From:
Media Anonymous Meetings and MeditationWalk [gk12x12@gmail.com]
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Re: VFU* k~g~ StudyDesk: Footnotes for Media Studies: Techno-mysticism
& the psychological symbolism of the dragon update 100526 cont'd
Monday, January 28, 2008
Technomysticism – A Manifesto
by Ido Ahrtugazaon
For the past few years I have been writing extensively (In Hebrew) about a topic which I label with the term "Technomysticism". I am often asked to define the meaning of this term. In this article I would like to outline the field of Technomysticism: the basic problem it presents and the solution it offers.
Technomysticism is, to put it shortly, harmony with technology. But before we try to define harmony with technology we should first ask, what is technology?
What is Technology?
The definition of technology seems clear enough at first, but in order to understand the concept of Technomysticism to tackle the concept of technology at a deeper level, which will enable a more fundamental discussion of the meaning of technology and our relation to it.
Technology, seen from its most fundamental aspect is the power of the many. What technology does is to analyze and divide unitary concepts into distinguished sub-constituents which allows it manipulate them in order to achieve a goal. This can be seen in any machine: mechanical, electronic, biological or intellectual. The clocks ticks with moving parts, the computer runs series of sub-programs, our body is a company of systems, and thought is the analytical divide of reality into concepts.
Technology, in its widest sense is not just computers and gadgets. These are only sub-components of a greater technological society. Technology as a principal of existence is as old as the universe, but on the material level it is at least as old as the biological realm. We find the beginnings of technology around the Cambrian explosion[1] when unicellular protozoa first became multi-organisms, utilizing the power of the many in order to create more and more technological functions. Thus, as Mcluhan implies, all biology is technology: an eye is a technology for seeing, a stomach is a technology for energy production, and a leg is a technology for movement. Biologies are technologies. In fact, de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man can easily be read as a zoological prequel to Mcluhan's understanding media, describing the influence of biological mediums on the evolution of consciousness.
The many finds various manifestations and myriad ways to utilize the powers of the many in order to achieve different goals: thus we have emotional technologies (e.g. NLP), intellectual technologies (e.g. Analysis) and spiritual technologies (e.g. tai-chi). The common factor for all of these is that they use complex functions in order to achieve a certain goal.
Technology is the manifestation of God the one in this world. Seen from a mystics point of view, technology is god's way of handling it's descent to earth, it's growth from being infinite oneness into being many different things, biological and technological. Technology is the process happening to the one source when it's becoming immanent, rather then just transcendent. To put it in other words, technology is the strategy of the one, to deal with its becoming many. From a cosmic or spiritual point of view technology can be called the immanent, the principle of judgment (in the language of Kabbalah, 'Din'), secularism or just logic.
The Fragmentation of Humanity
The history of technology, which includes within it the history of the sub-component of mankind (one of technology's highest achievements, the creation of a technologically evolving species, or meta-technological species) is the history of fragmentation – of the becoming many.
Fragmentation begins in the biological realm, with the rise of ever more diversified biological systems and with the fragmentation of the body to an increasing number of organs and functions. It goes on with the creation of more complex (increasingly wired) brains, capable of more complex thoughts – breaking unitary reality into more and more senses and perceptions.
In the human realm fragmentation is experienced as the fragmentation of knowledge fields and the fragmentation of expertise: a vast range of new professions proliferating, and new specialized knowledge areas which are created incessantly.
The most fundamental effect of fragmentation is the fragmentation of cognition which is experienced very vividly in our times. Carl Sagan has in his "Dragons of Eden"[2] an illustration which shows the relative part of the brain's attention which is allocated to each of the human organs. It goes without saying that each added organ fragments human attention even more. The history of biology, as the history of the fragmentation of the body into more and more parts and perceptual organs has been the history of the fragmentation of consciousness.
