The Allegory of the Matrix
=========================
Wolran Kim
April 2012
The Matrix, a film of the Science Fiction genre, was released during Easter week in 1999. Christians say that this movie is based on Adventists’ beliefs because the name of the revived protagonist, “Neo,” alludes to the Absolute when you rearrange the letters to “One.” The film consists of dazzling special effects and Cyberpunk, and is also paved with vast metaphors of philosophy, religions of the East and West, and the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. There are endless philosophical interpretations of the themes of freedom and happiness, imagination and reality, free will and fate, materialism, and even psychoanalysis.
Wide philosophical elements are also throughout in this movie, such as epistemology, metaphysics, existentialism, religion, philosophy, ethics, Marxism, and postmodernism. Of course, there are refuters as well, that say this is just a film for amusement mixed with Hollywood-style entertainment, filled with perfunctory expression. The refuters’ popular criticism is that the philosophy of the movie is flavored with inconsistencies such as, ‘The most important thing is the mind,’ ‘Only love can save the world,’ and ‘Let’s be a hungry Socrates rather than a full pig.’
Let’s consider the plot of the film. In 2199, the human world governs the system, and all humans are used as energy to extend the lives of machines that are trapped in an artificial womb after birth. They live in a mechanical, virtual reality for a lifetime after the Matrix is put into their brain cells. After the humans wake up from the dream of virtual reality, they build “Zion” as the new world and search for the hero who can save them. They finally find him; he is an ordinary worker, named Thomas Anderson, during the day and also a computer programmer by the name of Neo at night. After meeting a woman named Trinity, he finds the truth in the world outside of the Matrix. Now, he learns all the hidden truths and accepts his fate of having to save humanity with the name of Neo. He wakes up and escapes the Matrix after confirming the reality of human misery, raised by Al.
After liberation from the Matrix, Cypher, one of Moss’ colleagues, betrayed his colleagues to return the Matrix in the virtual reality, while he is impatient with fear in the midst of constant threats and attacks from machines. What would make him choose to live as a battery for machines? He said that he was tired of the cold and hunger. He wanted to live well, with wealth and riches, even though he knew he would be living in a dream as a computer simulation. Neo is a metaphysical existence who chooses the red pill and wakes up, and Cypher is a physical existence who chooses the blue pill and to live a comfortable life.
Cypher is a hedonistic person who thinks that pleasure is the only thing of value. The pleasure in the Matrix, which he chooses, is no more than a sensual satisfaction for humans, and he tries to achieve his objective through a rationalization that the Matrix looks more real to him than it is. He has chosen the way of a full pig and a satisfied fool because he knew the entire truth. In Cypher’s situation, does his choice deserve sympathy or condemnation in philosophers’ eyes? I will illuminate Cypher’s choice through the theories of the philosophers Plato (424/423-348/347 BC), Socrates (470-399 BC), and Hospers (1918-2011). Let’s look at Plato’s and Socrates’ views.
First, the Matrix, which is controlled by the main computer, resembles Plato’s cave. People in a cave live believing only their shadows of reality and the truth, reflected from the outside world. They blame and even kill an escaper who tried to teach the truth. "Would he not say with Homer, [Better to be the poor servant of a poor master] … I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner” (Plato, The Republic 207). Plato said that sacrifice to keep and teach the truth is the highest value for a human being, in spite of rejection and suffering across the worlds of reality and illusion. Seeking enlightenment, even if it is painfully difficult, is a more noble life than blissfully living in ignorance. Plato's good or righteousness is the ontological concept of integrity beyond an ethical level. Cypher is blamable for his ignorance in the cave because he chose physical pleasure and comfort in the Matrix even though he knew the truth.
Second, the theories of Socrates and Plato significantly differed from those of the Sophists, who were the leaders of Athens. The citizens were living according to the Sophists, with the unjust as just and the false as true. They looked just like ignorant prisoners in the cave, seeking riches and honor, in the eyes of Socrates and Plato. To that extent, Socrates, who escaped from the cave and preached the truth to them, will be condemned and sentenced to death. “Wherever a man that has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace” (Plato, Apology 31 #28e). People should adventure into danger to preserve their places no matter what their circumstances and environment are. Wiping away disgrace is more important than anything else, even the risk of death. In this regard, Cypher’s choice to escape from dangers and harsh environments is a selection of shame and disgrace.
