I dont think I needed to be debt free to see that - but for the average joe public it can be scary how little they understand about loans/debt/interest etc.
For example my dear old dad is buying a brand new gas guzzling anti-vegetarian 4x4 this week.
He was suckered into taking out finance from the dealer (backed by a bank) for said the said tank. I went mad, told him to cancel their agreement and get a loan himself via a bank. When he said why I showed him that he would be repaying 8k more than he is paying for the car (in fact they were giving him an 8k discount, only to re-coup that on the loan arrangement!!)
I like the matrix analogy, in fact i love it. At the risk of thread creep it amazes me how many people I see at work that have their head so deep in the sand, grains of it are coming out the end. Some of these people are quite high up and it frightening that they are running the show.