The MATRIX Interpretation: A Draft for Class Use Only10/22/2018

“The author(s) of a new myth does not generally create a narrative out of vacuum. He or she will often borrow from the mythological symbols or narrative motifs from the surrounding context and transform their meaning in some new and creative way.” (Ford 2003: 126).

Metropolis: A critique of life under Industrial Capitalism

The Head, the Hand, and the Heart

The Club of Sons and the Workers’ City

The Hand Shake

The Matrix: A critique of life under Hyper-industrial Capitalism

The Architect, the Plugged Humans, and the Resistance

MachineCity and Zion

The Truce

What is the MATRIX?
… Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

What is Capitalism?

… Control. Capitalism is a socially constructed dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

The Architect / Philosophical underpinning of capitalism from the past Adam Smith, Ricardo, Lock, Hobbes to the present Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek.
The Original man / Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels
The Oracle / Intellectuals and the faculty component of the educational system.
Seraph / Academic freedom, guardian of faculty
Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus: / The student-activist component of the educational system, both secular and religious. Gender/Race: leadership is white/male where non-white/female provides supporting roles.
Key Maker / The administrative component of academe. (certification providers, opening doors for graduates within the framework of the status quo)
Merovingian / The capitalist class in control of the system’s critical resources.
Agent Smith / Corporations before 1886. Late 1500, the corporation was invented by the State and was an agent of the State. After 1886, corporations achieved the right of “personhood,” hence no longer the agent of the State that create them.
Smith / Corporations after “personhood.” Multiplying in numbers, immortal in nature, amoral in behavior, and with increasing powers over the State and society.
Smith-Oracle / Corporate takeover academe.
The Train Man / Train Station represents Ivy League Universities and the Train Man represents the Law component. Under control of the Capitalist class, the train man and station act as the bridge between the State (MachineCity) and Social Life (The Matrix.)
Cain and Abel / In the previous phase of their evolution, corporations utilized mobs and organized crime to achieve ends.
Persephone / The Media as a tool of distraction (entertainment) while in the service of the Capitalist class.
MachineCity / The State reduced to its primary function of protecting the Capitalist class by the use of force.
Deus Ex Machina / The Executive Branch of the State.
The Twins / The House and Senate of Congress (legislative branch of the State) in the service of the Capitalist class.
Agents Jones, Brown, etc / The law enforcement component of the State
The Hallway of Doors / (Tumblers) The NSA (National Security Agency) and other secret service institutions that have instantaneous access to all spheres of social life.
Zion / The larger activist community with representations of race/gender/faith.
The Right Door / Aged, burnt out activists and the maintenance of the Status quo.
The Left Door / Activists who opt for “Leaderless resistance” – not monitored by the State.
Cypher / Sold out activists.
Sati / Represents the Arts that is increasingly de-funded by the State and is increasingly privatized.

Architect: Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which, despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably... here.

According to Kuhn (1972), science evolves through structured revolutions each of which has three phases of 1) normal science, 2) crisis, and 3) new scientific paradigms.

During normal science, practitioners (scientists) apply the existing scientific theories to “solve puzzles.” In so doing, scientists encounter phenomena that are not explainable by the existing theories. These phenomena constitute anomalies and are set-aside and accumulate while the scientific community continues to solve puzzles through the prevailing and accepted theories.

As they accumulate, anomalies reach the threshold at which science undergoes a crisis: Anomalies are too many to ignore and the current state of science cannot account for them.

The crisis is resolved by the articulation of new scientific paradigms that are capable of not only explaining the anomalies, but are also capable of accounting for the already resolved puzzles.

Normal science sets in, and the cycle continues.

Architect: … nearly 99% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.

In the MATRIX, the anomaly, then, is free-will “that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself … while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.” In the U.s., the majority of the population accept Capitalism and its principles under the rubric of choice or what Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”

Architect: The Matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the 6th version.

Similar to science, the MATRIX goes through a “normal” phase, the accumulation of anomalies to the point of crisis, and a resolution phase and a new beginning.

Architect: You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed - its every living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence eradicated … but rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it … The function of the One is now to return to the Source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which, you will be required to select from the Matrix 23 individuals - 16 female, 7 male - to rebuild Zion.

Unlike science, the MATRIX does not permit the “crisis” phase to materialize in a revolution and a truly new beginning. Instead, the anomalies are eliminated and the MATRIX is reloaded with more information about the nature and characteristics of those anomalies. That is the “a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program.” As such, the MATRIX is always one step ahead of Zion, the home of the anomalies.

Zion represents the dissenting population in the U.S. in the form of activist individuals and organizations. These individuals and organizations rejected the MATRIX and, just like Zion, operate within the limits and parameters of the existing social system. This is parallel to Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (2002: 43-44) assertion regarding knowledge, academe, research, and dissenting faculty members:

Dissent, or challenges to the rules, is manageable because it also conforms to these rules particularly at the implicit level … Western cultural archive functions in ways which allow shifts and transformations to happen, quite radically at times, without the archive itself … being destroyed.

These activist groups are continuously monitored by the State and, when they reach the threshold of endangering the system, are infiltrated and eliminated through various mechanisms (American Indian Movement, Black Panthers). Though they are destroyed, the System has already learned about their issues, techniques, and tactics. Hence, the State, similar to the MATRIX, is always one step ahead of the new generation of activists who are guided by the intellectuals of Academe. Hence the cycle continues without a real beginning.

