Neo is basically Christian mythos cyber-Jesus… why would he stay in comfort but aimless boring routine instead of trying to find the truth about the world and make it a better place, even if it means risking his own life? 🤷
Idk man, didn’t look perfect or comfy to me. Disconnecting was not necessarily an upgrade in life quality, but he was certainly more free than he was before.
Obviously there are also counter arguments as for every philosophical position, but the experience machine is a thought experiment to show how hedonism isn’t a good basis for well being if you’re trying to base your virtues or ethics in well being
I never understood why this was seen as a good counterargument. I think the hedonist would say just say “yes, hook me up” assuming people aren’t suffering in the real world that they would otherwise be helping. The reason for wanting to make change is if people are suffering, so if no one is suffering the hedonist would just say sign me up, no?
I don’t think that engages the argument from a hedonistic perspective it’s addressing though. Prioritizing and valuing reducing suffering and helping over pleasure violates the thesis that pleasure is the ultimate good.
EDITED: Sorry guys I tried to make an argument in favour of the movie, but of course I forgot trans is bad and therefore movie bad
Also, y’know, Neo was miserable and depressed and trying to figure out why he felt like there was something deeply wrong with the world and then took a pill to explore the truth and gain the agency over his life he was lacking. Unrelatedly the authors are trans and left wing.
Couldn’t possibly be a metaphor for how modern society crushes freedom of expression and agency in order to serve the powerful often in ways most people aren’t even aware of.
Then I choose ignorance as it’s bliss while life is hell.
Edit: I find it offensive that the commenter I replied to insinuates that there’s any transphobia in my comment.
Attitudes like this is why I’d rather do my transition alone that surrounded by the mainstream trans community.
And thats why the choice matters. Morpheus didn’t rip him out. There were too pills, youre free to choose the other.
Morpheus didn’t give him all the facts and rushed him into a decision before giving him the chance to process what little information he was given.
That’s not a choice. That’s a con-job.
but nio taking the blue bill then credits roll, isnt a very engaging movie
Ah right right, the movie would have flowed better if he was given a course on existentialism and a detailed recount of life on the outside.
the matrix reboot we should have gotten, instead of whatever the fuck that 4th movie was.
nio takes the blue pill, credits roll
How about a quick. “Hey. Just so you know, we live in sewers and eat gruel. Now make your choice.”
Isn’t this The Entire Point?
That there is value in truth, even if the truth is painful?
That we should believe in and fight for a cause, even if fighting is hard?
And that’s what I love so much about it, it really drills down to what you value in life. What’s more important, being comfortable, or knowing the truth? Do you really want to know how the sausage is made?
I think of cases like 1930s Germany, where people just ignored the atrocities happening because they weren’t happening to them. Those bystanders were like Cypher in The Matrix, where they decided that “ignorance is bliss” and looked the other way. The film certainly paints Cypher as a bad guy, but I think a lot would side with him if he instead were a new recruit who decides to go back to the Matrix shortly after learning the truth.
Anyway, The Matrix is perhaps my favorite movie of all time, I’m still waiting for a sequel. 😉
Yeah, it’s a real shame they never made another. I’d love a third Alien movie also, but we’ll just have to make do with two.
Ah see, but he is depicted as the soyjack
Uhh, I think that is a great interpretation but I’m pretty sure the entire point is to be a trans allegory.
Lol. Switch was supposedly trans initially (and I think it’s pretty obvious as well), so it’s not like there was nothing pointing towards the creators personal interest and accepting nature for transsexuality, but yeah the story is much much more than that.
Years after the release of The Matrix, both of the Wachowskis came out as transgender women.[183] The red pill has been likened to red estrogen pills.[184] Morpheus’s description of the Matrix creating a sense that something is fundamentally wrong, “like a splinter in your mind”, has been likened to gender dysphoria.[184] In the original script, Switch was a woman in the Matrix and a man in the real world, but this idea was removed.[185]
The last detail about Switch is so cool—I wish they had kept it.
As
first timerelatively green directors, the studio had a lot of say over what they got to include. Often to the story’s detriment. Humans were originally processors instead of batteries (which makes a fuck ton more sense)I always thought that in the end you would find out that the “real world” wasn’t actually real. The reality was that machines were not using them as batteries but were simply preserving the human race out of respect for their creators (like we preserve endangered species today). The machines were simulating multiple levels of a reality as some humans were stroking out or going mad as they discovered the simulation. The entire conflict was to deal with the human need for exploration and conflict in the face of control and restriction.
Smith even talks about it when he’s explaining how the first version of the Matrix was created to be a utopia.
It’s been so long since I watched it. Maybe this is an actual interpretation you could get from the ending and it’s why I thought it. I forget. But it made a lot more sense than being used as batteries.
