The Matrix is real.

Maybe I'm slow to the party, but it has dawned on me, with crystalline clarity, that the science-fiction, computer-generated alternate reality portrayed in the movie "The Matrix" is real. But instead of being generated by computers to keep farmed-bread humans happily unconscious while they feed on our electrical impulses, the real alternate reality is generated by our military-industrial-MEDIA complex to keep us very real humans happily ignorant while they feed on our wealth.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

and suspect...

:tinfoilhat:

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

MIGHT they have said?

Last night, my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them, "I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."

They got up, unplugged the computer, and threw out my beer.

They are SO on my shit list ...

I better hide my beer!

:silly:

He was the french Po-Mo guru who actually coined the term "virtual reality" (no, he wasn't talking about video games) and whose writings (especially "Simulacra and Simulations") served as the basis for the sci-fi plot of the film. Many of the lines in the film are lifted directly from his work, including the show-stopper where Morpheus shows Neo the actual earth outside of the Matrix and tells him "welcome to the desert of the real".

I teach an undergraduate course on Postmodernism about once every year if there are enough students interested; The Matrix films are a great common touchstone to begin discussions on ways our machines, media and modes of communication influence culture, thought and perception.

was an awful book, however.

like grumpy old men.....

heh.

I've just been reading Baudrillard myself for my Contemporary Political Theory class. And we literally watched The Matrix in class to drive the points home.

:hi:

...that 'The Matrix' is based on a true story..

..Day and night.. that Matrix spins its nylon strands over the consciousness of TV vewers.. until.. we can't remember where the dream started or why we are here?

Here is an essay from Joe Bagent.. a very good take on this very topic.. all about the Matrix Hologram.


http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/05/lost-on.html

"The political regime or philosophy does not exist which can turn this scenario around. Slow it down, maybe, but put things in reverse, nope. Not when six billion mouths are munching at one end of the last noodle, and at the other end a fraction of a billion well armed technological people want the entire noodle. Not when life is already so damned cheap you can buy a girl slave in Haiti for twelve bucks, or 50 child slaves for your Asian sweatshop for less than the cost of a new car. Or an American working man for half of what it takes to support a family, then throw his ass over the company fence when he's no longer needed. Or bury him in mines as he cries out in Jesus' name, blow him up in Iraq, and Stelazine his kids minds and souls under the hot lights of the hologram, readying them for "the labor market." Schenectady or Soweto, life is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper everywhere on the planet.

Meanwhile, gangster capitalism needs that hologram to maintain the illusion that life is not cheap, and that Jennifer Anniston's ass can be yours in mind and dream (Personally, I'm a Julianna Margulies fan -- The Good Wife"). And most of all, "The Gram" is required to keep its captives deluded and sated enough to remain productive and consuming -- not to mention hating the right people -- right up to the last moment before total collapse, and they are no longer needed. The higher owning/investing class is safe, no matter what happens. Oh sure, as Edward Bellamy wrote, a few of them topple from their high perch on humanity's coach during the hell bent journey, but their class remains."

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/05/lost-on.html

The most recent is called the Shadow elite, and it's a system that is not limited to the military-industrial complex. All government is local. Start there if you want to put an end to these status quo regimes.

it is a fitting metaphor for a World pulled over our eyes. From a philosophical perspective, the modern, Western culture is clearly based on an intensive methodology that simulates a certain, collective reality, especially through media and technology.

Even though Baudrillard is some heavy reading, (remember that book that was Neo's stash in The Matrix?) his philosophy centers on the nature of our particular "matrix" of simulation. Anyone familiar with how we personally filter information and create consensus reality can more easily fit the pieces together and then be aware of how media emits and reinforces a carefully crafted Simulation that absorbs everything, (past and present) and regurgitates it with authority and a synthetic form of reality that Baudrillard refers to as hyperreal, as in, more real than real.

However, bringing that up in a public place is bound to incite some contention and wrath. How would one describe water to fish when it is everywhere around them and they know no contrast to it?

