“When the Matrix was first built
there was a man born inside that had the ability to change what he wanted, to remake the
Matrix as he saw fit. It was this man that freed the first of us and taught us the truth; as long
as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free. When he died, the Oracle prophesied
his return and envisioned that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, an
end to the war and freedom for our people. That is why there are those of us that have spent our
entire lives searching the Matrix, looking for him.”
(Wachowski 1998, 43-44), The
Matrix
As children we are all born free and joyous,
without notions of money, class, religion, morality and ambition. No sooner, we
are delivered to the Matrix, a system that weans us while at the same time
imprisoning us for the rest of our lives. Yet there is something within the
soul of every man that the matrix cannot imprison, that retains a nebulous
memory of freedom. While most men never begin their journey for freedom, some
try to break free by revolting outwardly, only to find themselves entrenched in
it more firmly: But there have been a few who break the matrix.
1“The life that most of us
lead in society is to conform, that is, to adjust our thinking, our feeling,
our ways of life, to a pattern, to a particular sanction or mould of a
civilized society, a society that is always moving slowly, evolving according
to certain patterns. And we are trained from childhood to conform to the
pattern, to adjust ourselves to the environment in which we live. And in this
process there is never learning. We may revolt from conformity, but that revolt
is never freedom.
All religions are part of society,
invented by man for his own particular security psychologically. Religions as
they are now organized have their dogmas, their rituals; they are ridden with
authority and divisions. So religions too do not want man to be free.
So the problem is: is it possible for man to conform and yet be free
from society? Man must conform, must adjust himself - he must keep to the
proper side of the road for the safety of others when he is driving, he must
buy a stamp to post a letter, he must pay taxes on his income, and so on. But conformity, for most of us, is much
deeper; we conform psychologically, and that is where the mischief of society
begins. And as long as man is not free of society, not free of the pattern that
society has established for him to follow, and then he is merely moral - moral
in that he is orderly in social sense - but he is disorderly in the virtuous
sense. A man who follows the morality of a particular society is immoral,
because that only establishes him more and more in a pattern and makes him more
and more a slave to it. He becomes more and more respectable and therefore more
and more mediocre.”1
Morpheus
“The Matrix is everywhere, it's
all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window or on your television.
You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has
been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth… you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone
else, you were born into bondage, kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A
prison for your mind.” (1998, 29)
We are living in a matrix created by the
multinational corporations called Global Capitalism. This matrix of Global
Capitalism is our mother, whose mammaries we suck. These corporations unleash forces that not only shape our economic lives
but also dictate what we think, feel, wear, eat, and what meaning we make out
of our lives.
The matrix has
2“pitilessly torn asunder the motley ties that bound man to his
“natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man
than naked self interests, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the
mostly heavenly ecstacies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of
philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egoistic calculation. It has
resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless
indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom
– Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political
illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”2
The matrix has
3“stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked
up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the
priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. It has torn
away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation
to a mere money relation”3
The matrix has
developed a 4“class of labourers, who live only so long as they find
work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These
labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every
other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes
of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. Owing to the extensive
use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of human beings has
lost individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He
becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most
monotonous and the most easily acquired knack that is required of him.”4
The matrix is
one gigantic machine, crunching individuals’ freedom, obliterating their small
pockets of freedom until they get swamped in the competition created by the
matrix. The specialized and creative skills of people are rendered worthless by
newer forces of production while masses of labourers are crowded into the
factory organized like soldiers like an industrial army.
5“Governments
seem wholly incapable of responding, and public frustration is turning to rage.
It is more than a failure of government bureaucracies, however. It is a crisis
of governance born of convergence of ideological, political and technological
forces behind a process of economic globalization that is shifting power away
from the governments responsible for the public good” towards the matrix, “a
handful of co-operations and financial institutions driven by a single
imperative – the quest fro short term financial gain. This has concentrated
massive economic and political power in the hands of an elite few whose
absolute share of the products of a declining pool of natural wealth continues
to increase at a substantial rate – thus reassuring them that the system is
working perfectly well.
The Matrix
controlled by the world’s largest corporations constantly reassures us that
consumerism is the path to happiness, governmental restraint of market excess
is the cause of our distress, and economic globalization is both a historical
inevitability and a boon to the human species. In fact, these are all myths
propagated to justify profligate greed and and mask the extent to which the
global transformation of human institutions is a consequence of the
sophisticated, well funded, and intentional interventions of a small elite
whose money enables them to live in a world of illusion apart from the rest of
the humanity.”5
MORPHEUS
The Matrix is a system, Neo, and
that system is our enemy. But when you are inside and you look around,
what do you see; businessmen, lawyers, teachers, carpenters. The minds of the
very people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a
part of the system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand that most
of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inured,
so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.
