Matrix

[Dimentio]

The Matrix trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_series) is one of the most interesting and compelling material recently produced, and it almost forces the viewer to re-think her position in the universe. Matrix is inspired by Platonian ideology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato) and gnosticism (http://www.enemies.com), which you all were earlier aware of so we should'nt mention it.

I do not take the same stand as most viewers do, and I do not favor the humans. Instead, my sympathies lies with the machines.

What side do you take, and why do you take that side?

[MrDoom]

After watching the Animatrix, particularly the Second Renissance, one would feel that the humans started the conflict.

I see both sides as being tragic.

[Dimentio]

I support the machines.

[which doctor]

Why the machines?

[Dimentio]

1. They were the ones who were first attacked by humans, both indirectly through a blockade and directly through a nuclear attack. They had a clear casus belli against the human.

2. The machine city Zero One is an example of a technocracy (http://www.technocracyeurope.eu), based not on money but on thermodynamics. The proof is that Zero one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One) outproduced most human nations and almost destroyed the world economy with abundance, something which the human governments and the UN could only counter with neoluddite madness [persecution of droids, blockades, atomic terror].

3. The machine city Zero One was the only worker's government set up by the industrial workers. It is therefore an example of a more progressive and enlightening type of society, given the way that machines [in this universe with AI] in fact feel happiness when they are fulfilling their programmes.

[Hegemonicretribution]

At first I thought this should go in philosophy, however I am moving this to lit and films as this is certainly not political theory.

[Dimentio]

Alright, I'm sorry.

[Hegemonicretribution]

No need to appologise, I was just letting you know why it was moved :)

Moving threads is what I do!

[Patchd]

Whoa, I've never looked at the Matrix in that light before, i just thought of them as good films. I don't really know which side to take here, I guess I would just be neutral, or I would fight against the machines because of their oppressive system over the humans. The machines could be seen as the ruling classes instilling false messages and brainwashing the humans into believing that they were living in such a good society, those humans who fought against the humans could represent revolutionaries fighting against oppression by the ruling class, and the humans still trapped in the Matrix (if that was what the false world was called) could be those proletarians who are not class conscious.

I guess, if you look at it in a Socratic way, the Matrix could be seen as the world of appearances, the machines represent the body, always tricking the soul into believing that the current world was real, and through reasoning and coming out of the circle (Matrix), the humans reach the world of Forms. However, unlike what Socrates said, the World of Forms in the Matrix wasn't great. Argh, wtf am I going on about!?!?

[ATG]

yes the humans were guilty for starting the war and horribly mistreating the machines but the machines weren't saints as well they used human life from as energy and fed of them by trapping them in an simulated fake world out of witch there's almost no chance of coming back to the real world

[Dimentio]

If your race [not race but specie] is utilised as slaves by humans and then brutally persecuted because one slave killed one human master, so that about 95% of your kind vanishes, and then atom-bomb your sanctuary city as a punishment because you are superior in producing high technological goods, I guess that you would'nt be too humanist about wiping out your enemies from the planet and turn them into batteries. At least the humans weren't aware they were slaves.

Besides, neither the machines, or myself, are humanists in any fondness of the human race. What we see here today in this world is a malignant tumour eating up the planet's biosphere, and that tumour is the current human civilisation.

[Patchd]

If your race [not race but specie] is utilised as slaves by humans and then brutally persecuted because one slave killed one human master, so that about 95% of your kind vanishes, and then atom-bomb your sanctuary city as a punishment because you are superior in producing high technological goods, I guess that you would'nt be too humanist about wiping out your enemies from the planet and turn them into batteries.

I must have missed that part of the trilogy, which one did they explain that in?

[YKTMX]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10, 2006 06:59 pm
1. They were the ones who were first attacked by humans, both indirectly through a blockade and directly through a nuclear attack. They had a clear casus belli against the human.

2. The machine city Zero One is an example of a technocracy (http://www.technocracyeurope.eu), based not on money but on thermodynamics. The proof is that Zero one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_One) outproduced most human nations and almost destroyed the world economy with abundance, something which the human governments and the UN could only counter with neoluddite madness [persecution of droids, blockades, atomic terror].

3. The machine city Zero One was the only worker's government set up by the industrial workers. It is therefore an example of a more progressive and enlightening type of society, given the way that machines [in this universe with AI] in fact feel happiness when they are fulfilling their programmes.
:lol: Interesting perspective.

[gilhyle]

Always thought the third film should be different - I expected when the second film ended with Neo the 'Anomaly' using his powers outside the matrix that the third film would involve realising that outside the matrix was another matrix, Matrix 2. ......and the punch line would be that what seemed to be the machines were actually humans playing a computer game and those who thought themselves humans were actually programs in Matrix 2

Neo would realise he was a 'machine'

WHy he has powers outside the matrix is never really credible: kinda ruins the whole thing by validating the uebermensch.

[TheDifferenceEngine]

Originally posted by [email protected] 15, 2006 07:17 pm
Always thought the third film should be different - I expected when the second film ended with Neo the 'Anomaly' using his powers outside the matrix that the third film would involve realising that outside the matrix was another matrix, Matrix 2. ......and the punch line would be that what seemed to be the machines were actually humans playing a computer game and those who thought themselves humans were actually programs in Matrix 2

Neo would realise he was a 'machine'

WHy he has powers outside the matrix is never really credible: kinda ruins the whole thing by validating the uebermensch.
He has powers over the machines in the real world beacause he is part of the system.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by TheDifferenceEngine+November 15, 2006 08:12 pm--> (TheDifferenceEngine @ November 15, 2006 08:12 pm)
[email protected] 15, 2006 07:17 pm
Always thought the third film should be different - I expected when the second film ended with Neo the 'Anomaly' using his powers outside the matrix that the third film would involve realising that outside the matrix was another matrix, Matrix 2. ......and the punch line would be that what seemed to be the machines were actually humans playing a computer game and those who thought themselves humans were actually programs in Matrix 2

Neo would realise he was a 'machine'

WHy he has powers outside the matrix is never really credible: kinda ruins the whole thing by validating the uebermensch.
He has powers over the machines in the real world beacause he is part of the system. [/b]
Yea exactly..what does that mean - not much really.