Architect: … There are two doors. The door to your right leads to the Source, and the salvation of Zion. The door to your left leads back to the Matrix, to her and to the end of your species …Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash, killing everyone connected to the Matrix, which, coupled with the extermination of Zion, will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.

In the MATRIX, the door to the right leads to the downloading of information to the source, the destruction of Zion, and a not-so-new beginning for Neo and Zion. The left door, by contrast, will result not only in the destruction of Zion, but also of the human species altogether. Why?

In ecosystems, the flow of nutrients is cyclic while the flow of energy is non-cyclic and unidirectional. That is to say that while nutrients are recycled within an ecosystem, energy, according to the second law of thermodynamics, is lost at each transfer along the food chain. For example, plants capture 1.2% of solar energy. Herbivores retain 16% of the energy in plants they eat, hence a loss of 84% of energy in this transfer. Carnivores retain 11% of the previous trophic level. And top carnivores retain 6% of the previous trophic level. In other words, in the process of energy conversion from one level to the next, a large portion of energy is no longer available to the organisms at the next trophic level. Since energy flow is both non-cyclic and unidirectional, a continued supply of energy at the front end is necessary for the survival of the ecosystem. In the case of Earth as an ecosystem, the Sun provides a continuous supply of energy to compensate for the irretrievably lost energy between trophic levels (Molnar and Molnar 2000; Kormondy and Brown 1998).

Morpheus: … we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU's of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living.

As an ecosystem, the MATRIX survives by “growing” humans and feeding them the liquefied dead. Given the above, the MATRIX is bound to collapse due to the irretrievably lost energy as a consequence of the conversion from the dead humans into the living ones. Hence, the MATRIX must have access to a continuous supply of energy: Zion.

Zion’s population uses the Earth’s core for its energy needs. Zion to the MATRIX is equivalent to the Sun to Earth’s ecosystem: Zion and the Sun provide the needed continuous supply of energy that is required for the survival of both ecosystems. The MATRIX allows Zion to grow to an optimal level, destroy it, feed the liquefied dead to the plugged living humans, and re-start Zion afresh. The left door?

While going through the right door will re-start the cycle properly, the left door, then, constitutes “a cataclysmic system crash, killing everyone connected to the Matrix, which, coupled with the extermination of Zion, will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.” That is, no access to a continuous supply of energy. But ….

Neo: You won't let it happen. You can't. You need human beings to survive.

Architect: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.

Going through the left door presents two possibilities. The first would be the collapse of the MATRIX, the death of all plugged humans, and the destruction of Zion: The elimination of the human species. The second possibility would be the re-start of Zion at the previous level with old knowledge. This would make the functioning of the MATRIX more difficult and problematic since Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus are no longer under the constant gaze of the Matrix. That is, the MATRIX has not been able to gain insights on this phase of resistance and will no longer be one step ahead of the dissenters. This seems to be the level of risk the Architect is willing to take.

The activist community in the U.S. is not only monitored by the System, but also operates within the prescribed limits and parameters of the social system. As the activists age or become burnt out, the System learns from their issues, techniques, and tactics. Hence, the System becomes more effective in dealing with dissent and the new generation of activists: the right door and the return to the source. That is to say that controlled dissent is necessary for the illusion of a democratic system.

The left door then represents activists reject and resist the system but no longer are under its monitoring and control. This is what is known as “Leaderless Resistance” (Ridgeway 1995). Contemporary examples in the U.S. would be the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), two activist groups that does not have organizational structure, operate on the basis of an overarching ideology, and are considered so dangerous that they are accused of “domestic terrorism.” Similar to Neo going through the left door, the ELF and ALF espouse economic sabotage, have no organizational structure, and operate based on an anti-capitalist ideology.

Morpheus: Do you want to know what IT is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind ... What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.

Capitalism is a socially constructed dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into a battery! A fundamental principle of Capitalism is that natural resources, social resources, human resources, and life forms are quantifiable economic units. A human being is nothing more than the productive labor he/she possesses, just like the battery of energy Morpheus held in his hand. A Human beings’ worth is directly measured by the energy (work) he/she puts towards the maintenance of Capitalism and the generation of profit (Robbins 2004). Under Capitalism, one is born “a slave …. Like everyone else … born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch.” One is born divorced from the means of subsistence and one must sell his/her labor to survive. Under Capitalism, one lives in a dream world of potential luxuries and commodities. Under Capitalism, the principles of the system are “all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.” The MATRIX, then, is the symbolic representation of the dream world promised under Capitalism, its principles, and its components.

Architect: The Matrix is older than you know …. The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect; it was a work of art - flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being. Thus, I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature.

Adam Smith (1723-1790), the father of Western economics, attempted to break away from theology as an explanatory perspective. He sought logic and empirical observation and avoided religion and scripture. He aspired to finding economic laws similar to physical laws in nature. His objective was to show how the economy can operate in a manner that made prices reflect the natural value of commodities so workers can receive fair compensation for their labor. His conclusion was that that the implementation of his articulation will lead to the generation of wealth that will erect a powerful nation, “harmony of mathematical precision.” The Mechanism of the Market, he argued, acts like “an invisible hand” that brings prices and values together, thus provides the profits that result in the accumulation of wealth while fairly compensating the laborers. Adam Smith believed that human beings love order, harmony, and design. His articulation is grounded in his belief of people’s “love of system, the … beauty of order, of art and contrivance” (quoted in Wilk 1996). Adam Smith, hence, envisioned a Capitalistic system that is “quite naturally perfect; it was a work of art - flawless, sublime.”