The Illusion of Choice

A Matrix_Philosophy

You Call that a Choice (2024)

(The Matrix Resurrections, 2021)

It has been over 15 years since I wrote about The Matrix films. Over much of that time, I returned to the ground-breaking trilogy again and again for viewings. I’ve probably watched each of them 50 times, maybe more, mostly via Blu-Ray on a powerful, loud system, and a large screen. Like other franchises I love, they never get old, and once I’d internalized each of the films, as well as The Animatrix, it has always been edifying to “read” each through another, enriching the meanings deeper over time. One of the best things about the work was that it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This was not an endless list of cookie-cutter films like the inch-deep Marvel Universe, but a tightly woven story with dozens of levels and meanings.

Needless to say, any new film with The Matrix in its name had huge expectations to fulfill for filmmakers and viewers alike. Yet, when I heard Resurrections was a thing, like many people, I’d long since stopped going to actual movie theaters. What had been a profound and rich experience for me during the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s, had instead become a terrible experience, no matter what the film. Sitting in a large, very cold, mostly empty theater, listening to people chomp on popcorn or talk on their phone, and pay for the privilege of trying to focus on the movie, just no longer holds any appeal for me. Don’t ask me why. So, just as with the new Star Wars “sequel” films and others, I specifically didn’t go see something I highly anticipated seeing. Remaining unspoiled by reviews or opinions, I just waited for the Blu-Ray release, to watch Resurrections in my own home theater.

So, what did I think? Well, I was blown away! The new Matrix film struck me with an even more slick cinematography and audio, and the adaptation of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit alone is a work of art. From “simulatte” to “modal” code to blue pills and so much more, the layered references and meanings were there, just like in the older films. The internal references to the original trilogy (aptly termed “callbacks” by the new Morpheus), though criticized by some who seem to miss the point, are actually integral to the plot, and tease out yet another programmer’s reference, that of a callback function, a looped in process which affects the ongoing flow. You can’t have a story about convincing someone their past experiences were just a video game without showing a few scenes.

Deeper meanings came into clearer view upon multiple viewings, of course. One thing which emerged for me was a new and refreshing focus on Trinity (and all the female characters) in a way that highlighted her role in the previous films, but also tied in with the filmmakers themselves. Over the last number of years, I hadn’t heard about the Wachowski Brothers, Larry and Andy, becoming the Wachowski Sisters, Lana and Lilly. I really only learned of this when I got the Blu-Ray and watched the documentaries, and I applaud the courage and focus it must take to be transgender in a society like ours, particularly for someone who is well-known.

Clearly, this is another major layer of interpretation to apply to The Matrix series. Far from just “finding another shell”, someone who transitions genders both becomes a new person and also allows who they always were deep down to shine out. While the story of Resurrections seems to focus on Neo, it is really driven on the protagonist side by several women, from Niobe to Sati to Bugs to Trinity and others. Yet, this was always true of The Matrix films, of course including the Oracle, but also Niobe, Persephone, Sati, Trinity, and others. “The only way to get there, is together,” said the Oracle in Reloaded, and she and Neo combined with Smith at the end of Revolutions to reset the prime program. In Resurrections, though, it is Trinity, who with a notably weakened Neo, forms a duality bond revealed as inherent to the “anomaly of anomalies”.

The Sixth One, Neo, was always a duality, not just of Smith vs Neo as we understood, but now of Trinity plus Neo, as we are shown in Resurrections. It was always Trinity’s belief in The One, in Neo, that made his transformation possible in the first place - that was clear from the original trilogy. Other potentials could have become The Sixth One in order to fulfill the prophecy, but without Trinity’s commitment and love, Neo would not have even been found. “I’m nobody,” he said in the beginning. When Trinity and Neo again see each other in the “real world” (more on that later) after her rescue in Resurrections, the look on their faces and the thoughts in their hearts were rich with all of the emotion of realizing their equal bond. Now this source of power, of why, is revealed as a bond of equality, much like the “diad in the force” from The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Where all this takes us in the reported Matrix sequels to come will be exciting.

