of Class 1.10, Models of the Destructo-Culture

The Matrix Trilogy Decoded by Mark Passio

Sophia Stewart, The Real Creator of ‘The Matrix,’ Wins Billion Dollar Copyright Case

Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works..

According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement.

The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’ The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.

Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers. One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story.

Others are suspicious and mocking. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ said Stewart in a phone interview last week, ‘I always knew what was true.’

Some fans, are unaware of the case or they question its legitimacy, due to the fact that it has received little to no media coverage. Though the case was not made public until October of 2003, Stewart has her own explanation, as quoted at aghettotymz.com:

‘The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner…. this GIANT owns 95 percent of the media… let me give you a clue as to what they own in the media business… New York Times papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, DreamWorks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow and many, many more! They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing my case for years.’

by Sigmund Fraud

Today’s world is a strange place. We are inundated with signals from early on in life, encouraging each of us to walk a particular path, establishing blinders on us along the way to discourage us from looking for alternatives to what the herd is doing or thinking. Life is so complex that overtime, if we are paying attention, we realize that there are an infinite number of possibilities to what the human experience could be, and we come see that the world is on fire because individuals all too infrequently question why things are the way they are, failing to notice that their mindset or behavior needs adjustment in favor of more intelligent, common sensical, or sustainable patterns of existence.

Not meant to be overtly critical of anyone’s lifestyle choices or personal situation, the following 16 signs that you’re a slave to the matrix are meant purely as an observational approach to helping you identify the areas of your life where you may be missing an opportunity to liberate yourself from someone else’s self-destructive design for your life.

Read on, and please take a moment to comment below with anything you’d like to add to the list or object to.

• 1. You pay taxes to people you’d like to see locked up in jail. This is perhaps the biggest indicator that we are slaves to the matrix. The traditional notion of slavery conjures up images of people in shackles forced to work on plantations to support rich plantation owners. The modern day version of this is forced taxation, where our incomes are automatically docked before we ever see the money, regardless of whether or not we approve of how the money is spent.

  2. You go to the doctor, but you’re still sick. Modern medical care, for all of it’s scientific progress, has sadly become sick care, where we are rarely advised to eat well and tend to our mental and physical health, but instead are routinely advised to consume expensive medications and procedures that are pushed by the for-profit healthcare matrix.

  3. You’ve picked Team Democrat or Team Republican and argue with your friends, family and co-workers about politics. This is what the control strategy of divide and conquer looks like in our society. Both of the major parties are corrupt through and through, and independent candidates are not even allowed to. By believing in one of these parties and burning your personal energy on arguing with other ordinary people you are turning over your soul the matrix, and doing your share in making sure that ‘we the people’ will never be united against corruption.

  4. You work hard doing something you hate to earn fiat dollars. Work is important and money does pay the bills, however, so many people lose the best years of their lives doing things they hate, just for money. The truth about money today is that we do not have money, but instead, inflationary fiat currency that is privately owned and manipulated. Since it is still necessary to get by in this world, it is best that you get more value for your time by doing something you enjoy or by working with people you do not despise. It is easier than you may think to live on less money than we believe we need, we just have to be willing to go against the grain realize this.

  5. You’re willing to accrue personal debt to fund the acquisition of consumer a consumer oriented lifestyle. Each time a credit card is swiped it creates digits on the balance sheets of the banks that are most involved with the financial looting of the world today. These digits are then multiplied electronically by the fractional reserve system in place, which exponentially increases the power of these institutions. To participate in this, and by agreeing to pay this fake money back with interest, in order to maintain a certain lifestyle is a strong indication that you are bound by one of the main tenets of the matrix – consumerism.

  6. You converse with real people about the ongoing happenings of TV shows. TV is the most potent tool used for mind control, and the ‘programming’ that is available, while certainly cool, fun, or entertaining is geared to reinforce certain behaviors amongst the masses. Dramatizing the ego’s importance, over sexualizing everything, glorifying violence, and teaching submissiveness to phony authority are the main features of modern TV. By taking what is happening onscreen and making it a part of your real life, you are doing your job of supporting the matrix’s desire to confuse us about the nature of reality, proving that something doesn’t have to actually happen in order it to feel real to people.

  7. You don’t have anything to hide from total surveillance. If it does not bother you that someone, somewhere, working for somebody is watching you, listening to your conversations, and monitoring your movements, then, you are a good slave to the matrix. Invisible surveillance is an insidious form of thought control, and by using the logic of, ‘I have nothing to hide, therefore, it will do me no harm to be surveilled,’ then you are mindlessly admitting that you have an earthly master and are not of sovereign mind and body.

