Blog #100 - Agent Smith's Negative Outlook on Humanity

 

During Morpheus' interrogation, Agent Smith reveals to Morpheus why humans rejected the first version of the Matrix, the perfect version of it, 1.0:


"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from, which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization"1

This idea that humans' lot in life on Earth is suffering comes a lot from many different religions, but it's also a very negative view of life.  Is it accurate that humans' reality DEPENDS upon suffering and misery?  That's one question I'd like you to think more deeply about.  

Smith goes on to define humans as a virus that destroys anything and everything in its path; we spread across the planet like a plague and annihilate everything.

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure" 1

This is kind of a bleak outlook on humanity, but what would you expect from a computer / artificial intelligence who had been trying to destroy our kind for 200 years? But, ironically, these thoughts didn't come from a computer but the minds of the Wachowski sisters who wrote the script. And even more levels of irony, the Agents characters (as revealed in the sequels) are essentially viruses in the system of the Matrix (think about it - they can hop from one sentient being to another, and when that being is killed, the virus / Agent looks for another host with which to do damage).  

And since we're hopefully wrapping up the Covid pandemic (fingers crossed), I couldn't help but think of the corona virus when I watched this scene again in 2022.  In the past two years, we have seen the virus kill over 1 million Americans (and 6.2 million worldwide as of April 7) and almost half a BILLION confirmed cases across the world.  If we want any evidence that humans are NOT a virus, this pandemic has shut that notion down dramatically (though some radical environmental activists point to improved pollution levels as the pandemic being a good thing since a lot of human activity was shut down for months on end).  


Questions: 

1. Do you agree w/ Agent Smith that humankind's reality depends upon suffering and misery?  Why or why not?  

2. Does mankind act like a virus in the way we consume resources and destroy our living space? Why or why not?


Due Sunday, April 10. 300 words minimum for your total answer.

Sources:
1. Internet Movie Database - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes


A little music to make the blog go easier: Shinedown's "Devour" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXNtLaOnSE plus the lyrics for the song:

Take it and take it and take it and take it and take it all

Take it and take it and take it until you take us all

Smash it and crash it and thrash it and trash it

You know they're only toys

Try it you'll like it don't hide it don't fight it, just let it out

Steal and shoot it and kill it or take another route

Take it and take it and take it

You know they're only toys

Devour Devour

Suffocate your own empire

Devour Devour

It's your final hour

Devour Devour

Stolen like a foreign soul

Devour Devour

What a way to go

You want it, you want it, you want it, you want it

Well here it is

Everything everything everything

Isn't so primitive

Take it and take it and take it and take it and take it all

Nobody nobody wants to feel like this

Nobody nobody wants to live like this

Nobody nobody wants a war like this

Devour Devour

Suffocate your own empire

Devour Devour

It's your final hour

Devour Devour

Stolen like a foreign soul

Devour Devour

What a way to go

What a way to go

Blog #89 - Blue Pill or Red Pill

Which pill would you have taken and why?

Neo is offered the red pill and the blue pill by Morpheus in the opening act of the Matrix. The blue pill allows Neo to remain in the Matrix, in essence to go back to sleep and to remember this little encounter w/ Morpheus as a dream or "believe whatever you want to believe". The red pill allows Neo to stay in the "wonderland" and discover the truth.
I like this sentence from an essay about the Matrix b/c it captures the essence of the choice: 

"The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing."

I think since most if not all of you who are taking this class are taking this class b/c you want to dig deeper into life, you are highly curious and intelligent and want to find out what is out there, I think there's very very few who will NOT take the red pill.

So, when answering this question, consider the possible ramifications/consequences of choosing your pill.

• Are you content with knowing that you could die at any moment from those machines that are trying to kill you?
• What if Neo is NOT the One and you've sacrificed yourself for nothing?
• Obviously, if you choose the blue pill and you go back into the Matrix, would you be able to live w/ yourself w/ the knowledge that you had the answers at your fingertips and you let them go (for whatever reasons - fear, apathy, etc.)?

So, when choosing, choose wisely and consider the consequences of your actions.

350 words minimum.  Post your answers here below (Comments).  Due Monday, April 20.  

Please read this article and make some references to it in your answer: https://www.wired.com/story/matrix-red-pill-vs-blue-pill/  

Blog #61 - Fate and Free Will in the Matrix

After watching The Matrix this semester for what seems the umpteenth time, I was searching for something new to talk about.  This time, as with all good art, we can gather something new from it upon repeat viewings.

My question is: where do you see fate and / or free will in the movie?