About that concept of the “real”, we are again reminded of it all throughout Resurrections. Just as with the original trilogy, it is clear to me that the “real world” is not any more “real” than the Matrix itself. The clues were always there right from The Matrix (1999) and following. Sentinels flying with no means of propulsion, being in the Matrix without being jacked in, the Machine City and Matrix code made of light, programs moving back and forth between “worlds”, and many more illustrations, all of them made it clear. In Resurrections, we even get the physical (and “crazy expensive”) rebuilding of Neo and Trinity, whom had died. The characters are never aware of it, including the Architect, Oracle, and Analyst, but we are: The Matrix they speak of is only a Matrix within a Matrix, and the Real World they speak of bears little resemblance to the reality we know (which we presume really is “real”). This bifurcation allows for another duality in the story lines, but also creates a fundamental tension and struggle for those in the “real” world of Zion and Io, and the Machine City (or cities).

So, what does this mean, that the Real World of the Matrix films is not real? It means the whole thing is a morality play on a grand scale. The overall Matrix story never even hints at what might be underneath the “source of light”, as I put it in 2003, and it’s clear the filmmakers want that underlying reality to be left to viewer interpretation. Is the source emanating from a spirit world or some heaven? Is it coming from yet another matrix layer? Is it another illusion or mirror? That is all for you to imagine. This means the entire Matrix story is a test of who you are given the character choices within. It’s clear the story operates on providence and purpose, cause and effect, action and reaction, but not chance, coincidence, or freedom. Or does it? Again, “the problem is choice”. How can we understand our choices if all we’re doing is reacting to the inputs we experience? Essentially, I’m asking, are you good or bad? Are you striving for freedom in a determined universe, or are you just part of the swarm? Are you fighting for something more than your own survival, for love, or peace, as Smith asks in Revolutions, or are you just another “hate bot” blue pill sheep “copper top”, sleep walking the same day over and over again, powering the very system designed to enslave you? We call that a choice. Of course, these are difficult philosophical questions for all of us.

As Descartes argued so long ago in his Meditations on First Philosophy (1642), and as echoed throughout The Matrix films, the world I live in may very well be a deterministic ruse planned to enslave me by an evil genius mastermind, but so long as I can choose any part of who I am, I am indeed thinking, and thus I exist as an individual in some way. “I think, therefore, I am.” This powerful irrefutable meditation changed everything, paving the way for Modern Philosophy and our Modern World focused on the individual. So long as we make choices we become individuals rather than automatons. “The Matrix cannot tell you who you are.” Neither can the corporate, deeply polarized, wasteful, iniquitous, hugely complex, machine we call modern society tell us who we are. By making choices, we remain individuals, subjectivities, “apparently free”, and as long as those choices bend toward progress and freedom for everyone, then we are being ethical, as Kant argued in his great works on morality (1785, 1788).

But, are we really making choices, or is this just another illusion, the illusion of choice? Believe it or not, this is a very deep question in Metaphysics, that main trunk of Philosophy. As the Architect said, human emotion is made up of chemical precursors designed to overwhelm Logic, another branch of Philosophy. So, how can you make a choice when every single aspect seems to be governed by a deterministic causal chain? What started the chemical precursors to a choice? It must be desire, or fear, or joy, and so on. What caused those, if not events in your life? And what are those events, and the world all around us, including our own selves, but one extremely complex electromagnetic field? This is the conundrum of Subjectivity. On the one hand, there is no real distinction between the thoughts in your head, the head they are in, the air outside the head, and on and on. Yet, on the other hand, there is simply some form of motive force at work in our lives, and indeed the lives of every living creature no matter how simple or small.

This “subjective effect”, as Hume argued, and as supported by Descartes before him, just simply is. It exists in some way. Try as we might, we cannot prevent some people from doing things we do not want them to do, and likewise, no matter how enslaved we may be, we nevertheless do engage in reasoning and make our own choices. Whether to turn my head a certain way, to sit rather than stand, to write this essay rather than doing something else, these are all choices which cannot easily be seen as controlled from outside myself. Just as what might emanate that source light in the Matrix films, if there is some underlying cause for every single micro-moment of my existence, along with everyone else’s micro-moments, we simply have no evidence of it. Regardless, we simply are, because we think, we emote, we choose. We are our own causal mechanism as much as the world outside ourselves. There is zero scientific_evidence to suggest otherwise.