In an age where, if one wishes to put it in McLuhanesque terms, technologies as extensions of the human body abound – human attention is being fragmented ever more increasingly. Modern man is connected to an ever increasing number of communication channels and data streams from his incessantly sprouting technological organs: cellular phones, television, radio, printed media and above all the Internet with its dozens of fragmentizing media organs ranging from email and YouTube to instant messaging and Facebook applications.
Technology offers the power of possibility. To have it, is to have increased possibility space. However, does possibility space in itself increase well being? Not necessarily, and sometimes, following the work of Barry Schwartz[3], far from it.
Thus when left to their own the loose forces of technology induce (among other more positive traits) neurosis, schizophrenia and malcontent. Technological maladies cover the range from internet addiction to a decreased span of attention. Human beings who have to adapt to technology at an exponentially increasing rate experience this often as stress and disquiet. Digital existence is experienced by body and soul as a kind of future shock.
Media theorists such as Steven Johnson[4] have proposed that the increasing complexity of popular culture is accompanied by an increase in the complexity of our brains and our ability to process vast streams of data. Playing video games, engaging with an increasing amount of media simultaneously does heighten certain sorts of intelligence and is inspirational in its own way.
However While new networked intelligences and literacies (e.g. media literacy, digital literacy, gaming literacy etc.) are on the rise, we are experiencing a decline of old literacies and intelligences. I am not talking about textual literacy only but about much more fundamental "nature literacy" – the ability to relate to nature or even the ability to meditate – to stay in oneness. This causes a certain imbalance of a humanity lured into the many, without the ability to keep focus.
Technomysticism
"There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." (Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage)
Does this mean that we have to give up technology? By no means, technology is sacred, it is the means of God to manifest itself in the world by ever evolving and more complex forms and attain higher, more diverse and complex forms of self-knowledge of the possibilities within EnSof, the infinitude of Godly power.
Moreover, technology is the basic software running in universe's computer, the cosmic principle of extropy running up against the stream of entropy. It can not and will not be stopped. What can be done is developing a heightened sensibility to technology – a new harmony with technology.
Mystical and spiritual traditions have been divided through the ages[5] to transcendent ones (fundamental monotheism), immanent ones (paganism) and non dual. All great mystical religions, from Buddhism to Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have non dual traditions within them which are considered by many to be the zenith of sublime religious awareness.
Non-dual traditions sanctify both the transcendent and immanent faces of God, both the heavenly and earthly side – the power of the one, and the power of the many: God's origin in the undivided unity of the one (Mysticism in its purity) and technology in its courage to expand the presence of God from undivided oneness into new structured forms.
Different spiritual traditions also teach a non dual way of being. This is done in the Zazen practice in Zen Buddhism, in the "raising of the spark" in Jewish Hasidism, and in the practice of Kung-Fu to give a few examples.
I wish to concentrate on that last example a bit. According to Chinese tradition the practice of Zen and Meditation assists one in gathering Chi. Martial arts are the arts of releasing that Chi correctly. This is why the Chi arts and Martial arts are considered two complementary arts. While one cultivates the relation to unity, the other one teaches the right way to channel that unitary energy into multiplicity.
The emphasis that Kung-Fu puts on the ability to perform different complex activities while staying intent and focused makes it into to a prime form of Technomysticism. The kung-fu master can perform different complex tasks simultaneously while remaining clearly focused – sustaining a tranquility of both mind and breath.
Is a form of digital Kun-Fu possible? Can we develop a sacred relation to technology, one which will enable us to use technology in a harmonic fashion? Can we learn to navigate vast virtual spaces and stay emotionally and spiritually balanced? I am talking about a technology which will be virtual yet green, engaging yet relaxing, focusing yet mind-expanding.
Technology has a central role in the universe. It stands in the place of one of two poles which according to most spiritual religions are the basis of all creation. Kabbalah teaches that God first created the world in the power of Judgment, which is the power of separation and the many. However a world based on judgment only could not survive and thus God remade the world in a perfect balance between the two poles. This balance is the basis of all life.