Third, the early accusations against Socrates were: studying things in the sky and below the earth, making the worse argument the stronger, and teaching these same things to others. We should dig into our awareness to find the truth, and doubt the obvious to find a way to the truth. Socrates just wanted to inform people of the value of the truth, but people acted perversely, following society’s complacent stereotypes of an easy life. “On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less” (Plato, Apology 39 #38a). Socrates thinks that the only value of the good is to consider ourselves and others looking for the truth.
The greatest good in life consists of informing and persuading ignorant people about what the real truth is. Those people, who are just like prisoners in the cave, live daily lives together in a society pursuing the true Good in Socrates’ eyes. To Socrates, Cypher is just a cowardly person who avoids the truth for warmth of the body and chooses the illusion of the Matrix, in both the ontological and epistemological view to Socrates, who gave up his life for the truth. Hospers' philosophical theory, which opposes the face of the Platonic theory that the best idea is keeping truth and justice in line, makes us see Cypher's choice from a totally different perspective.
First, Hospers is a typical determinist who believes in fate more than free will. All happenings have cause and effect, and nothing happens without its prior cause. All behavior is explained through underlying psychological illnesses, neuroscience, genetics, childhood experiences or upbringing, and subconscious impulses. “His actions grow out of his character, which is shaped and molded and made what it is by influences…that were not of his own making or choosing” (Hospers 479). All choices are just the result from circumstances and conditions, so our options are the processes that have already been fixed in the past, not a representation of our freedom. According to Hospers’ determinism, Cypher’s choice and behavior hardly deserve blame, because Cypher’s deterministic action is just an adaptation of his condition and history that he has lived. His choice to return to the comfort of illusion in the Matrix is simply the result from his past life without any other options.
Second, an event will essentially happen if its antecedent conditions are filled. If certain conditions exist, then a certain event will take place. “He does not know what works within him to produce these catastrophic acts of crime. His aggressive actions are the wriggling of a worm on a fisherman’s hook” (Hospers 479). Murder is just a result from snapped pictures, such as a puzzle in the environment, from birth to everyday living conditions. Accordingly, an ignored, abandoned ego is the process of composition. Thus, impersonal social order is just a legal judgment about instant crime and it is not philosophically fair. We merely bite baits from hooks as fish do and are also planted into the process of those conditions. Cypher’s choice in determinism is that destiny has to choose the bait, not his free will. Therefore, we have no reason to blame his behavior as being selfish or immoral.
Third, everything that happens in the universe is determined according to the laws of nature. Every event has its causes. “If we can overcome the effects of early environment, the ability to do so is itself a product of the early environment” (Hospers 481). If we have the abilities to overcome our past environment, they become another consequence that is born from a different cause. If one is able to ‘get over,’ ‘get past,’ or overcome, through discipline and rational constraint, the forces cause him/her to have criminal or abnormal tendencies.
We have never been granted the power to go beyond our environment. There are numerous reasons hiding underneath all the condemned charges. All events have antecedent causes just like physics, and this applies to humans as well. Cypher’s ignorant choice is the result from his granted process of the past from birth to the present. The behaviors of Cypher, when he killed and betrayed his friends, are only mechanisms of self-defense controlled by his fate, and our reasons to blame him for moral responsibility disappear.
So far, I illuminated Cypher’s choice with two directly-opposed ideas: the perspectives of Socrates and Hospers. Cypher’s choice is cowardly denying the good in humans to chase comfort in the Platonic ideas, and he is just a weak human being who followed fate without any responsibility in Hospers’ determinism. Then, how does Cypher look to me? I feel sympathy for him rather than blaming him for his choice even without a philosophical point of view because I would make the same choice. I am going to explain my view with two major points.
First, the society in which I am living is the Matrix, already programmed. Cypher, who chose the ease life instead of the truth, is me, and Morpheus and Neo who want to save the world from the Matrix, look much more like unrealistic warriors to me. The Matrix sarcastically asks us philosophical decisions with the red and blue pill. I would likely choose the blue pill for a comfortable life. Let’s be honest! Who wants to live in hunger and cold everyday even though it is the true, real world amidst the poor, anxiety-ridden Zion and the rich, programmed Matrix? We have two different worlds, Zion and the Matrix inside us.