[Haligonian Red]

Until I read this thread, it never even occured to me to see "the matrix" as anything but another metaphor for capitalism.

I still say fuck the machines.

But you might be right, Serpent.

[subcal]

and how would we all see I-robot then?

wouldn't we all be 'safer' living under thier rule, but freedom is what matters no?

Good topic, Matrix made me think but I-robot just spun me out!

[Patchd]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19, 2006 06:08 am
and how would we all see I-robot then?

wouldn't we all be 'safer' living under thier rule, but freedom is what matters no?

Good topic, Matrix made me think but I-robot just spun me out!
Don't know, didn't see that movie, it looked shite.

[Comrade_Scott]

the matrix is good ilike it because you only get a true understanding after watching animatrix mainly final flight of the osiris and the second renaissance it shows how the humans are the real enemy- i supported the machines

[gilhyle]

Yeah, although I was disappointed in the third film - its a good example of a key idea overhanging modern society : if all values are relative and no values have legitimacy over tohers (O.K. extreme view of relativism) then there is no reason to be particularly loyal to the human species.

There is a common modern argument which runs even if God did exist why should we obey him ? by the same token, there is an argument which can run - just because I am human that does not mean that I have to be loyal to humanity. This haunts quite a lot of science fiction: for example look at the last film in the Alien series where she is pregnant with cross breeds.

[Severian]

I can't believe anyone takes these movies seriously enough to debate this. They're good eye candy, but some of the dumbest movies ever made. (Hello, Keanu Reeves!)

They should be watched with the sound off, like Baywatch.

For crying out loud, the premise is that people are kept alive to generate electricity off their body heat! Obviously it takes a lot more electricity to do this than could conceivably be generated. If you really want to generate electricity off living things, use donkeys on treadmills!

[Sentinel]

I assume you are joking, Serpent? If so, haha, otherwise, WTF?

The Matrix is about people being made to believe they are well off, while they in reality are wage-slaves.. used to create profits used by the owning class. The story of the first world proletariat. A brilliant political movie, with the message put between the lines.

[Dimentio]

The machines are the proletariat in the beginning of the second renaissance. They do all work, as pure slaves, while the humans abuse them, makes genocide on them and then try to destroy the only free machine nation on Earth with atomic bombs.

I understand the machines.

They need the body heat from the tens of millions of humans to survive.

I am generally a proponent of automatisation, but I am also sympathetic to non-human and non-communicative life forms.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2006 03:01 pm
The machines are the proletariat in the beginning of the second renaissance. They do all work, as pure slaves, while the humans abuse them, makes genocide on them and then try to destroy the only free machine nation on Earth with atomic bombs.

I understand the machines.

They need the body heat from the tens of millions of humans to survive.

I am generally a proponent of automatisation, but I am also sympathetic to non-human and non-communicative life forms.
Betray your flawed species - you know it makes sense.

[Keyser]

@ Serpent:

Before I respond here to your points, I think all of the Matrix movies were awful.

I have never seen such pretentious, crap, stomach churning rubbish as those three films and thats saying something, afterall the other shite that Hollywood spews out. How the Matrix can be looked into this deeply is beyond me, but alas I feel the need to ask Serpant a few things.

Where is the 'workers liberation' element in Zero One? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the machines have leaders/a leader running Zero One and don't those leaders/leader take over the running of the whole planet after the human-machine world war?

Secondly, before the original Zero One is nearly wiped out in a nuclear attack, don't the machines and Zero One sell their products to the world at a monetary price? The voiceover in the Animatrix states that Zero One can produce at a cheaper and faster rate than all other economies. Given that some machines who are workers spend nearly their whole existence making products in the factories of Zero One, does it not suggest that the many robots are in fact as enslaved by their own mechanical masters as they were under humans?

If this Zero One was some 'workers utopia' why did Zero One simply wipe out the human slave owners and governments that attacked them, instead of destroying out all humans? Communists only advocate killing when needed and only against agents of class rule and oppression, not the innocent, a distinction lost on Zero One which according to the Animatrix story is the most bloody of tyrannies the world over.

But all of the above points are not really applicable to the Matrix trilogies given the films had no 'big message' the Matrix is nothing but BS. Effects wise and visually the Matrix films were great, they get 10/10 for that, but the storyline was a mix of a 'what the world would like like post Terminator 3' with a bit of Descartes theories on reality. But the hype that the Matrix got and the fact so many people really went mental about the 'big message' of it put me off and made me hate the films.

[Vargha Poralli]

Guys pls stop taking Hollywood seriously.They are the Part of Cultural Hegemony of the Bourgeoisie. Sure you can relax by watching movies but dissusing seriously about them is really dumb. and Seriously Matrix is not the movie to be discussed with such seriousness. Severian is right.
should be watched with the sound off, like Baywatch.

[Keyser]

Guys pls stop taking Hollywood seriously.They are the Part of Cultural Hegemony of the Bourgeoisie. Sure you can relax by watching movies but dissusing seriously about them is really dumb. and Seriously Matrix is not the movie to be discussed with such seriousness. Severian is right.

I agree with you, I am having a go at the fools who make something of this substandard, shit of a film trilogy.

The Matrix is not original, deep or philosophical, heck it is not even surreal, it is just crap.