If set loose, the power of technology could run over humanity and life. However, if humanity will be able to integrate higher and ever growing orders of technology into a unitary and harmonic consciousness then it will fulfill its evolutionary and spiritual call - the appeasement of the opposites. This is also the vision of the Omega Point as Teilhard de Chardin describes it: where individuality and collectivity are integrated into a new order of being.
Technomysticism aims to further this goal of the integration of the one and the many in an harmony with technology and although I will not go into go into the details of different techno mystic strategies here, I will only state here that I firmly believe it is possible. Moreover, I believe the future of mankind and of technology depends on that ability in this increasingly technological age.
[1] This is a bit simplified, since eukaryotic cells also have divided functions, and thus, technology.
[2] Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden
[3] Barry Schwarz, The Paradox of Choice, Why More Is Less.
[4] Steven Johson, Everything Bad Is Good For You: How popular culture actually makes us smarter.
[5] Among other methods of division of course.
Ido
Hartogsohn
Labels: de chardin, Hartogsohn, Ido, kabbalah, kung-fu, mcluhan, mysticism, technology, technomysticism
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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Mind Interfaces
In order to understand why different psychoactive substances have functioned as great creativity accelerators during human history and why and how such psychoactives lead to greater creativity some metaphors from the world of computing my come in handy.
Drugs are a technology, but they are a mental technology. This technology enables us to think using a different interface. The kind of interface which tryptamines (LSD, Psilocybin Mushrooms, DMT etc.) create enables a much tighter interaction between the different parts which constitute consciousness.
Synesthesia, the mixing of different senses, is often induced by tryptamines. One can see sounds or hear landscapes (This btw. gives new meaning to the part in the Torah in which it is said that during their spiritual ascension on Mount Sinai the Israelites saw the sounds). Other forms of synesthesia are also possible. The interaction between different parts of the mind is much closer, more associative and free. Words become images, images become words, and different ideas are hyper connected to each other in surprising arrays. Whereas in the normal state of consciousness the different parts of the mind are kept sharply separated from each other using, psychoactives these machines become integrated and create a sort of hyper-thought. This in its turn allows new combinations which are the reason for the great creative powers attributed to psychoactives.
In actuality human senses and the patterns in which our brain perceives the world are our interface to the world. We as humans are used to work with one brain, the human brain which is a machine which allows one specific interface to reality. Humans all work with the same brain.
What psychoactives enable you to do is change your mind interface, they enable you to change your brain. Psychoactives illicit the awareness that we are experiencing the world through an interface. Using psychoactives one comes to the realization that the interface you usually work with, the so called concensus consciousness is only one kind of interface among many possible one.
Comparing "consensus consciousness" with alternative consiousness can be like comparing the DOS opearting system to Mac Os Leopard (only the difference is much much further and extremer). For example, using our normal interface solving any kind of simple problem is very tedious and requires much work. Using alternative mind interfaces the same problems might become as easy as copying a file.
The same mind codes which usually demand great mental labor are now already written as procedures, while other mind procedures and functions are erased. The concensus interface includes within it everything: greed for power, money, sex and more. It is filled with bugs that hinder the evolution of mankind. However if you change opeating system you can rid yourself of most of the problems of concensus interface to reality. Like the ShiftSpace Software psychoactives just demonstrate and make you aware that we can choose our interface, that we don't have to be stuck with just one interface to our computing machine, to the internet or to reality.
However, one is not able to be under the influence of psychoactives the whole time. This would be slavery and therefore we have the concept of the work. Working to make a lasting change in our interface. Beside the work, computing and BCI (Brain Control Interfaces), nanobots and virtual realities come to mind again as a future possibility which will enable us to change our interfaces, erase many of those human "software bugs" which many mistake for inevitable but which, as the psychoactives teach us, are only part of our operating system, a part of an interface which we as experienced hackers and pscychonauts should know – is always interchangable.
Ido Hartogsohn2:02 AM
Labels: dmt, interface, interfaces, mckenna, mcluhan, mind, psilocybin, psychedelics, psychoactives
3 comments:
Anonymous said...