All our free choices hide the two different faces of reality and perfection, paradoxically of true and false. Ordinary people live just as Cypher did, chasing a rich and successful life rather than the truth of human beings. However, we all have little anxiety about it being okay to only seek pleasure, considering that we are all facing death pretty soon. We are programmed in our cave and we do not have the courage to cut the chains—livelihood, family, community, nationality, etc.—and we are taking a blue pill everyday to settle in the Matrix.
Second, reality and virtual images are mixed in our daily lives. We are always dreaming and unrealistic elements soak into reality. It is not wrong if I say that our consciousness exists alongside unrealistic thinking. The Matrix becomes our nature; the core of stoicism is “According to nature.” I do not blame Cypher for anything except his immoral behaviors of murder and betrayal. We do not have authority to condemn others for choosing a comfortable life if they do not harm others. I have lived like Cypher, choosing the easier way to live, rather than suffering with the truth. The United States is my Matrix too because my mother country, Korea, is the real place where I can live with my career, while I live here as a marginal immigrant. Poetry is another Matrix that saved me from a severe depression swamp. Poetry is a world of pure fiction and the ghost image is an important medium that creates my happiness now.
When Neo asked Morpheus if the Oracle is always right, Morpheus answered that it is not a problem with right or wrong, but it is about finding the right way. Who can say that my life is right or wrong? We do not have to consider if there is no right or wrong, but we should find the way. No one can condemn others’ choice of how they live after choosing the red or blue pill. We can never put ourselves in another’s shoes perfectly. If someone chooses an unrealistic world, it is a reality to them even though it is not a true world. How many people choose a hungry and cold reality in order to keep the truth in this world?
The name, Cypher, gives us the same nuance as cyber of the virtual world. He is the same character as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, and is also the weak human who favors pleasures of peripheral sensory. He is also a large number of normal people who live like losers, rather than imposing winners, because we often try to settle in a familiar and ordinary world rather than an unknown world of the truth. We are even too busy to find out the hidden truth. We are all living in our prison mind and the system of society, and we are no better than slaves. In the standards of moral justice, Cypher threw away the truth, but he is the figure of ourselves–ordinary human beings in a realistic view.
=========================
Wolran Kim
April 2012
The Matrix, a film of the Science Fiction genre, was released during Easter week in 1999. Christians say that this movie is based on Adventists’ beliefs because the name of the revived protagonist, “Neo,” alludes to the Absolute when you rearrange the letters to “One.” The film consists of dazzling special effects and Cyberpunk, and is also paved with vast metaphors of philosophy, religions of the East and West, and the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. There are endless philosophical interpretations of the themes of freedom and happiness, imagination and reality, free will and fate, materialism, and even psychoanalysis.
Wide philosophical elements are also throughout in this movie, such as epistemology, metaphysics, existentialism, religion, philosophy, ethics, Marxism, and postmodernism. Of course, there are refuters as well, that say this is just a film for amusement mixed with Hollywood-style entertainment, filled with perfunctory expression. The refuters’ popular criticism is that the philosophy of the movie is flavored with inconsistencies such as, ‘The most important thing is the mind,’ ‘Only love can save the world,’ and ‘Let’s be a hungry Socrates rather than a full pig.’
Let’s consider the plot of the film. In 2199, the human world governs the system, and all humans are used as energy to extend the lives of machines that are trapped in an artificial womb after birth. They live in a mechanical, virtual reality for a lifetime after the Matrix is put into their brain cells. After the humans wake up from the dream of virtual reality, they build “Zion” as the new world and search for the hero who can save them. They finally find him; he is an ordinary worker, named Thomas Anderson, during the day and also a computer programmer by the name of Neo at night. After meeting a woman named Trinity, he finds the truth in the world outside of the Matrix. Now, he learns all the hidden truths and accepts his fate of having to save humanity with the name of Neo. He wakes up and escapes the Matrix after confirming the reality of human misery, raised by Al.
After liberation from the Matrix, Cypher, one of Moss’ colleagues, betrayed his colleagues to return the Matrix in the virtual reality, while he is impatient with fear in the midst of constant threats and attacks from machines. What would make him choose to live as a battery for machines? He said that he was tired of the cold and hunger. He wanted to live well, with wealth and riches, even though he knew he would be living in a dream as a computer simulation. Neo is a metaphysical existence who chooses the red pill and wakes up, and Cypher is a physical existence who chooses the blue pill and to live a comfortable life.
