Philosophical Speculations

Now that Matrix 4 (Resurrections) is about to be released (December 22th), this might be a huge opportunity to introduce BK's idealism to the world.

According to Wikipedia:

Philosopher William Irwin suggests that the idea of the "Matrix" – a generated reality invented by malicious machines – is an allusion to Descartes' "First Meditation", and his idea of an evil demon. The Meditation hypothesizes that the perceived world might be a comprehensive illusion created to deceive us. The same premise can be found in Hilary Putnam's brain in a vat scenario proposed in the 1980s. A connection between the premise of The Matrix and Plato's Allegory of the Cave has also been suggested. The allegory is related to Plato's theory of Forms, which holds that the true essence of an object is not what we perceive with our senses, but rather its quality, and that most people perceive only the shadow of the object and are thus limited to false perception.

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant has also been claimed as another influence on the film, and in particular how individuals within the Matrix interact with one another and with the system. Kant states in his Critique of Pure Reason that people come to know and explore our world through synthetic means (language, etc.), and thus this makes it rather difficult to discern truth from falsely perceived views. This means people are their own agents of deceit, and so in order for them to know truth, they must choose to openly pursue truth.

This idea can be examined in Agent Smith's monologue about the first version of the Matrix, which was designed as a human utopia, a perfect world without suffering and with total happiness. Agent Smith explains that, "it was a disaster. No one accepted the program. Entire crops [of people] were lost."


What do you think?

PHIbonacci wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:45 pm Now that Matrix 4 (Resurrections) is about to be released (December 22th), this might be a huge opportunity to introduce BK's idealism to the world.

According to Wikipedia:

Philosopher William Irwin suggests that the idea of the "Matrix" – a generated reality invented by malicious machines – is an allusion to Descartes' "First Meditation", and his idea of an evil demon. The Meditation hypothesizes that the perceived world might be a comprehensive illusion created to deceive us. The same premise can be found in Hilary Putnam's brain in a vat scenario proposed in the 1980s. A connection between the premise of The Matrix and Plato's Allegory of the Cave has also been suggested. The allegory is related to Plato's theory of Forms, which holds that the true essence of an object is not what we perceive with our senses, but rather its quality, and that most people perceive only the shadow of the object and are thus limited to false perception.

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant has also been claimed as another influence on the film, and in particular how individuals within the Matrix interact with one another and with the system. Kant states in his Critique of Pure Reason that people come to know and explore our world through synthetic means (language, etc.), and thus this makes it rather difficult to discern truth from falsely perceived views. This means people are their own agents of deceit, and so in order for them to know truth, they must choose to openly pursue truth.

This idea can be examined in Agent Smith's monologue about the first version of the Matrix, which was designed as a human utopia, a perfect world without suffering and with total happiness. Agent Smith explains that, "it was a disaster. No one accepted the program. Entire crops [of people] were lost."


What do you think?

All sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films (actually all stories in general, but these genres of film make the connection most clear), especially if they capture the Imagination in any way, and present what feels to be "original" or "innovative" ideas, are abstract distillations of archetypal spiritual activity which constitutes our daily experience. It is the same archetypal spiritual activity which gave rise to all ancient mythology and philosophy and modern philosophy-science. So the real lessons are not to be learned by comparing the movie themes and images to philosophies, but to the underlying spiritual forces which gave rise to them both and which are immanently present in our experience. The 'physical' sense-world we perceive, for ex., is quite literally a symbolic expression of these supersensible activities, and that is the core idea of the Matrix which really captures the Imagination because it rings so deeply true. Personally, I love watching all the great movies related to "time travel" and discerning how they capture the ways in which our own past and future spiritual activity manifests itself in the present ("our own" when we understand all be-ings to be evolving manifestations of the same Spirit-Soul). The best I have come across so far is "Arrival" by Dennis Villenueve, in terms of both ideal content and execution.

Matrix 4? Hollywood is truly undead.

I rewatched the first Matrix movie after many years. It's one hell of an imaginative extract of the ever-present Christ journey. Everything from the broad story to the red pill/blue pill scenes and the specific characters and their decisions and sub-story arcs reflect sensible (matrix) and supersensible realities. Of course it is extremely relevant to our particular stage of spiritual evolution and the mechanistic forces which shield the supersensible from awareness. And, the fact that movies like this One exist when they exist is itself a reflection of our particular stage of blossoming imaginative cognition. Actually these things can be discerned in pretty much any movie now with a half-decent story, but it is especially noticeable in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. We are participating in very interesting times!

Some tasty food for existential dread: What if, instead of us being enslaved in a simulation right now by machines, we're instead scanned at birth for societal defects or narcissistic traits by our descendants and all of us who have presumably failed get lumped summarily into a containment space simulation so we don't affect diplomatic society. Even the biblical deity had something tantamount to that; he called it 'hell.' Maybe even racism is only a problem we end up having to engage with seriously here but in the 'real world' it's resolved because people aren't so defective or devolved they start socially imploding when forced to associate with too many different types of people in one place. (as a sort of prisoner's dilemma, I sympathize with those who put their own group first; if everyone else is beholden to clownhood you may as well preserve no. 1 and joke about it) If you look at the way we behave on social media when we lynch people and our egregious dehumanization of other ideas (very prevalent on the left and with the people JP has to unfortunately deal with), it isn't an entirely unrealistic idea that our future selves managed to isolate what 'types' of humans can get on with others intelligently and that if they got there already, we'd probably be in some mind farm to prevent us from messing their world up. I don't know; felt like making another bad post to exercise my imaginative prowess.