Neo seems to disagree with the concept of fate (or the more technical term, determinism) "I don't like to think that I'm not in control of my life."  In fact, he seems to use free will by choosing the blue pill over the red pill when Morpheus gives him the options.

There are other scenes where Morpheus seems to give Neo choices - "I'm just trying to show you the door.  You're the one who has to walk through it" -  right before they go to visit the Oracle.  Morpheus also seems to make the choice to sacrifice himself when the agents attack the group in order to capture Neo.  Also, Neo appears to make the choice to go back into the Matrix to save Morpheus.  Even the Oracle tells Neo, "you don't believe in all that fate crap.  You're in control of your own life."



But, I think that all of these "choices" are fated to happen because of a number of factors, many of which can be traced back to the Oracle's prophecies:
1. Morpheus believes so strongly in the prophecy that he would be the person to find The One that he sacrificed himself to the agents.  "I did what I did because I had to.  I did what I did because I believe that search is over."
2. Neo would have chosen the red pill because of his natural curiosity, his inner determinism, that drove him to find the answers to the questions burrowing in his brain;

3. Trinity, Apoc, Tank and the others of the Nebuchadezzar follow Morpheus wherever he believes they need to go, even if it means their deaths.
4. The Matrix is, in fact, slavery - a contentment program for those who power the machines.  There are no choices to be made b/c the people that live in reality carefully choose those who seem to be discontent with their lives.

Cypher is the only character who has made a choice of free will when he decides to betray Morpheus and Neo.  He has lived in the "real world" for nine years and chooses to go back into the Matrix (though Agent Smith would most likely kill him regardless of the promise), because he feels discontent with Morpheus, his promises, and his need for mindless enjoyment (the steak).

Your question: Agree or disagree with the fate/ free will assertion in The Matrix?  Why?  If you believe that there is some element of free will that I have overlooked, please let me know.

250 words minimum.  Due Tuesday, April 16.  

Blog #48 - Interpretations of Inception

I am glad that we watched Inception together as a class because our discussions afterwards confirmed my initial feelings about the movie when I saw it last summer - that this was a movie that could be like The Matrix and be both entertaining and work on several different levels of philosophical interpretation. I'm going to toss out a bunch of questions for you to consider, and please pick two to answer before Tuesday's class.

Questions to choose from (pick two):

1. Near the end, Mal (or her projection) in limbo makes a pretty good case that Cobb is lost in his own dream and can't tell one reality from another. Do you think that this is a plausible alternative?  Why or why not? 

2. This blog from Moviefone.com outlines six different interpretations of the film (and also five plot holes - see next question). Read it for more details on each of the six interpretations, but I'll just list each of them below. We have talked about some of them in class.

** If you decide to tackle more than one interpretation of Inception, this will count as your two questions.

a. All of Inception is a dream - are we ever really shown reality? Whose dream is it, anyway?

b. Everything after the test sedation is a dream - after Yusuf's chemical test, do we see Cobb spin his totem and see it fall properly?

c. Saito is the architect and pulls a Mr. Charles gambit on Cobb - instead of a job audition like Saito said, maybe Saito is trying to extract something from Cobb?

d. Ariadne is Cobb's therapist trying to help him get over Mal's death - This is an interesting and plausible take on the movie - found here http://halphillips.tumblr.com/post/822919795/inception

e. We do see reality in the movie (first train ride in Japan, Paris, Mombasa), but Cobb is in a dream at the end - could this explain why the totem never falls at the end of the movie? This interpretation apparently hinges on the idea that the children don't appear to have aged. Plus, we don't see how Saito and Cobb get out of limbo.

f. What we see is what we get - that we are presented with a reality at the beginning of the movie (train ride in Japan) and that Cobb is back in the U.S. at the end of the movie.



3. What do you think were the movie's biggest plot holes? We had discussed a few, and I wasn't satisfied with a couple of the answers - which sounded like filmmakers' excuses instead of decent rationales. Provide one or two examples (you might want to read the blog link mentioned at the beginning of question #2 to help you out if you forgot) and explain how these holes do or don't affect the movie.


4. Evil genius theory - we had discussed this in class and it didn't get much traction, but I wonder if it's possible to show that either Saito, Mal or Cobb could be the evil genius manipulating everything we're seeing. Or could it be the film maker Christopher Nolan?



