William Irwin has compiled a
series of essays about the movie “Matrix” in this work that makes us think
deeply:
from religion to philosophy, from politics to metaphysics. This world
isn’t real, is “virtual”. Machines take over the planet and everyone follow the
scheme built by them in the sense of a “soft and happy” life, but without
freedom. The search for freedom is the main point of the story. Few heroes take
anti-
government-apparatus to themselves the difficult responsibility of leading
the world from the chaos where it stands towards the true order and peace,
happiness and freedom. The typical difficulties in dealing with authoritarian Government
things are here put in a level and according to a completely different
perspective. Machines, basically cutting-edge computers that reached artificial
intelligence, take over the planet and everything that happens is monitored so
that it is satisfactory for the machine and not for the human. Few have access
to reality through computers not submissive to the system in a brilliant mirror
game. The world that appears to be real is just accessible to few that have the
necessary technology to simulate it in computers. Out of this appearance,
everyone sleeps while it is generated the necessary energy for the work of the
machines. A young programmer spends endless nights looking for something,
feeling that something wrong’s happening that things aren’t what they seem to
be… Who gets the intuition that there’s something wrong with the world feels
immediately identified with the story’s hero. He searches so much that he ends
up being found by the anti-Government guerrilla group leaded by an activist
named Morpheus. A perfect nickname, because in his battle everyone is falling
asleep in the arms of the computers that resist the system so that all human
species can wake up from the sleep that it’s in. The young programmer is
invited to know more (information is power, control and dominium) and fight for
the world’s freedom. He becomes aware that him, Neo, is The Chosen One, the one
that, for being capable of acting operationally against the order, capable of
fighting and of showing men the way to freedom. Morpheus is his master, who
recognizes him and who will be soon overtook. How to fight against the slavery
that, for centuries, men is born enslaved? This question, old as the Government,
was exceptionally worked by the Renascent Etienne de La Boétie. The thirst for
freedom was already crossing Spartacus’ dreams in the Roman Empire.
The actuality of this restlessness in the globalized world in which we live in
disturbs. Besides the allegories introduced in the movie, there is the
reflection around man’s fight for his emancipation facing a tormenting power.
Against all evidence – even
because the alternative for the one who woke up is the unbearable “voluntary
servitude” – the human being fight to emancipate proceeds full and effective.
More important than achieving success in the fight is not to surrender, because
to surrender is to become one’s butcher.
The apprentice has to “die” and
“resuscitate”, he needs to learn new techniques, he needs to overcome specially
his own fear and conformism. He needs to live and let live in permanent battle
against the mechanical torturers.
“Matrix” is the Government, the
cold order to which the human being should submit. It is a joint of machines
capable of making believe in anything, acting directly at people’s neuronal
level. Against this, the battle seems to put back the machine at the human’s
service, not using him any longer. The final combat, between the imaginative
human, creator on one side and, on the other representatives of the “order”,
the machines agents, he’s an allegoric perfection. It makes us remember of all
the historical moments in which our species followed the right direction,
always under the direction of a charismatic leader, serving a superior power
that sometimesnot even he, in the beginning, utterly understands.
Neo, Morpheus and their allies
are the human liberators, the humanist guerrillas that want the restoration of
the order, of the harmony. Few idealist human beings fighting for what’s good,
fair, correct intend to bend, to stifle the dominant autocracy. Hasn’t it been
like this along human species history? This book should be read with the same
attention and enthusiasm that in other times would be devoted to the Communist
Manifest, to the Voluntary Servitude Speech, to the Surrealism Manifest and
other subversive works. Everything is pain and illusion – old Buddhist teaching
– what we call reality is nothing but a mere illusion of the senses.
Futuristically, brothers Larry and Andy Wachowsky direct an exquisite mixture
of Christian aspects with those from Buddhism and Hinduism, into what became
known as Gnosticism.
References to the Messiah, The
Chosen One, Zion, Trinity, run
parallel to oriental philosophies. Everyone sleeps, it is necessary to wake up,
here’s one of the main points of the Buddhist philosophy. In one scene the
“Messiah” Neo holds his hand open and paralyses the bullets shot against him,
they have been transformed into flowers petals, according to tradition.
Communism and religiosity have a
close, umbilical relationship! People from high intellectual and moral level
fighting for a world and a better life for everyone are the main issues between
politics and faith – connection that nowadays we can only find, it’s worth to
emphasize, in Islam. It’s a joy to watch a Christian movie, with Buddhist and
oriental mentions, bringing us the same meditations.