Cypher is a hedonistic person who thinks that pleasure is the only thing of value. The pleasure in the Matrix, which he chooses, is no more than a sensual satisfaction for humans, and he tries to achieve his objective through a rationalization that the Matrix looks more real to him than it is. He has chosen the way of a full pig and a satisfied fool because he knew the entire truth. In Cypher’s situation, does his choice deserve sympathy or condemnation in philosophers’ eyes? I will illuminate Cypher’s choice through the theories of the philosophers Plato (424/423-348/347 BC), Socrates (470-399 BC), and Hospers (1918-2011). Let’s look at Plato’s and Socrates’ views.
First, the Matrix, which is controlled by the main computer, resembles Plato’s cave. People in a cave live believing only their shadows of reality and the truth, reflected from the outside world. They blame and even kill an escaper who tried to teach the truth. "Would he not say with Homer, [Better to be the poor servant of a poor master] … I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner” (Plato, The Republic 207). Plato said that sacrifice to keep and teach the truth is the highest value for a human being, in spite of rejection and suffering across the worlds of reality and illusion. Seeking enlightenment, even if it is painfully difficult, is a more noble life than blissfully living in ignorance. Plato's good or righteousness is the ontological concept of integrity beyond an ethical level. Cypher is blamable for his ignorance in the cave because he chose physical pleasure and comfort in the Matrix even though he knew the truth.
Second, the theories of Socrates and Plato significantly differed from those of the Sophists, who were the leaders of Athens. The citizens were living according to the Sophists, with the unjust as just and the false as true. They looked just like ignorant prisoners in the cave, seeking riches and honor, in the eyes of Socrates and Plato. To that extent, Socrates, who escaped from the cave and preached the truth to them, will be condemned and sentenced to death. “Wherever a man that has taken a position that he believes to be best, or has been placed by his commander, there he must I think remain and face danger, without a thought for death or anything else, rather than disgrace” (Plato, Apology 31 #28e). People should adventure into danger to preserve their places no matter what their circumstances and environment are. Wiping away disgrace is more important than anything else, even the risk of death. In this regard, Cypher’s choice to escape from dangers and harsh environments is a selection of shame and disgrace.
Third, the early accusations against Socrates were: studying things in the sky and below the earth, making the worse argument the stronger, and teaching these same things to others. We should dig into our awareness to find the truth, and doubt the obvious to find a way to the truth. Socrates just wanted to inform people of the value of the truth, but people acted perversely, following society’s complacent stereotypes of an easy life. “On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less” (Plato, Apology 39 #38a). Socrates thinks that the only value of the good is to consider ourselves and others looking for the truth.
The greatest good in life consists of informing and persuading ignorant people about what the real truth is. Those people, who are just like prisoners in the cave, live daily lives together in a society pursuing the true Good in Socrates’ eyes. To Socrates, Cypher is just a cowardly person who avoids the truth for warmth of the body and chooses the illusion of the Matrix, in both the ontological and epistemological view to Socrates, who gave up his life for the truth. Hospers' philosophical theory, which opposes the face of the Platonic theory that the best idea is keeping truth and justice in line, makes us see Cypher's choice from a totally different perspective.
First, Hospers is a typical determinist who believes in fate more than free will. All happenings have cause and effect, and nothing happens without its prior cause. All behavior is explained through underlying psychological illnesses, neuroscience, genetics, childhood experiences or upbringing, and subconscious impulses. “His actions grow out of his character, which is shaped and molded and made what it is by influences…that were not of his own making or choosing” (Hospers 479). All choices are just the result from circumstances and conditions, so our options are the processes that have already been fixed in the past, not a representation of our freedom. According to Hospers’ determinism, Cypher’s choice and behavior hardly deserve blame, because Cypher’s deterministic action is just an adaptation of his condition and history that he has lived. His choice to return to the comfort of illusion in the Matrix is simply the result from his past life without any other options.
Second, an event will essentially happen if its antecedent conditions are filled. If certain conditions exist, then a certain event will take place. “He does not know what works within him to produce these catastrophic acts of crime. His aggressive actions are the wriggling of a worm on a fisherman’s hook” (Hospers 479). Murder is just a result from snapped pictures, such as a puzzle in the environment, from birth to everyday living conditions. Accordingly, an ignored, abandoned ego is the process of composition. Thus, impersonal social order is just a legal judgment about instant crime and it is not philosophically fair. We merely bite baits from hooks as fish do and are also planted into the process of those conditions. Cypher’s choice in determinism is that destiny has to choose the bait, not his free will. Therefore, we have no reason to blame his behavior as being selfish or immoral.