  8. You think the world would be safer it only governments had guns. This is a violent world, and criminals engage in criminality against honest people at every level of society, including from within the government. Sure, in a perfect world, weapons wouldn’t be necessary for anyone but, sadly, our world is anything but perfect, and firearms are indeed a very effective form of protection against common criminals and abusive governments alike. The willingness to forego your right to self-defenseis a sign that you’ve relegated personal responsibility to someone else. Having the masses abdicate personal responsibility is one of the most important aspects of controlling them. Welcome to thematrix.

  9. You knowingly drink fluoridated water. Of all the health debates taking place today, the topic of fluoridated water is the easiest to understand, for it is a toxic by-product of an industrial process. Water is supposedly fluoridated to aid in dental health, which is debatable in itself, but if this were so, then the involuntary fluoridation of public water is a medication without your consent… a form of slavery. Knowing this and continuing to drink fluoridated water is a sign that you’re content with your slavery to the matrix. Here are 18 scientifically validated reasons to end public water fluoridation.

  10. You knowingly consume toxic poisons like MSG and Aspartame. These two chemicals are widely known to be toxic to the human body. Knowing this and continuing to poison yourself with tasty, but chemical-laden processed foods is a sign that the matrix has programmed you to place less value on your health and future than on your immediate gratification.

  11. You depend on the pharmaceutical industrial complex for the management of your own mental health. The use of psychotropic medicines is rising rapidly in our society because people have been convinced that mental states are similar to diseases, while the truth about natural mental health has been obfuscated by corporate media and a for-profit medical establishment. If you’re taking psychotropic medications, then you are under one of the most potent forms of mind control available. Part of this control is to convince you that you have no authority over your own mind. This is perhaps the matrix’s most terrible lie, and by willingly taking these psychotropic medications you are conforming to the worst kind of slavery, and inhibiting your natural mental and emotional responses to the life stressors that are signaling to you that you need to change your behavior and habits.

  12. You haven’t yet stopped watching your local and national news programming. The mainstream news media is a tool of control and manipulation, and by continuing to support their ideas and world views by giving them your attention you are volunteering to be a slave to this not-so-subtle form of mental programming. Even the local news is scripted at the national level by agents of the handful of corporations tasked with shaping our opinions of events.

  13. You’re more concerned with televised sports or other mindless distractions than you are with the quality of your natural environment. The Deepwater Horizon, Alberta Tar Sands, the rise of Fracking, the sacrifice of the Amazon, and Fukushima are all life-changing events that will severely impact the our future on planet earth. To be unconcerned with all of this while tuning into a never-ending stream of sports trivia and distraction-based living is a sign that your sense of self-preservation has been stolen and replaced with an impulsive tendency for triviality and escapism.

  14. You’re skeptical of any area of life that hasn’t been ‘proven’ or validated by modern science.The very essence of science is the inquiry into the unknown, implying that until science can grasp something, it is unexplainable. By discrediting or ridiculing experiences that other people have, yetevade scientific understanding, like near-death experiences, acupuncture, or the life changing effects of Ayahuasca, then you are slavishly reducing your understanding of the world to a narrow range of possibilities. The matrix is made possible by efforts of volunteer gatekeepers people who are unwilling to think outside of the box.

  15. You’ve never questioned the popularized version of ancient history and the origins of our civilization. There are many unanswered questions about the origins of the human race that point to a different version of human history than what is taught in school. Read 2o history questions they refuse to answer in school to discover some of the many ways in which our history has been hijacked. By never questioning what we’ve been told about our origin we are acquiescing to many of the imposed belief systems and narrow-banded views of human potential that the matrix promotes.

1. You haven’t yet realized that you are a spiritual being living a human experience.

If you can relate to any of the items on this list, then the matrix has you, and it is now your duty to engage more deeply in your liberation.

If you’d like to add to or object to anything on this list, then please do so in the comments section below, and be sure to share this with your friends.

About the Author

Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for mankind.

Sources

Waking Times

Image Credit

An Interpretation of the Philosophy of The Matrix Trilogy

from thematrix101.com

by Mark Young

Certainly the Matrix movies represent one of the most successful recent attempts to bring philosophical ideas to the general public, although many will confess to be ignorant of the central thesis of the movies and are therefore also dissatisfied with them.

This is understandable, since the Wachowski Brothers may not be attempting to convey a definitive thesis, but also because one needs an extensive philosophical background to grasp the ideas and debates that are conveyed in the movies.