No regime,
regardless of how authoritarian it might be, could sustain itself primarily
through organized state power and armed force. In the long run, it has to have
popular support and legitimacy in order to maintain stability.
The matrix
thus creates a cultural hegemony, an entire system of values, attitudes,
beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power
relations. This hegemony is an organizing principle that is diffused by the
process of socialization into every area of daily life. It in internalized into
the consciousness by the population as “common sense”, so that the philosophy,
the culture and the morality of the creators of the matrix appear as the
natural order of things.
The matrix
prevails in the curriculum of our schools, our religious scriptures, political
parties, cultural associations, clubs and the family: So much so that the
matrix uses its coercive apparatuses, the forces of law and order, as a last
resort. Instead its domination is maintained by the overwhelming consent of the
mass of people.
Overcoming
popular consensus created by the matrix is never going to be easy. Majority of
the people has accepted what is happening in the society as “common sense” or
as the “only way of running society”. There may be complaints about the way
things are run and people look for improvements or reforms but the basic belief
and value systems underpinning society are taken as granted.
MORPHEUS
The Matrix is programmed to protect its software
with the help of “agents”: Agents are ”sentient programs. They can move in and
out of any software still hardwired to their system. That means that anyone
that we haven't unplugged is potentially an Agent. Inside the Matrix, they are
everyone and they are no one” (Wachowski 1998, 63).
On a day in 399 BC the philosopher Socrates stood before a jury of 500
of his fellow Athenians accused of "refusing to recognize the gods
recognized by the state" and of "corrupting the youth."
Allegedly, Abraham Lincoln, who waged a war against slavery, was
assassinated by the banking cartel. In his own words,
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire
against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a
monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They
denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon
their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and
the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. [As
a most undesirable consequence of the war...] Corporations have been enthroned,
and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power of the
country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of
the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the
Republic is destroyed." —Abraham Lincoln”
This is just to cite the violent deaths of two famous figures of history
who challenged the matrix. The agents of the matrix are not men whom we
instantly recognize as violent. More than often they are respectable and moral
citizens, who 6“glide on water, cuts ribbons, walks across golf
greens, greets mothers and babies and obliges TV anchors. (He may be a man who) in his plush Oxford
Street office has a photograph of him with a bunch of international buddies,
global players and Sultans of the stock market. It is a black and white
snapshot of the cartel that rules the world.”6
The matrix blurs the distinction between moral and immoral. A slave to
the matrix is described as moral while Socrates is described as immoral and
corrupting.
AGENT SMITH
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. I've realized that you are 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.
He smiles.
Human beings are a disease, a
cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are... the cure.
Being in the
Matrix 7“we are experiencing accelerating social and environmental
disintegration in nearly every country of the world. There is a rise in
poverty, unemployment, inequality, violent crime, failing families, and
environmental degradation. These problems stem in part from a fivefold increase
in economic output since 1950 that has pushed human demands on the ecosystem
beyond what the planet is capable of sustaining. The continued quest for
economic growth as the organizing principle of public policy is accelerating
the breakdown of the ecosystem’s regenerative capacities and the social fabric
that sustains human community; at the same time, it is intensifying the
competition for resources between rich and poor – a competition that the poor
invariable lose.”7
8“In India, the 300
million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF “reforms” middle class—the
market—live side by side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeists of
dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of
2,50,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million
who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive
on less than twenty rupees a day.”8
NEO (V.O.)
I believe deep down, we both
want this world to change. I believe that the Matrix can remain our cage or it can become our
chrysalis, that's what you helped me to understand. That to be free, you cannot
change your cage. You have to change yourself.
I can't tell you how to get
there, but I know if you can free your mind, you'll find the way.
Throughout history there have
been people who have seen beyond the matrix. In every heart there is a flame
that seeks out truth. Eventually, if this flame is not smothered by the
education of the matrix, it begins it’s ascent to truth. And when it does,
strange co-incidences start taking place. People with messages enter and exit
your lives, books come by the way, phrases uttered by strangers are caught by
your conscience and life, instead of turning like a cog, shatters the
predetermined boundaries and starts drifting in a mysterious cosmic current.