Makes
one realise how strong a drug 'normal consciousness' is.
Randomising and
shuffling connexions turns out to be darn useful.
As for the OS metaphore,
it might be abit too localised in both time and spatial domains.
-oyD11^TpR
Ido
Hartogsohn said...
Yeah I agree.
The OS metaphor is just a vehicle to understand it with terms in which digital
man sees these things.
Interfaces, however, are an innate concept of
existence. We live, feel, experience through interfaces. I think the proliferation
of interfaces in today's digital culture substantially increases our awareness
to the idea of our existence-interface in a different but also related fashion
to the way psychoactives do.
K.
said...
Ok; thanks for mentioning this interesting subject. it's something on the ToThink list for some time;; (sorry for signing annonymously b4, pw's you know..)
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
The Matrix as an Ideological Network
Note: this article was first published in January 2004, in the Tel-Aviv Cinematheque Magazine.
Abstract: “what is the matrix?” This big question that Morpheus presents Neo and us in the first Matrix, has been a matter for debate over the last 5 years. Since then the Matrix has been interpreted as Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Platonist, Post-Modern, Buddhist, Chsristian, Jewish and what have you. This article tries a different approach to this question. While seeking to preserve former interpretive possibilities, it claims: The Matrix is a devouring ideological network. The capitalistic nature of this network is at the center of this piece.
The Matrix Trilogy may be the Star Wars of our generation, creating a new mythology in a new world. It is undoubtedly pretentious in its special effects, and more so in its theory and philosophy, to the point that some critics dismiss the film's lengthy philosophical discussions as hopelessly muddled. Others have looked for coherent meaning in its symbols and langauge, and found exactly what they were looking for - which is to say, they found what they had already believed. That list includes Matxists, Psychoanalysts, Platonists, post-modernists, and even the believers of the world: Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists. Each of them offered his own biased interpertation of the Matrix, like the six blind men who tried to describe an elephant - each was (partly) right, but also very wrong.
The truth is, the matrix is all of these things: seemingly incoherent, and yet Christian and psychoanalytic and post-modern. Yet everyone who has tried to analyze the film using any of these dogmas has have fallen prey to exactly the same deceptive Matrix with which the trilogy deals. The big question everyone is trying to answer -- the one Morpheus presents Neo and us in the first film – is, “what is the matrix?” This question cannot have a single answer because above all the Matrix is simply the Matrix itself, an irreducible term.
Like
the Deleuzian idea of complexity, which claims reality has no simple source, the
Matrix lacks any simple, ideologically homogeneous source. The meaning of this
notion of “complexity” is that reality in itself is a complex being or experience,
which is irreducible to the finite medium of words. The Matrix is likewise irreducible,
and contains various ideological complexities as well as ideologically contradictory
and complementary possibilities. The movie Matrix, much like the Matrix
itself, presents us with an ideological network which is linked to all places.
This is the meeting place for all places, an animate free market of religious,
philosophical, political and social ideologies.
The plot
In the first Matrix, computer expert Neo is contacted by an enigmatic group of people who tell him that the world he knew is nothing but a simulation generated by an immense network of computers. The time isn’t the end of the 20th century, as he believes, but about 200 years later. The world is ruled by machines, which use the bodies of human beings to supply their energy needs. Machines grow people in isolated cells where they are connected to conductors that suck out their energy and transfer it to the machines. In parallel, people are also linked from their cells to a digital universe that simulates the world of the end of the 20th century: the Matrix. The only people living outside of this virtual world are a group of rebels who unplugged themselves from the matrix and built an underground world inside the earth called “Zion.” From this underground world they go on rescue missions across the matrix to save other prisoners of the Matrix.
In one of the classic scenes of the first movie, a scene that repeats in variations through the series, Neo is offered by Morpheus, the leader of the group, two pills which symbolize the choice he faces. If he takes the red pill, his mind and body will leave the Matrix and he will be pulled out into the fierce reality of the war against the machines. If he takes the blue pill, he would be able to get back into the Matrix, forget all that has occurred and continue a life of pleasant ignorance.
