Chinese parable that may have some wisdom to offer, "yu gong yi shan....愚公移山"

"Long long time ago, there was an ninety-year-old man named Yu Gong (愚公) who lived in the north of two high mountains. One was called Tai Hang Mountain and the other Wang Wu Mountain. It was hard for him and his family to get around because of the mountains. So he made up his mind to move the mountains out of his way. One day, Yu Gong called all his family together to talk about how to move the two mountains to other places. His wife said, "An old man like you cannot even move a small hill, not to mention the two high mountains. Even if you can, where can you throw so much earth and stone?"

"Dump them into the Sea of Bohai!" said everyone.

So Yugong, his sons, and his grandsons started to break up rocks and remove the earth. They transported the earth and rubble to the Sea of Bo Hai.

Their neighbor was a widow. She has an eight-year- old son . He was glad to offer his help. Summer went by and winter came. It took them a whole year to travel back and forth once.

On the bank of the Yellow River dwelled an old man named Zhi Sou who was much respected for his wisdom. He laughed at him and said, "You are so silly! You're so old and weak that you can't even take away the grass and trees. How can you move the high mountains?"

Yu Gong shook his head and said,"You're wrong. You can't even compare with the widow's little boy! Even if I am dead, there will still be my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my great great grandchildren. They will go on forever. But these mountains will not grow taller. We shall move them one day!" Seeing the old man so confident, Zhi Sou was tongue-tied.

The gods of the two mountains, hearing about Yu Gong's words, was afraid that Yu Gong and his family would never stop just as he said to Zhi Sou, and thus reported the Emperor of Heaven about this. Moved by Yu song's spirits, the Emperor of Heaven ordered the two mountains to be moved away. Yu Gong’s dream came true."

http://www.chinesestoryonline.com/idiom-story/127-yu-gong-yi-shan.html