When you think, it does seem like there's a bizarre non congruity betwixt our expectations of what people are meant to be and how their traits actually materialize in reality. A 'statistical' madhouse if you will, salvaged only by very few reveries of respite such as this very discussion board we're on here and marred irreparably by the overwhelming super majority of interactions elsewhere on twitter, campuses, youtube, in company board rooms... - where there's a stifling abundance of prejudice, cynicism, spite

Idealistic theories of consciousness supersede the idea we're in a simulation anyway so it's as unlikely as all of the others, but it came to me from a dream

idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 7:28 am Some tasty food for existential dread: What if, instead of us being enslaved in a simulation right now by machines, we're instead scanned at birth for societal defects or narcissistic traits by our descendants and all of us who have presumably failed get lumped summarily into a containment space simulation so we don't affect diplomatic society. Even the biblical deity had something tantamount to that; he called it 'hell.' Maybe even racism is only a problem we end up having to engage with seriously here but in the 'real world' it's resolved because people aren't so defective or devolved they start socially imploding when forced to associate with too many different types of people in one place. (as a sort of prisoner's dilemma, I sympathize with those who put their own group first; if everyone else is beholden to clownhood you may as well preserve no. 1 and joke about it) If you look at the way we behave on social media when we lynch people and our egregious dehumanization of other ideas (very prevalent on the left and with the people JP has to unfortunately deal with), it isn't an entirely unrealistic idea that our future selves managed to isolate what 'types' of humans can get on with others intelligently and that if they got there already, we'd probably be in some mind farm to prevent us from messing their world up. I don't know; felt like making another bad post to exercise my imaginative prowess.

When you think, it does seem like there's a bizarre non congruity betwixt our expectations of what people are meant to be and how their traits actually materialize in reality. A 'statistical' madhouse if you will, salvaged only by very few reveries of respite such as this very discussion board we're on here and marred irreparably by the overwhelming super majority of interactions elsewhere on twitter, campuses, youtube, in company board rooms... - where there's a stifling abundance of prejudice, cynicism, spite

Idealistic theories of consciousness supersede the idea we're in a simulation anyway so it's as unlikely as all of the others, but it came to me from a dream

All of these - simulations, terminators, aliens, machines running the matrix, cosmic star trekking, etc. - are metaphors for spiritual (idea-) beings who transcend linear space-time. We are all the same Spirit at different stages of evolutionary development and therefore with different relational perspectives on the Cosmic whole. The sense-world (spatiotemporal) is generally depicted as the past-visible and the spiritual as the future-invisible (yet becoming more visible), with both "good" and "evil" idea-beings battling with each other (pursuing their own interests) and intervening within the sense-world to influence its evolution (or stop its evolution). All of our imaginative scenarios depicted in popular culture precipitate from this shared reality of idea-beings and their ideations. I know many people don't like spiritual assertions which say "all", but this is what makes sense of our structured experience and all of these cultural developments within the sense-world, regardless of how we feel about it.

I have no concrete reason to believe any of that but it does remind me a lot of this:

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:31 pm I have no concrete reason to believe any of that but it does remind me a lot of this:

You were on your way home when you died, etc ...

That double entendre of 'home' nicely sums it up

That story surely deserves a round of applause ... EveryOne now, give it up for God, narcissistic as that may be ! For God is g ...o ... o ...d (getting off on dissociation)

idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:31 pm I have no concrete reason to believe any of that but it does remind me a lot of this:

Belief is for the birds! If belief is what you are after, then it's best to adopt materialism, mystical nondualism, Schop idealism, or religious fundamentalism and call it a day. Free beings are only satisfied with knowledge. Archetypal knowledge that our best fictional stories cannot be more creatively, precisely, and richly structured than the Reality which gave rise to all of them; that our fantasy of an 'empty unconscious void' standing behind the visible world has no relation to our structured, ever-evolving experience. We are afraid that our deepest motivations, hopes, longings, and intuitions may actually be true, so we instead of choose to live in darkness and complain about our lack of motivation and hope. It's a very tragic circumstance humanity finds itself in today.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 10:54 pm

idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:31 pm I have no concrete reason to believe any of that but it does remind me a lot of this:

Belief is for the birds! If belief is what you are after, then it's best to adopt materialism, mystical nondualism, Schop idealism, or religious fundamentalism and call it a day. Free beings are only satisfied with knowledge. Archetypal knowledge that our best fictional stories cannot be more creatively, precisely, and richly structured than the Reality which gave rise to all of them; that our fantasy of an 'empty unconscious void' standing behind the visible world has no relation to our structured, ever-evolving experience. We are afraid that our deepest motivations, hopes, longings, and intuitions may actually be true, so we instead of choose to live in darkness and complain about our lack of motivation and hope. It's a very tragic circumstance humanity finds itself in today.