Neo chooses the truth, and here the plot starts to get complicated. Neo (an anagram of “one”) finds out that the leader of the rebels has nourished hopes that Neo is “the One,” the messiah, who will save people from the tyranny of the machines. Neo makes a good start in meeting their hopes. Soon he learns to look through the Matrix’s illusion of a world and see the Matrix as it is, a kabbalistic maze of letters that can be penetrated and altered, thus enabling the bending of the rules. Neo, as a digital “mekubal” (an adept of Jewish mysticism), acquires supernatural combat abilities inside the Matrix by playing and controlling the text that composes the world.
In his various adventures Neo also comes to know an array of curious characters, among which is the Oracle, a prophet who leads Neo in his way (although the credibility of her prophecies is constantly in doubt). Another important figure is the Architect, a creator and programmer of the Matrix, a dubious demiurge with dubious motives. The common factor among these various figures is that they are all computer programs, like sub-applications in the immense computer network that is the matrix.
The messiah is the one that lives in the real. And Neo, after learning to bend the rules of the virtual reality, develops similar abilities in the real world as well. The second and third movies have apocalyptic, almost Biblical, battles betweens the machines coming to destroy Zion and the rebels, while Neo – by contrast – goes on a peace mission to the machine city to bring peace with the machine world.
What
narrative explains this story? There are several.
The messiah as a Christian, Jewish and Eastern hybrid
One of the Israeli critics who wrote about the third Matrix dismissed it as a Christian movie. This is understandable because that is the most prominent aspect of Neo: Neo arrives as a messiah around whom a small group is gathered. He has his Judas (Cypher), his girlfriend is called Trinity, and his last name is “Anderson,” which can be taken as “Son of Man,” using the Greek root andros for man. During the film Neo dies, is resurrected, and finally leaves the world as a cross of light. These are fairly obvious Christian symbols. But how can you call a movie Christian when it has an oracle, hand-reading, a spaceship called Icarus, and an underworld goddess called Persephone?
The
word “messiah” is an example of the ideological network that the matrix presents
to us in different aspects. Neo as a messiah, for instance, is not a monolithic
figure at all, but rather a complex incarnation of the Christian, Jewish and eastern
messianic figures.
Neo as a kabbalistic messiah
The Matrix is full of Jewish kabalistic and Hasidic ideas. The Wachowsky brothers have studied Kabbalah, now their ideas are being taught in Kabbalah schools in Israel. So it is no surprise that the concept of the Messiah in the Matrix borrows quite a lot from Jewish Kabbalah and Jewish theology.
For example, Neo’s perception of the world as a textual world, where knowing the textual source allows the bending of the rules, is reminiscent of ancient Kabbalistic books such as the ancient Sefer Yetzirah from the first century, where the creation of the world is described as a textual event. As in the Matrix, Sefer Yetzirah tells us that the world is created from a sea of letters. One could even compare Neo and the midrashic character of Abraham as a person who has the power to recreate the world by textual acts (see Golem, by Moshe Idel).
Neo first sees through the digital Matrix. What he learns there, he implements later in the real world, which he reveals as another matrix. Interestingly enough, where Neo once found a maze of digits he now finds a blaze of light. Neo perceives the real world as a stream of emanating light that surrounds all things, a worldview reminiscent of the Kabalistic emanation theories in Jewish sources. The Book of Splendor -- the Zohar -- and Lurianic Kabbalah see the whole universe as a creation of light which is immanent in all things.
Smith, that self-duplicating agent against whom Neo fights time and again, could be Kabbalistically interpreted as the klipot. Literally meaning peels or shells, klipot is the kabalistic explanation of why we don’t perceive the true existence of the world as a world of light, the way Neo does. The reason is that things are covered with the klipot, peels which hide and prevent us from seeing the real divine light that is present in all things. The klipot represent the raw exteriority of things, an exteriority that must be peeled away to reveal the true essence, which is light.