Or the preservation of humans was deemed important because, well, humans are amazing. I think any artificial intelligence would be smart enough to know that organic life and billionaires of years of evolution were definitely something worth preserving. Even if that life could no longer live within the environment (climate change) that it once could.
Like, there are a million different better explanations than fucking batteries. So, even if that wasn’t the writers idea. I always found it much more satisfying to think this.
IIRC, in supplementary material (maybe the Animatrix?) it’s revealed that the machines kept trying to sue for peace, but the humans insisted it had to be genocide, so the machines settled on the Matrix as their way not to have to kill all humans.
Morpheus’ last line in the movie is “Is this real?” People have taken it and run with it. That coupled with the Oracle’s explanation that choice was the key to the current matrix’s success led people to believe that both the matrix and “the real world” are matrix instances and that the only way out would be to realize that fact and then reject the system wholesale. It also explains why Neo’s abilities still work in the real world as well. And again, explain the fucking batteries line.
Thanks. It’s been awhile since I watched the second and third movies. I just knew it ended without clarity and being open to interpretation. Which I guess allows me to project my own story onto it where humans are basically being preserved as organic life forms. Or even don’t exist organically at all. I enjoy writing that allows for that open ending.
On a first viewing, if you turn your brain off, batteries make enough sense. But don’t sit back and ponder how many calories the machines had to pump into the humans to get a few volts out. :)
“Combined with a form of fusion”
There we go, all fixed!
- The Studio
Nonono see , it’s bioelectricity …which is uh, different.
I just mentally replaced “battery” with “processor” anyway.
They had directed Bound before this
Thank you for keeping me honest. I’ll update
So was Switch supposed to be a woman in the Matrix because of a bug and in the real world he was his true self, or did the machines allow her to live her true gender in the Matrix?
Just because it’s a trans allegory doesn’t mean they figured it all the way out. I think it was mostly the broaching of the topic and putting the ideas into normal people’s head that something like that could happen. I can imagine a very different social experience if explaining trans in the early 2000s could have been boiled down to “I’m kinda like switch from the matrix.”
Bruh. Think through the thought for a moment before you dismiss it as something that wasn’t thought through. People with gender dysphoria often question their existence. The robots don’t want people to do that, cause they’ll start finding the seams. So yeah, everyone meshed with their gender (assuming it could fit within the binary parameters of the 90s) because the matrix wants to be as stable as possible.
I think the comment is saying the actual analogy was open to interpretation. Maybe, they said it poorly. The lack of clarity is on purpose. Though I never read the pre-movie version. Maybe it’s more clear. Is Switch an assigned male at birth character in the real world happy being cis? or a trans-man finally able to be accepted for their identity?
I’d say they simply wanted to have Switch as a character with this trait and leave the interpretation up the the audience. In that universe it’s not even clear if the “real world” is actually organic reality. Switch could be interpreted as a trans man, trans women, or even a nonbinary person forced to conform to gender roles in both the Matrix and the “real world”.
I think leaving this for the viewer to interpret would have been really good if it made it into the movie.
Also, the machines absolutely wanted conflict. The first matrix failed because it was a utopia. They realized that the struggles of being human were important to simulate. So you’re not correct in that. At least from literally what agent Smith explains in the movie.
Also, an interpretation I have of the last movies is that the “real world” is just another level of the Matrix. It is a place for the minds of people to go that cannot be contained by the restraints of the lower level Matrix. It is a place that gives them purpose and struggle while maintaining order in the first level of the Matrix. So, yeah. Things can definitely be “thought through” in different ways. It’s why the movie was iconic. It’s not spoon feeding you exactly what the writers want you to interpret.
The robots don’t want conflict between humans, they want humans to accept their false reality without question. That allows them to keep as many humans as possible. A utopia (from a machines idea of utopia, mind) wouldn’t be the most seamless thing. If everyone around you gets whatever they want and there’s no interpersonal friction from that, it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. Putting thought into it would reveal that something must be putting its finger on the scale in order to cause this result. That would wake people up to the fact that this isn’t reality.
They even over corrected with the second matrix and made humans these cowering things to the monsters that went bump in the night. That’s where the maravangian and his pals come from. The issue with that one is humans in constant fight-or-flight are hard to control, so they eventually do things that cause them to awaken as well.
Someone who is trans has a built-in reason to question their reality if they’re kept in their biological body (“why do I feel like I should’ve been born a girl”, etc). So, by putting them in the body that matches their perception, the machines reduce conflict between the system and humans. Reduces the likelihood that any one person has any reason to question that their reality is real.
Smith is a character in the world. He’s explaining things as he understands them, but most importantly in order to break Morpheus and get him to give them the info they want. He’s trying to get him to buy into the idea that the machines are superior to humans.
I don’t mind the different interpretation but I don’t agree that machines would for some reason not have trans people exist in the matrix. Are we assuming they have the ability to assign someone’s “true” gender at birth? Trans women are trans women. Trans men are trans men. Simulating their genitals to be “correct” wouldn’t change that. What do they do with nonbinary people? Nonbinary people can’t be “tricked” to not conform to a set of binary gender identities.