In these times, seeing more clearly into exactly how this Brave New World is pulled over our eyes is a potential antidote to the nature and function of skillfully manufactured consent and management and manipulation of the masses. It is not an enjoyable or popular emergence, but the air is clear and fresh, at least.

We only have to look at the success of the 'placebo effect'. We're happy our needs are being taken care of without actually knowing what our needs are...

.

Sadly, too many of our fellow citizens happily choose the blue pill on a daily basis. Anyone who has ever tried to talk facts to a rabid right winger knows this. They willfully ignore facts while spouting fox news sound bites.

is alluding to in this interview, although he refers to it as "structures of power."

However it seems even the wealthy and members of the corporate media are trapped in this subconscious Matrix.



Thanks for the thread, jfkraus.

If you did....DON'T go to the fucking party!! STAY HOME!@!@! I'M SERIES!!!!222

:shrug:

Yes, you are slow to the party, and it is far worse than you yet imagine. Life isn't about production and consumption but that is what it has become for us. Social reality is a construct and it is sustained by media perceptions. That most people still don't 'get' this, what this means for us and the lives we live, is a never ending source of amazement.

The first being reality is too much of a shock so remaining in subconscious denial is easier.

The second for those people; who are consciously aware pertains to the same motivation as that of the traitor to the group.

I don't remember the exact quote but it went something like.

"I know this isn't steak, but it tastes like steak."

Absolutely. So many people who don't want to know what's actually going on in the world. It's too scary; they'd rather hide in "reality TV" or whatever other bullshit.

Doesn't change the fact that it's fucking happening, asshats. :banghead:

Sorry, sometimes I just find it really frustrating. I don't understand how people can, in good conscious, live that way.

But they're still left with another curtain.

The poster I was responding to seemed to insinuate that people; believing society was being manipulated by the military industrial/corporate media complex to create a nation and/or world of non-thinking consumers; and thus depleting them of their wealth to be the "Materialists"

Whereas, I've always thought it to be the other way around, those people or corporations worshiping the idea of unlimited consumption and accumulation of possessions without regard to it's impact on society and the environment to be the true "materialists."

I'm curious as to which side you believe to be "woo woo" and which side is "reality based?"

as it is most commonly used on this board. I was not engaging in the substance (or lack thereof) of the discussion nor was I making a comment about the lack of relevance the term has in said discussion.

with the term "woo-woo".

Pathetic.

'welcome to the desert of the real'

There must be a conspiracy.

:tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

If metaphors were only a matter of one thing being LIKE another, they'd just be similes.

Perhaps there is more of an equivalence in metaphors; we say one thing IS another by virtue of (an) essential characteristic(s) which they share, while the elements of a simile are similar for less essential reasons.

The entire genre of social science fiction is predicated on the extrapolation of drawn out metaphors, for example. Does a book like Frank Herbert's Dune have nothing to say about the actual world because the real-life "spice" is burned in internal combustion engines instead of horked by inter-galactic navigators? I think not!

"we say one thing IS another by virtue of (an) essential characteristic(s) which they share"

Naw. Just that one thing is analogous to another, and that thinking about this other situation might give us some insight into the present one.

:eyes:

"… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses." Roman poet Juvenal (circa 100 AD ).


...or more like McDonalds and American Idol.

"To Serve Man"

Only you can do that...

that led to cascade failure, resulting in where we are now. I believe only around 20% are happily ignorant while the rest of us go out daily to charge up that corporate battery!

That's an interesting thought - I need to chew on that a while. Thank you!

We've been reading that book for my Contemporary Political Theory class. Then to drive the points of the book home, we watched The Matrix.

Of course, the terms Baudrillard uses are hyperreality and simulation.

P.S. Watch The Matrix for a philosophical Easter Egg. At the beginning, when Neo opens up a hollowed-out book to pull out some disks for those druggie kids, including the girl with the white rabbit tattoo, notice that the book is Simulacra and Simulation...

http://www.simulation-argument.com/faq.html
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/02/our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html

The planck length is the smallest theoretically possible unit of measurment. Observations support the prediction by demonstrating that the actual, practical minimum unit of measurement is far larger, by several orders of magnitude than the planck length. They had found the resolution of the universe.