Furthermore, the Kabbalah says that the process of the peeling of the klipot is a dynamic process. A person has to peel the klipot his whole life, because the klipot duplicate by nature and put new barriers in men’s search of the truth of reality. Every day in which you don’t clean your eyes, you get new dust obscuring your vision. This is the endless duplication of Smith.
The
way Neo gets rid of Smith, by infiltrating Smith’s body and filling it with light
until it cracks from the inside and burns with the inner light, calls to mind
the radical 17th-century Kabbalah of the false Messiah Shabbtai Zvi
and his believers. Shabbtai Zvi was arrested by the Turkish authorities and given
a choice: death, or conversion to Islam. He chose to convert, which was naturally
a blow to many (though not all) of his followers. Trying to justify his action,
his faithful came up with a new theological explanation which describes the messiah
as a worm inside an apple, or a sacred spy. The messiah goes down inside of the
source of impurity (Smith; the klipot) and fills it with light until it
cracks from within.
Neo as an eastern mystic
Taoism and Buddhism are also very evident in the Matrix. Through the prism of Eastern religion, Neo is not only the Messiah but also “the Enlightened” – the Buddha. Smith tells Neo that the two of them are very similar, and they are. They both identify the self with the world, only in a fundamentally different way. Smith is the Ego, the impurity of Buddhism, the one that sees himself anywhere he looks - egocentricity. This is why, when Smith touches people or other agents, they turn into him. Smith sees himself everywhere. Neo (One), on the other hand, follows the Buddhist ideal of seeing himself as a part of the unity of the universe. Neo can control the world because he is devoid of the ego that separates us from the world and can identify with the universe totally.
Because Neo and Smith are so similar to each other – indeed, Smith is actually part of Neo’s self -- Smith also gets stronger every time Neo gets stronger, as in the old Jewish saying “The greater a person, the greater his temptations.” In other words, in parallel with Neo’s spiritual developments, the traps of Ego (Smith) become more and more dangerous. As in Buddhism, the erasure of the self and becoming one with the surrounding world lead to total control. The Zen Archer doesn’t aim, and this aims his arrow. When the blind Neo fights without looking, and sees his opponents in a mystic way as streams of energies in the world, one can’t help being reminded of the Buddhist Kung-fu series “Zatoichi,” about a blind warrior whose blindness is a background to his spiritual perfection and fighting ability.
Beyond the metaphors from Eastern religion, there are also ideas that are common to all religions such as peace and love. It is easy to forget that, aside from the Hollywood portrayal of these ideas, they have a deeply religious message. In the war of humanity against the machines in The Matrix, the underlying narrative is that the machines are not in themselves the true enemy of Neo. This fact becomes clearer as the Matrix series advances, when we encounter machines that feel (a breaking of the opposition between Machine vs. Man that could be the a subject of another whole article).
In the movie “Animatrix,” a collection of 9 animation movies written and produced by the Wachowsky brothers, the battle between the machines and the humans is actually an outcome following the oppression of the machines by people. The real enemy of Neo is therefore Smith, the klipot which separate machines from mankind in our perception and make them enemies. The difference between humans and machines is an external one that only Neo as the unified-unifier can abolish. This is why the destruction of Smith is in the movies the condition for peace.
In order to lose the klipot and see men and machine as one, Neo must discover love in its religious sense, the love Dostoevsky implies when he says “hell is the inability to love.” This is the love of acknowledging the oneness of things, of withdrawing yourself and making room for the Other: Neo’s ability to leave his city and go to the machine city and face the ultimate Other of the source, the code of all codes. When he totally gives himself over to the machine, when he lies on a bed of little machines, it is a token of that love.
It’s
worth noting that the very fight with Smith, the ultimate redemption struggle,
takes place within the boundaries of the Matrix. Salvation comes from inside the
Matrix. This is the love that can bring the peace that Neo talks about – that
peace which actually means the redemptive resolution of the opposition between
man and machine, and between all oppositions.