Within the three movies there occurs a variety of social and philosophical commentary, and this commentary is obscured simply by the fact that the mode of presentation is highly symbolic.

Also, the story of the Matrix movies represent not only certain substantive claims and ideas concerning the nature of reality and the human condition, but further communicates the general effect of philosophy on those who engage in it.

In what follows an attempt will be made to interpret some of the symbolism of the Matrix movies in order to make some of its interesting aspects transparent.

One of the most significant scenes in any of the three movies occurs when Neo decides to eat the red pill, which then leads to his awakening from the Matrix. With this scene the Wachowski Brothers convey an important idea within philosophy that has been a part of the discipline since its inception.

Often people are wiling to accept things as they appear, in that they do not question their beliefs about the world. Our belief systems determine our world for us; since it is through them that we interpret our experiences.

A simple example is the optimist who seems to live in a different world than the pessimist, although a more striking example is between the fundamentalist Christian and the scientific naturalist. Each will interpret particular experiences, as well as the whole of reality, differently simply due to the divergent belief systems that each possess.

Of course, our belief systems can be wrong, and thus reality is not as we think it is. This was Neo's discovery when he ate the red pill, and the discovery of philosophers when they began to question their beliefs more than twenty-six hundred years ago.

Thus Neo's awakening is symbolic of the general philosophic experience of questioning one's beliefs about the world, and the attempt to discover what exists behind our illusions. We can be deceived by evil machines, a Cartesian demon, or by the traditions of our society; and if we are, then reality is not as we believe it is.

The awakening from the Matrix that occurs in the beginning of the first movie, though, is simply a foreshadowing of the rude awakening that Neo experiences through his meeting with the Architect at the end of the second movie.

Through this meeting Neo discovers even further that his beliefs are illusory, as the Architect informs him that the 'savior myth' is merely a means of control. But much has occurred between the two 'awakening' scenes.

We have learned of humanity's struggle to be free, of Zion, and have been introduced to a number of interesting characters, which include Agent Smith, the Oracle and, of course, the Architect. Zion can be easily interpreted as the city of free thinkers, or those who think 'out side of the box/Matrix.'

Their struggle represents the struggle to be free from illusions, and to accept the world as it is. More interesting philosophical notions emerge, though, when we ask whom Neo, the Oracle and the Architect are supposed to represent.

The significance of Neo seems to be readily apparent. He is the savior of a people imprisoned by a false reality. This is a theme that can be found in religions that are as diverse as Christianity and Buddhism.

Another theme that can be found in either of these religions' mystical traditions is that religious myths and symbols can be a hindrance to true enlightenment. At the end of the second movie we discover that Neo is such a hindrance. That is, he is not truly the savior of humankind, but instead a means of control.

Thus, people will not become free through him. Neo nonetheless is still something special, and it is through the Architect's esoteric remarks that we learn of his significance. Neo is, as the Architect states, the manifestation of pure choice or freedom.

We may ask, of course, what does this mean? To answer this question we must state what the Architect is supposed to represent.

The Architect is the designer, and maintainer, of the Matrix. The Matrix is for him an elaborate calculation, or algorithm, which he is capable of computing. This is due to the fact that he possesses a sophisticated logical mind, since he is artificial intelligence.

The Architect is able to deal with the plethora of human motives, desires and drives within his algorithmic world, but one thing he is incapable of managing is unfettered choice as it is manifested in Neo.

Neo is not constrained by the world around him, since the rules and laws of that world can be overridden by Neo through a simple fiat. He can stop bullets, or fly, by simply willing these things to occur. Neo is therefore referred to as the 'anomaly' by the machines, and by the Architect, since the artificial mind of the latter cannot fathom an undetermined choice.

For the artificial mind all thinking is determined by strict rules of reasoning. To make a choice the machine must have a reason which justifies what is chosen, and the reasoning toward this choice always follows the necessary logical steps.

The machine mind cannot think outside of strict rules of logic and justification, and this is why the Architect, as well as the Merovingian, cannot break a promise once it is made. If reason and circumstance has led them to make a promise, then they can do nothing other than act in accord with it since their minds can be nothing other than logical.

These are some interesting insights into the two characters of Neo and the Architect, but what is the philosophy that is lying behind such characters? Well, the Wachowski Brothers seem to be making statements both about the nature of the human mind, and about the whole of reality.

Within the twentieth century there have been two distinct intellectual traditions, each advocating a contrary view concerning the nature of the human mind. In one tradition there is a focus on logic and science with the mind being thought of as analogous to a computer.

The mind makes choices, and comes to conclusions, only through the influence of particular causes, whether individual persons are aware of such causes or not. These causes can be such things as particular reasons deliberated over, unconscious fears, experiential input and overwhelming desires.