This is why it is ethical, or moral, to make choices which maximize, or at least do not diminish, the freewill of other people and other creatures on this Earth. Your choice to hurt someone, control someone, dominate or in any way prevent someone from being happy, is an unethical choice, even if you think you’re doing it for some other “right” reason. You can extend this reasoning to corporate and political choices, to national and international developments, and so on. It’s all built upon the same basic principle, that you can choose to be good or bad in every moment. The Matrix films, as well as the Star Wars films, the Lord of the Rings films, and many, many others, are all illustrating this simple truth, that you choose how the “matrix” is going to define you, as much as any external causes.

It was always my hope that my reviews and commentaries on these films helped viewers appreciate philosophical aspects of The Matrix. If you like martial arts, there’s plenty of that. Into guns? No shortage of them. You dig counter-culture, Gothic themes, or computer worlds? Again, it’s got you. But these deep philosophical questions are what The Matrix films are really all about, and seeing them play out really gives me joy while watching my favourite films. I can’t wait to see what they do with this second trilogy or series!

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Older Than You Know (2008)

(Commentary)

In the passage of years following that big year for Matrix fans, 2003, and of course, the breakthrough in 1999, I find the “trilogy”, “franchise”, or just “series”, as more and more relevant to today’s world, while also striking themes far older. In 1999, and ever the contrarian, I was skeptical about the popular first film, partly because it quickly became a “must see” film (whose DVD release later became the first “must buy”, which I bought), but also because I did not know it would be followed up with such a wonderful and rich series of stories, or that the basic questions arising out of the first film would_be_addressed. In 2003, also in a contrarian mode, I ignored general disappointment expressed by popular sentiment and strongly pushed the sequel films as being even better, and far more substantial, than the first. While the first gave us the basics of Epistemology, the second taught us about Ethics and the third much more about Metaphysics and Teleology. I found the Matrix sequels more philosophical than the opening film.

During that time, and in years since, “geeks” my age have enjoyed the completion of the troubled and inconsistent Star Wars “saga”, as well as the incredibly well-produced Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, based on the Tolkien book which was not originally a trilogy. We have also seen countless Sci-Fi and action flicks coming our way which are quite forgettable by comparison, many which are downright insulting. In my view, only the Peter Jackson directed Lord of the Rings “franchise” meets the quality and emotional import of The Matrix series, and indeed, surpasses it in some ways in the “extended edition” form. Jackson’s approach to Rings was unflinchingly careful and serious toward the book, and actually perfects the book, rereading it into a flawless “trilogy” of films unlikely to be bested on cinematic and artistic merits anytime soon. If you want to study the basics of great story-telling in tripartite form, you only need study Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and its supporting documentaries and commentaries.

The Matrix films are at least equal in story-telling stature, if not as well developed in terms of satisfying virtually every curiosity, as Rings. What they lack in definite answers they more than make up for in rich connections, multi-layered possibilities of interpretation, and of course, sexy visuals and sounds. The look “back” to the Matrix is really not much of a looking back, so much has a perennial return to that source of inspiration which cannot be limited to 2003 or 1999, a continual reflection on the overarching theme, as I see it, that “choice is an illusion”, as The Merovingian lectured. In a time where we face all kinds of choices, we have to ask ourselves if we have real power, if we know the “why” behind our choices. Like The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix is a timeless tale, and in that, endlessly rewarding in viewing after viewing. As The Architect notes, it is “older that you know”.