5. Is Inception really just an extended metaphor for films? In a previous blog from last semester, I posted a link from Wired, and I traced it back to its source, so I'll quote the author's take on Nolan's film:

"The film is a metaphor for the way that Nolan as a director works, and what he’s ultimately saying is that the catharsis found in a dream is as real as the catharsis found in a movie is as real as the catharsis found in life. Inception is about making movies, and cinema is the shared dream that truly interests the director."

Here's a link to the whole post: http://www.chud.com/24477/NEVER-WAKE-UP-THE-MEANING-AND-SECRET-OF-INCEPTION/



My question is, do you buy this interpretation of the movie? Why or why not? What kind of implication does it have for us as film watchers - this shared "dream space" of watching a movie together? Did Christopher Nolan just perform inception on all of us because it's now an idea, like a parasite that won't go away? :)



6. Comparing the dream/reality rules in Inception and (if you've seen) The Matrix, why do you think they're vastly different? How does Descartes' dualistic theory about the mind and body being separated work for one movie but not the other?

7. When Saito asks Cobb to take a leap of faith, he's asking Cobb to believe in him and Saito's ability to fix Cobb's problems. In some ways, Saito almost acts like a deity in this movie because through him, almost everything is engineered to work. He is the Prime Mover or causal agent - Cobb and his team are sent on their mission because they failed to extract vital info from Saito for Cobol Engineering. They are tasked to help destroy Saito's biggest competitor (Fischer), and when it's all said and done, Saito returns from limbo after many many years (remember, Mal and Cobb didn't look like they had aged when the train ran them over after just 50 yrs together, but Saito was wrinkled and withered) and supposedly sweeps away Cobb's murder warrant. What is Saito, really? Is he just a very powerful man or is he something else? Why?

8. Those of you with AP Psych experience, help us out on some of the brain / dream logistics. The way that they explain the dream rules in the movie sound plausible, but what is realistic w/ regards to dreams? Shared dream space isn't possible, is it? Any other psych insights would be greatly appreciated here.

9. Arthur mentioned it briefly on how the technology for the shared dreaming was created - by the military so that soldiers could fight/kill each other without truly maiming themselves in reality. Plus, the character played by Michael Caine, Mal's father, seems to have been the one who taught Cobb how to do what he could do. In many ways, I sense the hints of a "prequel," not a sequel for this movie. Unlike the Matrix (which probably should have been left alone instead of having 2 sequels), it might be interesting to explore how the technology for this type of thing was developed and most likely stolen. If it takes 10 years in between movies like it did with Toy Story or Tron, then so be it. What kinds of possibilities do you see in a prequel or, even if you don't agree with me, a sequel?

Some additional points and counterpoints to theories in the movie - http://inceptiontheories.com/inception-theories-points-counterpoints/

Blog #48 will be due Tuesday, 5/17. 150 words for each answer, 300 words total.

Blog #29 - Agent Smith's Outlook on Humanity

During Morpheus' interrogation, Agent Smith reveals to Morpheus why humans rejected the first version of the Matrix, the perfect version of it, 1.0:


"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from, which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization"1



In fact, Smith goes on to define humans as a virus that destroys anything and everything in its path; we spread across the planet like a plague and annihilate everything.

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure" 1

Kind of a bleak outlook on humanity, but what would you expect from a computer / artificial intelligence who had been trying to destroy our kind for 200 years? But, ironically, these thoughts didn't come from a computer but the minds of the Warshawsky Bros. who wrote the script.



However, using the phrase, "mankind is like a virus on the planet" to search Google, I discovered several interesting articles including one from a "Save the Whales" activist who feels that mankind is killing its host, the Earth and that we need to reduce our population to around one billion 2. The right-wing article doesn't really do the original article justice so I included a link to the original -http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/editorial-070504-1.html , but apparently, the extinction event is just one in a cycle of extinction events - we are in the 6th extinction cycle! And this whole current cycle began 50,000 years when:

"a relatively hairless primate stumbled out of equatorial Africa and began wiping out the megafauna of the time. Wherever this creature (our ancestor) went, their arrival was followed by large die-outs of megafauna. Primitive hominids were well-organized, efficient, slaughter crews. As they advanced, the mammoth, sabre-toothed cats, cave bears, giant sloths, camels, horses, and wholly rhinos fell to their stone weapons and deliberately set fires. The extinction of all of these great mega-species is directly attributable to "primitive" human hunters. The hunting down of the mega-fauna was followed by the advent of agriculture and the domestication of selected animals. Domesticated cows, goats, sheep, and pigs grew in numbers and denuded large areas of grasslands. Irrigation systems began to toxify land. Then agriculture was followed by industrial activities, and finally, by the burning off of vast amounts of fossil fuels." 3

So.