There are a variety of theories about the mind within this tradition, but what is common is the idea that the mind entails a set of determinate relations, and that it is through the interaction of these relations that the mind produces its particular activity.

The other tradition focuses less on science and logic, and more on art and creativity. Within this tradition the activity of the human mind can occur without being strictly determined by prior causes.

That is, the mind is thought of as more creative and not bound by reasons, desires and so on. Humans have no determinate nature, and can assess the reasons, desires, fears, etc that are possible influences on them and then decide to act on them or not.

The important point of distinction to notice here is that with the former tradition the mind's activity is strictly determined by causes while with the latter it is determined by the agent's ability to choose.

The mind is more intuitive, in that it does not always act through the influence of reasons, but instead through some insight which shapes perception and acts to influence choice and action.

It therefore advocates a strong theory of the unfettered will that is able to act undetermined by causal influences. Exemplary examples of the latter tradition include art, poetry, irrational behaviour and human imagination.

Within the Matrix movies, then, we have the interaction of these two theories of the mind through the interaction of such characters as Neo, the Architect, the Oracle, and Agent Smith. But, as the third movie develops its plot, it is more than a mere theory of the mind that is developed.

Also developed is a specific ontology, and this ontology seems to have its roots in the thought of Plato. For Plato there are three fundamental principles at work in any possible universe. These are the One, the Limited, and the Unlimited.

The One simply represents unity as fundamental. If there is to be anything it must first possess unity. How things come to be, though, is through the interaction of the Limited and the Unlimited. Unity must exist, but if we are to have more than just unity something must expand, or develop.

Such expansion is spurred by the Unlimited, which we can try to make sense of by thinking of it as unfettered growth. How are we then to have a variety of things, or, more accurately, explain the variety of things? Limits must be put on the Unlimited to generate such variety. A sphere comes to be such by having a circumference. Eventually red ceases and the next colour emerges.

The basic idea is that there would be nothing without first having unity. Next we need growth, and if we are to have differentiation, then specific limitations must be placed on this growth in determinate ways.

In the third movie, then, the interplay of the Limited, the Unlimited and Unity come to the forefront; although they have actually been there all along.

We see this through the interaction between Smith and Neo, as well as the Oracle and the Architect.

That Neo is supposed to be representative of the Unlimited has already been elaborated upon, and if Smith is his opposite, as it is stated in the third movie, then he will naturally be symbolic of the Limited.

And we can see that this is the case if we look to Smith's actions, and role, in the second and third films. Smith represents an algorithmic self that continues to produce itself. Eventually Smith eliminates all others, and intends to put the ultimate limit on the world by ending it.

With this character, then, it seems that the Wachowski Brothers are saying something about algorithmic interpretations of intelligence. They are saying that such an intelligence would ultimately only produce itself, and that if we are to have the variety of humanity we have now there must be some undetermined aspects that humans can mold through sheer will and creativity.

What is most important, though, is the interaction between Smith and Neo, especially their last scene together. If we rely on the interpretation that Neo represents the Unlimited, while Smith represents the Limited, then their interaction will be significant for the maintenance of existence.

Certainly this is the case, since through their interaction they are both cancelled out and reality reemerges from destruction. This is because we can interpret Neo, as the Unlimited, as representing -1, while Smith, as the Limited, represents 1.

What happens when we bring -1 and 1 together? They cancel one another out, and we get 0, which is the starting point of the number line. The number line is itself symbolic of the continuity of existence.

Thus, humanity and the machine world is saved through the confrontation and unity of Neo and Smith, and an uneasy peace exists between the two groups. Once again this 'uneasy peace' represents the delicate balance between the rational and irrational, or limited and unlimited, aspects of the human animal.

That it is the Wachowski Brothers' intention to propose an ontology that relies on the interaction of the Unlimited and Limited is further attested to by the last few scenes of the movie. In these last few scenes we see the Oracle and the Architect talking to one another about what has recently transpired and the peace that has emerged.

The Oracle, as it is stated in the movie, is an intuitive program, and therefore is representative of the unlimited aspects of humanity. The Architect is the limited. With this last scene when they are talking to one another we learn of how it was ultimately a battle between these two that we had been observing throughout the movies.

The Architect is the epitome of rationality, and accuses the Oracle of playing a dangerous game. The Oracle confesses ignorance of what the outcome was to be, but states that such actions were necessary for real change.

Nonetheless, it is through their game - through the tension and interaction of the Limited and Unlimited - that a new reality is brought about.