Below follows my reviews of the trilogy, or what we can now call the first three films. After much thought, I’ve ordered them from last to first, and they do contain many spoilers. First, my 2003 views on Revolutions should illuminate key meanings to enjoy the trilogy, then my 2003 review of Reloaded holds the key to really understanding both the first three films, as well as the larger series now unfolding. Lastly, there I’ve provided a short discussion from 1999 on a public newsgroup, Alt.Philosophy. The two articles I wrote in 2003 about the series appeared here on GetWiki and have expanded my work on “The_Matrix_Philosophy”.

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The Source of Light (2003)

(The Matrix Revolutions, 2003)

Now that The Matrix Revolutions is out to complete the trilogy, and now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the film and the overall arch of the three-part work, I can finally say I’m intimately satisfied, and more so every time I reflect on it. To be sure, on first viewing, like many others, I was tremendously disappointed by Revolutions. But, I was nearly as disappointed on the first viewing of Reloaded, and much more after the first Matrix, and many other films. It is all too easy to forget, art which will be satisfying, even edifying, is going to take some time to digest. We all know people who sit at a premiere of a film like this, fully geeked out, and pretend to get every single reference, allusion and subtext on a cold viewing, but they are just pretending, I assure you. They are usually not interested in the finer layers underneath the celluloid. I enjoy all the neat references too, like the repeated use of “101”, the allusions to sci-fi classics, and the subtext of light, but what mainly interests me is the philosophical, the deeper meaning.

Perception and Reality

So, like many at the end of Reloaded, I was left with certain expectations of how Revolutions would and should complete the trilogy. Call me demanding and presumptuous, but consider this: Our Neo gained powers in the “real world”; Zion had already been destroyed five times, along with five previous One’s; the overwhelming tone of the first and second films led one to conclude there was no Freewill, and that even the “real world” might not be real. Now, given all of this, I hoped the third film could indulge the appetite for action, but show us how these setups lead to an inexorable conclusion: The “real world” depicted in the films was just another layer underneath the matrix.

Further, I expected the characters would learn they were still plugged in, and had only been tricked into believing they were unplugged, that the “children of Zion”, as Tank had called himself, would find they had been inside a matrix all along. I also hoped this layer would give way to yet another bubble of “reality”, whereby we would be brought back to our own real world somehow, or at least outside any hint of the depicted matrix, perhaps back to Thomas Anderson sitting at his computer. I expected that because the rules of machines were constantly evoked, because destiny was constantly privileged over chance, because the characters were so wooden, that we would find our heroes unplugged for real in the final chapter. I expected the lessons Anderson learned as Neo would be the whole point, that he was merely a gamer in a role-playing exercise, and that in saving Zion and confronting Smith, he, as the player Neo, just as any other player in the simulation, learns he was saving himself, or saving us.

At first, I felt let down from my ideals, but after a second viewing and reading a slew of reviews online, I’ve been able to see that most of my ideals were met. Consider the following: Neo’s powers, including his ability to see beyond Time, stem from his connection to the Source; Zion and the previous One’s had fallen more predictably, where as our Neo was different, as the Architect noted; our Neo shows us at the end of the trilogy that there is Freewill, at least for him, even within the determinism of the Source; Neo had already received a spoon from an orphan in the “real world”; and the “real world” was shown to be generated by either machines or the Source itself in the opening frames.

Now, most of the characters know nothing about this, although some viewers might point to Morpheus’ last words, “Is this real?”, as evidence. I think his reaction is natural, given a life spent waiting and fighting for the end of the war. We are not brought to a world outside the worlds depicted, but that was not a precise requirement. Star Wars episodes, for example, do not show us a world outside the story lines. We are shown that the fundamental basis of all the worlds in The Matrix Trilogy is the fire-code light our Neo can now see. Everything we see, the matrix, the “real world” and the machine city, along with other characters, is built upon that. The entirety of the story takes place within appearances, which makes it a story of simulations, but also a story of mythology. At the end, we can now see that the wooden quality of the acting is intentional, because everyone is a program, and for programs, there is no Freewill, only the illusion of choice. Neo’s role in the great game was to see beyond, or beneath this reality, to save himself and everyone else. Through all his visions, the vignettes at the beginning of the sequels and throughout, we are saved from determinism by seeing a part of what he sees: The Light.