Why would anyone be afraid of that? Most of them are outright saying it's because they know a good deal of it is fabricated and being sold to them so JP can make a buck while they languish, that's why they don't feel very good. Everyone is looking for people to 'join a cause' to absolve their suffering or loneliness and they tend to predate upon these exact intuitive leanings. Loosely topical; you should start a youtube channel, I'd have a better overview of your premise so I could formulate a better understanding of it and you'd probably enjoy the money too.

>saying I have to see his subjective opinion as objective or I don't have any basis to believe mine-

no u, you might have already died in the 1930s. See the above story. Same here, btw.

There are tons of stories which are intelligently written and have absolutely nothing to do with the base three act structure culminating in a christ analogue that you see stemming from big budget cheeseball westerns like the Matrix, even if a bulk of them are eastern (Kino no Tabi, HxH, Berserk, the third is extremely popular at least) or delegated to a late night Channel 4 slot for publicity (At least until someone makes a 7 hour video with 5,000,000 views lavishing commentary on it; that show would be Utopia. The original/UK version. Watching at least a little of that might show how different that TV show was and it sits at the top of most viewer/critic aggregates too.) The rest are in actual books.

I'm a writer/artist myself so I'm aware of how a cultural zeitgeist builds cumulative expectations that you can then use as a sort of linguistic code to subvert or direct expectations, it's an exposed science that's easy for the experienced to codify; it has no especial preference for the analogues you point out as prevalent for a story. That's a language we built up to sell things. It's mostly that westerns (generally films, with recent TV such as the Sopranos or Breaking Bad finally breaking form on this) are too short to diversify the focus on a group of protagonists or go through the individuation of personalities in scrutiny since they often fail to really develop one, that and the rudimentary three act structure rather than the four act one Japan uses is really good at sophisticating a premise for a fight scene that can allow the audience to go mad with mindless explosions for the twilight of a story's three hours.

The Matrix or LOTR are not reflections of a spiritual exaltation, unless you're going to say the Big Mac also is. In the case of those two you've probably been mislead by degenerates in suits plagiarizing a few other authors that're powerless to intervene, at least in Tolkien's sake; the man is dead. Stories are a fetishistic medium so I'm abstaining from affixing my own appraisal of them to those who enjoy these in turn; what you order at McDonalds is your life and same here. But I will say those characters hardly even do anything meaningful or think. If Mickey Mouse just 'did' things' and Tom & Jerry finally added characterization with a train of thought behind the wheel leading protagonists between exacting their plans then the bulk of big budget cinema has remained firmly as the former. I know this because a famous visual novel artist underscored this change when going from his first protagonist in the late 80s to the protagonist's grandson and changing how fights were portrayed in his medium forever; the first of his stories was written when his medium strongly derived from tropes in James Cameron era cinema and it showed. Largely unaffected and financially complacent with not changing this, western cinema doesn't have to show a character doing anything surprising or spur pause for reflection to fill in their thoughts.

The Matrix is cool and if the questions it brings up makes you think then that's great; you may exude a greater propensity for it than me even. But come on, it's Rambo ft. Plato's Cave. It had about 2 hours to establish itself so what else was it ever going to be? Easier way to put it; if I had a good shot at delivering a ring to a volcano and I'd be revered as a hero for the rest of my life doing it do you think I wouldn't? The dominoes are set up for these protagonists to exact their course without scruples, Neo was chosen before he was aware of it and didn't have to explore more than one forking decision of minutiae or make difficult choices in making manifest his ascension. Is Rambo a spiritual journey now?

Some of the most uplifting stories are the ones that violently exclaim and venerate our atomized individuation because they don't run from reality while carefully reasoning through the prospects that would require someone to live happily in a 'maelstrom of uniformity', Berserk being the standout here. There is something infinitesimally more charismatic to me about an individual finding their way in a world of darkness despite being cursed to fail by that universe's representation of god himself; it's the same reason I enjoy hard magic with solid rules and drawbacks (Mistborn, HxH, Avatar Last Airbender) as opposed to 'a wizard did it.' But stories don't even need to climax. You can literally just make talking with each other interesting, GRRM built a career off of that and the entire ascension allegory of many a good story's main arc often plays second fiddle to the little moments of people interacting and working out the emotions that punctuated the road there.

I don't even think the Christ ascension analogy style writing works for plots that inspire that gratuitous sense of wonder as well as you think either. I'm serious. One Piece is the most popular graphic novel of all time more or less and as much as I've grown out of it (it's aimed at kids and has taken way too long to finish), some of why is that after the timeskip he got concerned with morality or the general well being of the world. To a lot if it's readerbase it had such a majestically optimistic plot when he was starting out and only cared about him and his crew as a pirate, the way just seeing things how they were and intervening in countries' affairs often led people to a more wholesome tomorrow and paved the way to free themselves from the heel of a world government that's tantamount to the global technofascism smothering us in our world.

I don't know. It's just that I spend a lot time in stories and thinking about them. You can maybe say some stories do this but a lot of stories really don't, where would Lovecraft's fables even sit on this spectrum?