Third, everything that happens in the universe is determined according to the laws of nature. Every event has its causes. “If we can overcome the effects of early environment, the ability to do so is itself a product of the early environment” (Hospers 481). If we have the abilities to overcome our past environment, they become another consequence that is born from a different cause. If one is able to ‘get over,’ ‘get past,’ or overcome, through discipline and rational constraint, the forces cause him/her to have criminal or abnormal tendencies.
We have never been granted the power to go beyond our environment. There are numerous reasons hiding underneath all the condemned charges. All events have antecedent causes just like physics, and this applies to humans as well. Cypher’s ignorant choice is the result from his granted process of the past from birth to the present. The behaviors of Cypher, when he killed and betrayed his friends, are only mechanisms of self-defense controlled by his fate, and our reasons to blame him for moral responsibility disappear.
So far, I illuminated Cypher’s choice with two directly-opposed ideas: the perspectives of Socrates and Hospers. Cypher’s choice is cowardly denying the good in humans to chase comfort in the Platonic ideas, and he is just a weak human being who followed fate without any responsibility in Hospers’ determinism. Then, how does Cypher look to me? I feel sympathy for him rather than blaming him for his choice even without a philosophical point of view because I would make the same choice. I am going to explain my view with two major points.
First, the society in which I am living is the Matrix, already programmed. Cypher, who chose the ease life instead of the truth, is me, and Morpheus and Neo who want to save the world from the Matrix, look much more like unrealistic warriors to me. The Matrix sarcastically asks us philosophical decisions with the red and blue pill. I would likely choose the blue pill for a comfortable life. Let’s be honest! Who wants to live in hunger and cold everyday even though it is the true, real world amidst the poor, anxiety-ridden Zion and the rich, programmed Matrix? We have two different worlds, Zion and the Matrix inside us.
All our free choices hide the two different faces of reality and perfection, paradoxically of true and false. Ordinary people live just as Cypher did, chasing a rich and successful life rather than the truth of human beings. However, we all have little anxiety about it being okay to only seek pleasure, considering that we are all facing death pretty soon. We are programmed in our cave and we do not have the courage to cut the chains—livelihood, family, community, nationality, etc.—and we are taking a blue pill everyday to settle in the Matrix.
Second, reality and virtual images are mixed in our daily lives. We are always dreaming and unrealistic elements soak into reality. It is not wrong if I say that our consciousness exists alongside unrealistic thinking. The Matrix becomes our nature; the core of stoicism is “According to nature.” I do not blame Cypher for anything except his immoral behaviors of murder and betrayal. We do not have authority to condemn others for choosing a comfortable life if they do not harm others. I have lived like Cypher, choosing the easier way to live, rather than suffering with the truth. The United States is my Matrix too because my mother country, Korea, is the real place where I can live with my career, while I live here as a marginal immigrant. Poetry is another Matrix that saved me from a severe depression swamp. Poetry is a world of pure fiction and the ghost image is an important medium that creates my happiness now.
When Neo asked Morpheus if the Oracle is always right, Morpheus answered that it is not a problem with right or wrong, but it is about finding the right way. Who can say that my life is right or wrong? We do not have to consider if there is no right or wrong, but we should find the way. No one can condemn others’ choice of how they live after choosing the red or blue pill. We can never put ourselves in another’s shoes perfectly. If someone chooses an unrealistic world, it is a reality to them even though it is not a true world. How many people choose a hungry and cold reality in order to keep the truth in this world?
The name, Cypher, gives us the same nuance as cyber of the virtual world. He is the same character as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, and is also the weak human who favors pleasures of peripheral sensory. He is also a large number of normal people who live like losers, rather than imposing winners, because we often try to settle in a familiar and ordinary world rather than an unknown world of the truth. We are even too busy to find out the hidden truth. We are all living in our prison mind and the system of society, and we are no better than slaves. In the standards of moral justice, Cypher threw away the truth, but he is the figure of ourselves–ordinary human beings in a realistic view.