Light

In fact, Light is itself a powerful subtext, metaphor and element of the trilogy. Everyone knows the light inside the matrix has a green colour balance. Fewer might recognize the light in the “real world” is not white balanced, but blue balanced. Thirdly, the light of the Source is gold or red balanced. Red, green and blue, or RGB, are primary colours, and The Matrix Trilogy shows us how the blue and green light is added atop the golden red, or split out from it. Also, red is an exciting colour, while green is restful and blue is cheerful. So, the matrix is a place of rest, Zion one of cheer, and underneath it all is the excitation of the Source. There is also a loose reference to the colours of the chakra, where red is the base, sexual energy, green the heart, and blue the mind, but different chakra systems make this classification difficult to overlay onto the films.

Because I am working on a trilogy myself, I noticed there is another use of light in the films, as an arc across the story, if you will. In classical multi-part works, there is an affinity for crafting the story so that it begins in a neutral light, becomes dark with tragedy, then is lifted to full lightness through triumph. So, The Matrix Trilogy shows us the neutral light of Neo’s early birth, then shows how the darkness the Oracle fears is approaching as an inevitable part of life, but then how Neo’s path is transformed by turning the darkness to light through death itself. This is why he increasingly interacts directly with the Source, why his matrix visage, along with Smith’s, are turned to light, and why there is a golden sunset within the matrix at the end, which incidentally, balances out the green of the matrix to a golden, or even white light balance. This is also why Trinity is allowed to see the real Sun at the end, in the final nod to Plato’s myths of the Cave and the Sun. Trinity looks upon the Truth, she sees the Light.

Source

Finally, it cannot escape notice that a heavy theme through out is the Messianic, the Gnostic and Buddhist. Here, the trilogy shows us how the path of the One is one of slowly shedding the body, which is a deterioration of the spirit. Neo’s journey is to overcome the gross nature of matter, a point which Smith makes clear both in the first and third films, and to return to the Parent-Spirit, the Source. Gnostic and Buddhist salvation, then, is the return of all things to what they were before, hence “Revolutions”, and free the light sparks from their material imprisonment. Neo is like the son of God, saviour of the people, whom even Alexander the Great said had seen an Oracle in Egypt, who told Jesus he was the son of Amen-Re. Given this primary element of the trilogy, it would have been strange to return to a Thomas Anderson at his computer, as I hoped for originally, because that would have been a backwards movement, not at all in keeping with the basic Gnostic mythology. Neo, son of the Deus ex Machina, must return to the Source, to turn darkness into light, war into peace, discord into a harmony of primary colours.

Indeed, the return of Neo to the Source, his bodily semblance to be gently carried away on the Arthurean barge, is really the only kind of an outcome which would truly complete this trilogy, because of the carefully laid groundwork. To finish with the whole scenario being merely a computer game or a simulation is a reasonable interpretation, but not a fulfilling one. To edify us all, something larger and deeper is needed than a mere virtual reality trip, and that is the attainment of higher wisdom through knowledge itself, through the return to the ground of all reality. However, we may still cite our Baudrillard, noting the Simulacra, the “desert of the real” of the machine world, Zion and the matrix. Neo’s path takes him beneath the desert, to light itself. This is why the Oracle feels the programs in the matrix may see him again, and in fact, he could have embodied Sati to render the sunset, but more likely, it was her own found purpose to render the new light.

Conclusion

Four years after the first film opened, and after dozens of viewings on DVD, I am still wowed by the warp in world-view the first two films offer. The first really takes us for a ride, with the development of the simulation, and the second, with its reduction of choice and chance to destiny. I now believe the third does the same, with its revelation of light, making the second all the more important in the overall trilogy. While I lament the dependence on and glorification of violence in these and other films, I now see that too as so many simulacra within the story, not to mention a vital hook to get viewers in the seats, buyers in the stores. There are many more layers of references in the films than I have illuminated; from Sati’s father’s name coming from Hindu mythology; to Smith becoming both the cancer and flesh he so deplored while interrogating Morpheus; to the gradual reducing number of regular people in the matrix, from billions at the beginning until we reach zero at the end, all freed by the Architect. No reviewer can hope to catalogue all of the references and meanings; I only hoped to provide a few layers which were the most meaningful to me. Revolutions, the title itself an obvious two-letter play on Revelations, is the crowning touch of a ground-breaking trilogy.