Maybe we'll all be better off if we turn our cities and suburbs into Amish colonies with the horse-drawn carriages and little to no electricity. Or some of these of these people are over-reacting. Or both?

Question: Does mankind act like a virus in the way we consume resources and destroy our living space? Why or why not?


Due Wednesday, January 6. 200 words minimum.

Sources:
1. Internet Movie Database - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/quotes
2. Business and Media Institute - http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070506180903.aspx
3. Sea Shepherd Editorial 2007 - http://www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/editorial-070504-1.html

A little music to make the blog go easier: Shinedown's "Devour" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QXNtLaOnSE plus the lyrics for the song:

Take it and take it and take it and take it and take it all

Take it and take it and take it until you take us all

Smash it and crash it and thrash it and trash it

You know they're only toys

Try it you'll like it don't hide it don't fight it, just let it out

Steal and shoot it and kill it or take another route

Take it and take it and take it

You know they're only toys

Devour Devour

Suffocate your own empire

Devour Devour

It's your final hour

Devour Devour

Stolen like a foreign soul

Devour Devour

What a way to go

You want it, you want it, you want it, you want it

Well here it is

Everything everything everything

Isn't so primitive

Take it and take it and take it and take it and take it all

Nobody nobody wants to feel like this

Nobody nobody wants to live like this

Nobody nobody wants a war like this

Devour Devour

Suffocate your own empire

Devour Devour

It's your final hour

Devour Devour

Stolen like a foreign soul

Devour Devour

What a way to go

What a way to go

Blog #18 - What's wrong with Americans?

Many have criticized Americans for not being too philosophical, especially when compared to Europeans. In Europe, philosophers can actually make a decent living by writing books and giving lecture tours, but in America, they are university professors (or high school teachers!).

Maybe this dislike for philosophy comes from the super specialized language that we hear in philosophical circles (remember the bottle of tea example from Zizek!). If we can't seem to talk about it or explain it in straight forward language, forget about it!

Also, America tends to have an anti-intellectualism streak to it. If you follow our history, there have been movements that have looked upon scientific advances or theories w/ suspicion and even fear (evolution just being one). This is the same country that revels in Redneck jokes.

But parts of me wants to disagree with this idea that Americans hate philosophy. A popular TV show like LOST is full of philosophical and religious references with some main characters named after dead philosophers. The 1999 movie, The Matrix, is a modern version of Plato's allergory of the cave, how mankind learns (and may learn too much). The movie calls into question simple things that we take for granted - can we trust our senses? If not, what do we trust? The Matrix was hugely popular and spawned two sequels (though not as good).

Plus, do we not need some kind of personal philosophy to guide us along life's journey? A moral compass of some kind to steer us through the tricky waters? Or is that what religion is for?

If we don't philosophy for a moral guide, then what good is it? British philosopher Sir Bertrand Russell said the following:

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its
questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but
rather for the sake of the questions themselves"

Every generation asks the big questions: why am I here? What's the purpose of life? What is good/evil? Is there a god?

And every generation comes up with their own answers. The Matrix and LOST are just a couple examples of those answers.

Your question: From your observations, do you think most Americans really care about philosophy? Why or why not? Use specific examples from your own life.

Minimum, 150 words. Due Friday, Sept. 11.

Blog#2 - Red Pill or Blue Pill?

New Due Date - Friday, Sept. 19th

Which pill would you have taken and why?

Neo is offered the red pill and the blue pill by Morpheus in the opening act of the Matrix. The blue pill allows Neo to remain in the Matrix, in essence to go back to sleep and to remember this little encounter w/ Morpheus as a dream or "believe whatever you want to believe". The red pill allows Neo to stay in the "wonderland" and discover the truth.

Here's an essay about the pills - http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php I like this sentence best in the essay:

"The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing."

I think since most if not all of you who are taking this class are taking this class b/c you want to dig deeper into life, you are highly curious and intelligent and want to find out what is out there, I think there's very very few who will NOT take the red pill.

So, when answering this question, consider the possible ramifications/consequences of choosing your pill.

• Are you content with knowing that you could die at any moment from those machines that are trying to kill you?
• What if Neo is NOT the One and you've sacrificed yourself for nothing?
• Obviously, if you choose the blue pill and you go back into the Matrix, would you be able to live w/ yourself w/ the knowledge that you had the answers at your fingertips and you let them go (for whatever reasons - fear, apathy, etc.)?

So, when choosing, choose wisely and consider the consequences of your actions. Discuss this in your blog. 200 words minimum.