Would trans or nonbinary people be more likely to question the Matrix? Sure, you could argue that. But so would neurodivergent people or anyone that’s feels they are not accepted by the social constructs of society. The reality that human beings accept and question the least is the reality that we live in. A reality where trans people exist. Humans (and especially trans/nonbinary humans) would be far LESS likely to accept a reality in which there are only two genders. It would make the matrix LESS believable not more.
I think you’re projecting the human history of attempting to erase trans people onto the machines. Which could be an interpretation. But I don’t see the machines as malicious or evil. I see them as logical in their methods of control.
That kind of runs counter to the idea that the rest of the metaphor though.
The real world is messy, gritty, real. The matrix is what humans want for themselves. A reality that most of us can accept without issue. We see this time and again in the matrix movies.
How does what I said run counter to the metaphor?
Because as the wikipedia quote illustrates, the uncanny feeling of the matrix is a metaphor for gender dysphoria. Taking the red pill helps you transition to your true self.
So if we strictly apply that to Switch, the Matrix assigned them as female when their true identity is male.
I’d wager Matrix was true expression.
Then the allegory wouldn’t make sense though, would it?
The main character would have less reason to want to stay in the real world if they received the “wrong” body. They lived their whole life in the “right” body in the simulation and then wake up just to feel gender dysphoria? It would just be confusing and uncomfortable as fuck for them.
Ah, you’re right. I was thinking too hard about it, reasoning that a non-human entity would be unaffected by human errors and cater to the being itself, its mind, rather than its body, and waking up to the reality of being in the wrong body is the issue. But then the point of the allegory, as you reminded me, is that exiting the Matrix is akin to exiting the lie, the false idea of you. I derped.
I guess the real moral is you can fabricate any story that suits you from source material, and ideas can go many ways. What matters is the Wachowskis’ vision, then, except in the idea that art is meant to be interpreted by the individual, in which case there will never be a singularity or wholly accepted conclusion…
It could be boiled down to what we can interpret from Switch, what’s canon. Then, knowing that she uses femme pronouns, and that her character was Lilly W’s internalised egg feelings, this seems the Matrix self is the true self.
She was a woman in the matrix because the robots wanted as little possibility for people to question their existence, so everyone identified with their own images. There was no gender dysphoria in the matrix unless you were nonbinary.
Also check out
“Begin Transmission” by Tilly Bridges
Morpheus gave him a choice. But, of course, being a good marketer, he didn’t say how reality would be.
The Matrix, Office Space, American Beauty, and Fight Club all came out in 1999. They all starred white males between the ages of 30-40 who have become disillusioned with their soul sucking jobs in a consumerist society. They all have an epiphany that breaks them away from the corporate consumerist grind and rebel against it, before finally becoming a sage who can live in the world but not be destroyed by it. Except for Kevin Spacey’s character, but seriously, fuck that guy.
Cipher’s a much better example. He’s tempted not with being an office drone, but with having a steak in a fancy restaurant, so being upper middle class? Anyway, that’s enough to get him to resort to literal murder.
Anyway, 1999 was a weird year in film. It seems almost trite nowadays that having a stable job with stable housing and being able to afford Starbucks every day was the bane of human existence, when nowadays it’s living in the lap of luxury.
We Are Living Inside the Matrix and the Rapper Pitbull Is the Proof - The Ringer https://www.theringer.com/2017/08/11/movies/pitbull-cypher-the-matrix-theory
Having a stable job just means masking everything different about yourself so you can be a good little worker ant in the capitalist machine. I want a stable job in the sense that I do something I genuinely want to do which serves my fellows.
There’s a reason they thought 1999 was peak in the matrix. If the biggest problem was boredom.
You mean that dead-end job and no social life to speak of? Not to mention the clashes with police he had.
Neo wouldn’t even have left his house to go to the party if it wasn’t for the white rabbit reference.
Living the dream.
This guy loves porridge
I mean its obviously better to live free and without false reality I find it crazy this is even being debated.
“Would you rather have an average mediocre life, or a bi-polar life that swings between being a god and a pauper on the run?”
I’ve seen this many times and it’s always fucking funny for me every time. The combination of the picture and the caption is so perfect.
Why’s this one different? It didn’t even mention living in a cave or porridge slop
PORRIDGE SLOP NEOOOOOO
There’s an interview with Keanu where he tells the story of how he explained the plot of Matrix to some child, who basically replied with “what does it matter if it’s real or not?”
Oh, hey Cypher!
Neo basically had no free will and had no real choice in the matter anyway. The Architect designed the Matrix so that the One would appear eventually and reset the instance after the rebellion. If he didn’t take the red pill he would have woken up in another way. He only had true free will when he decided to save Trinity.