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The Illusion of Choice (2003)

(The Matrix Reloaded, 2003)

The second Matrix film came out [four years after the first], and I was happy to see it, but like many others, I also expected to be wowed by a mind-bending type of plot, as found in the first film. My expectation was not met at first, but upon reflection. Online, I’ve read several reviews by well-intentioned writers who simply did not see that the second film does this job of turning the mind around, only by doing it in a different way. The problem, as Neo says, is choice. In The Matrix Reloaded, we have to understand that the hidden messages are hidden in different ways than in the first. The second film also complicates the first, which left us with a simplistic understanding of the relation of hero to matrix. The third will no doubt clarify these tensions through many climaxes and resolutions.

Philosophy

When the first Matrix film opened, I was fairly critical of it. At the time, I was not impressed as much as many fans with the Philosophy, and felt there were several plot questions which got in the way. Being a philosopher myself, it is easy to gloss over much of what counts as philosophical in the film, as well as the recent The Matrix Reloaded, as sophomoric, what one would encounter during an introductory course. I sometimes neglect to recall that most people never take that introductory course. The whole premise of the first film is little more than a condensed dramatization of Descartes Meditations, specifically the first and second (of six) mediations, frequently excerpted for textbooks. Many have noted the connection with the Myth of the Cave, found at the start of Book VII in Plato’s Republic, but the Cave Myth is effectively incorporated into the mediations by Descartes, and also the myth does not directly involve the technical problems Descartes proposed.

It took Reloaded to bring Plato’s Cave Myth more into focus. When taken with the first film, the story becomes a nice illustration of the myth, including the Myth of the Sun, from the end of Book VI, along with the Philosopher King later in VII. With less of a demarcation between the matrix and the real world, with the painfully clear exposition of the Christ-like cum God-like qualities of Neo, with introduction of ethical choice and arithmetic derivations, the influence of Plato’s work becomes more evident, while the remaining four mediations from Descartes also become more relevant. But it is not as if the Wachowski brothers stopped here, for one can find references to tenets from the “Know Thyself” of the Hellenistic, Oriental, Christian and Gnostic thinkers, such as Plotinus, to the “Desert of the Real” from Baudrillard, and other Poststructuralist notions like Foucault’s critique of power. There are plenty of morsels to savour in the films, no matter what your persuasion.

Logic

Near the end of the second film, when we fully understand the notion of Neo as the Philosopher King, we find Neo in front of the Architect. The later mediations, passages after the Philosopher King in Book VII of the Republic, as well as Baudrillard and Derrida again, shed some light on a reading of the rehearsed-sounding prose spoken to Neo by the Architect. Plato wrote about mathematics, specifically Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy, as leading one’s soul to perfection and unity, and the relation to harmony through music. Descartes wrote about God as the orchestrator behind the scenes, beyond the limits of one’s perceptions. The Architect is certainly portrayed as the orchestrator, for whom perfection is mathematical, manipulating Neo through the Oracle and the other characters to choose the love of one over saving the many. In Baudrillard, the notion of what is left within a person, which cannot be described vis-a-vis simulacra, is the remainder, while in Derrida, the difference of individuals can never be reduced to a system of signs.

If this connection with a negative remainder, or affirmative difference, isn’t clear, consider that the Architect says Neo is the “sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix,” the “eventuality of an anomaly.” As Plato might have said of the Republic, the Architect explains the remainder by saying “the first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime.” This also references Descartes, from the perspective of his theory of a clockwork Universe, a pure, mathematical machine which Newton and Liebniz would later describe in more detail. Plato showed how the imperfection of Number proceeds from perfection, to dialectic choice, deduction, intellection, and then back again into the world of images depicted in the beginning of the Cave Myth. Neo’s life is the result of choices, the sum of excesses, which are little more than remainders of equations, anomalies of deduction, trifles of intellection. The parallel here between the Architect and Neo in the film with Socrates and Glaucon in Plato’s dialogue is quite interesting, but the thrust of the argument is “freewill vs. determinism 101”, a number, by the way, which appears again and again in the films, clueing us to their basic lessons.