The start of the journey is to
understand the way we have been conditioned by the matrix. Or, even prior to
that, understand that there is a matrix that is controlling our lives. It’s
painful to realize that we are caught in the cage of the matrix. What we
thought, felt and knew about our life was never our own but a set of social
codes, moral injunctions and authority of the religious scriptures. But this
cage is comfortable. The matrix rewards us if we follow and punishes us if we
alter our course. One’s cage may be more beautiful than the other, nonetheless
it is a cage. When we see the cage, the entire design of it, in that seeing,
arises, the first ray of freedom.
The matrix is not outside. The
matrix exists till we give it authority, sanction and validity in our minds.
The social codes, religious injunctions and economic determinism of the
corporates are all patterns to which we conform to, psychologically. Freedom
begins when we revolt inwardly to all form of authority we have accepted in our
minds.
As Noam Chomsky says, “I think it only makes sense to seek out and
identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of
life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they
are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human
freedom.”
Mere revolt to outer forms of
society without understanding one’s own structures of power, ambition and
violence has been the bane of many a social movements. One has to change
oneself. Self transformation is a revolution because it unplugs you from the
matrix and is the beginning of intelligence. From hereon there is no
predetermined path. You make the way as you walk.
Stripped of our religious
gods, our social gods, our economic gods, unplugged from the matrix: it may
seem a frightening yet undeniably exhilarating experience. The burden of
choice, perhaps for the first time, is squarely put on us. There is no authority
to be blamed, no destination to be reached, no preset rules to live. We create
the matrix.
MORPHEUS
She told you exactly what you needed
to hear. That's all. Sooner or later, Neo, you're going to realize just like I
did the difference between knowing a path and walking a path.
I guess there are many who
know what is right or at least what is wrong, who are tortured by their slavery
to the matrix. Yet, knowing is not enough for one has to walk the path. I have
met some who think in a disillusioned way that they are out of the matrix just
because they understand and can articulate it in its most pressing details.
There is a difference between
knowing the path and walking it, just as there is a difference between knowing
where Himalayas are and climbing its peak.
Walking the path is a lot of hard work. It is about the 9“willingness
to look at problems honestly, to look at them without illusions, and to go to
work chipping away at them, with no guarantee of success — in fact, with a need
for a rather high tolerance for failure along the way, and plenty of
disappointments.”9
No guarantee of success?!!
Yes, the matrix has reared us on the carrot and the stick. It is almost the
purpose of our life to be seen as successful by someone; the most highly prized
middle class value that keeps intelligent minds plugged to the matrix. Again, as
Noam Chomsky writes, “How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not
a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going
to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster';
instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask
the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty,
that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods
or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his
employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of
its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see
the reality is something far different.”
NEO
(V.O.)
When I
used to look out at this world, all I could see was its edges, its boundaries,
its rules and controls, its leaders and laws. But now, I see another world. A
different world where all things are possible. A world of hope. Of peace.
10“Optimism is a strategy for making a
better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s
unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you
assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you
assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change
things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The
choice is yours.”10
11“It
is within our means,( however), to reclaim the power that we have yielded to
the institutions of money and re-create societies that nurture cultural and
biological diversity – thus opening vast new opportunities for social,
intellectual, and spiritual advancement beyond our present imagination.
Millions of people the world over are already acting to reclaim this power and
to rebuild their communities and heal the earth.
We are now on
the threshold of an ecological era called into being by an Ecological
Revolution grounded in a more holistic view of the spiritual and material
aspects of our nature. This revolution now calls to each of us to reclaim our
political power and rediscover our spirituality to create societies that
nurture our ability and desire to embrace the joyful experience of living to
its fullest.”11
References
- Talks by J Krishnamurti, Madras, 23rd Dec, 1964
- The Communist Manifesto: Marx and Engels, 1848
- The Communist Manifesto: Marx and Engels, 1848
- The Communist Manifesto: Marx and Engels, 1848
- When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten, 1995
- The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Go beyond the gore and get the message, Syeda Hameed, April 7, 2012
- When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten, 1995
- Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Arundhati Roy, Outlook India, Mar 26, 2012
- Noam Chomsky, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2476.Noam_Chomsky
- Noam Chomsky, http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/2476.Noam_Chomsky
- When Corporations Rule the World, David C. Korten, 1995