Ethics

“Choice. The problem is Choice,” Neo says. Much like “There is no spoon” from the first film, this dense line about choice struck me as the key to unlocking the meanings of the second film. The basis of ethical reasoning is an attachment to humanity, as Kant theorized in his Critiques, and as the Architect explains, it is “a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the one.” Neo experiences this attachment through his love for Trinity. Because this love can put us in the impossible situation of having to choose between it and survival, the problem indeed is the choice itself, one which would not be present without the very predication of the anomaly, the remainder, the incalculable sense of hope, but also the endlessly deferred affirmative difference.

As the Architect says, the delusion of hope, the illusion of choice, as the Merovingian put it, is at once what makes humanity beautiful and grotesque. Because we can choose to love is as wonderful as the destructive quality in our inverse ability to hate. To hope we can change our perceived destiny is a never-ending lure. The pretense that things could be different from what they are is what keeps Neo on the path, but because it dissolves into a mere manipulation on the part of the Architect and Oracle, because the illusion of his choice has been exposed, he falls defeated, to the lowest point in his story, to rip through the matrix, destroying everything in his wake, as he rushes to save Trinity. It will take the third film, or Act III, if you will, to resolve this predicament of choice for Neo, and for us in relation to the allegory.

Conclusion

The first film made sure we understood that things may not be what they seem, that the matrix cannot tell us who we are. The second certainly continues those messages, but also tells us to beware of false prophets, to know why we are making the choices we are making. The Merovingian makes it very clear. “Choice is an illusion, created between those with power, and those without... Our only hope, our only peace is to understand it, to understand the ’why.‘ ‘Why’ is what separates us from them, you from me. ‘Why’ is the only real source of power, without it you are powerless. And this is how you come to me, without ‘why,’ without power. Another link in the chain.”

Is this not the problem with contemporary “monoculture” around us? It is an alluring realm of social pretense which never provides power, but only the illusion of power, power (dunamis) being that dynamic motive force to creativity, love and freedom. By following the false prophets of common culture, by succumbing to the more superficial social pressures of the world, by being mere links in an economic chain, we lose our sense of ‘why’, we lose any possibility of true power. Thus for many people, choices are an illusion, mere algorithms already played out by an endless parade of nearly useless products, services and expectations. The only way out is not merely to ask “why?”, but to understand the ‘why’ of our own behaviours. Therefore, while it remains to be seen in Act III if our Neo, can discover the ‘why’, discover peace, in the face of such a seductive matrix of control, I feel sure many of us can. The matrix that is our monoculture cannot tell us who we are.

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Merely Entertainment? (1999)

(The Matrix, 1999)

These were (and are) public posts on Usenet from 12 April- 22 May, of 1999. Participating with myself (MRMP) below were: eKSeL, MHK, whatever, DaJoker711, Sadtomato, Josh S., The Vision, Taichi, LessXTreme, REYLC, JPH, someguy, and Kooter.

The replies have been nested into my original, and at least one post seems to have been lost, at least from Google, over the years. Still, the discussion below serves to show how all of us participated that “Philosophy Buzz” after the first film. Keep in mind, it wasn’t clear at the time that many, many viewings might be necessary. Also, many of our questions have now been answered, but at the time, right after The Matrix was released in early April, 1999, there was little reason to believe there would be such revealing sequels and short features to come four years later...

‘the matrix’, merely entertainment M.R.M. Parrott (12 April, 1999)

Hey, I like graphics like everyone else, I’m a designer; but without the expensive visuals, this movie falls flat.

For example, what about these problems...

• The Matrix Series
• The Matrix Philosophy
• New Philosophy