The Meta-Religion and capitalism
Despite the abundance of religiousness in the Matrix, no orthodox clergyman would be content with these films. The Matrix accepts almost every spiritual direction that has ever been invented, and this total acceptance is a negation of every spiritual system that demands any sort of exclusiveness, or uniqueness. Take, for example, Neo’s conversation with the oracle in the second part of the Matrix. The oracle tells Neo that ghosts, angels, vampires, werewolves, UFOs and every unnatural phenomenon he has ever heard about all exist – their explanation is that they are trivial malfunctions in the digital system of the matrix.
So what religion do the rebels mean when they proclaim time and again that they “believe”? No other word is said so often in the Matrix as “belief.” Again and again Morpheus announces his belief in Neo; time and again the others are demanded to answer regarding their belief in Neo. And when Neo asks the oracle how he can be sure of the sincerity of her words, she tells him there is no way of knowing, nor any information which could help him decide whose prophet she is: Satan’s or God’s. The world is an equation composed exclusively of unknowns, and the question is – do you believe, or not? Neo, of course, chooses to believe.
Ultimately the only religion the Matrix is marketing is the meta-religion which is a radical expansion on the ecumenical idea. The Meta-religion is a name for perhaps the most widespread spiritual concept in today’s secular Western society. It is the religion without commandments or sacraments, the virtual-existence religion which is willing to abolish the form in order to reach the inner essence, symbolized by the letters-digits-symbol matrix (released from the klipot).
It therefore makes no difference if we call Neo Savior, Messiah or Buddha. The Meta religion is willing to assimilate all symbols without obliging itself to even one of them. This is a more sophisticated version of New Age. The believers of the Meta-religion don’t limit themselves to any discourse’s rules. The Meta-religion sucks in and makes a salad out of terms and ideas from different spiritual fields in order to reach the content it seeks. Hence the abundance of gods, symbols and ideologies with which the Matrix is saturated.
But whom does the Meta-religion serve? Whom is this Metaphor aimed after? The Matrix of the Meta-religion is first of all the capitalistic Matrix which profits from every commodity that passes through it and takes commission from every sale -- even the sale of Marxist books.
In the second movie Morpheus prepares his crowd of believers for the final battle against the machines in a Masada-style speech. Morpheus appears as the prophet of capitalism and calls to the audience: “Tonight, let us send a message to that army.” To explain what he means he adds, “Let us shake this cave! Tonight let us make them remember this is Zion.” The meaning of these words is conveyed in the next scene, maybe the most baffling in the Matrix series. For many long and seemingly meaningless minutes we watch the minimally dressed rebels dance to the sound of loud rock music and rub against each other sensuously in a sort of pagan fest. The combination of the glistening skin of the young sweaty youth and the rhythmically jumping human waves gives the scene the aesthetics of a commercial. This is the message of the people’s unification scene in Zion: a sex party and sensuality, the essence of capitalistic redemption.
It
isn’t that the Matrix really says that capitalism represents redemption, but neither
is it Marxist in the classical way. Perhaps The Matrix is a Marxist-capitalistic
movie. It does criticize capitalism, but it also makes clear that resistance is
futile. The end of any resistance is to be sucked inside the system. In other
words, The Matrix is a Hollywood film. The criticism is also part of Hollywood.
Without the stars, the production crew and the Hollywood marketing system, none
of this would exist.
The
cinematic matrix religion of capitalism
In a Marxist reading, one could see Neo’s fight against the agents as a fight against the salesmen of capitalism. Smith, the self-duplicating agent, does look much like one of the businessmen populating Manhattan, and indeed in the third Matrix we see huge skyscrapers full of duplicated Smiths. Smith is dressed in a black suit and impenetrable black sunglasses. In his hand he holds a James Bond suitcase, as if he’d come to sell you something. The commodity Smith would like us to see is of course the symbolic world, the digital simulation which he would like to force on everyone. One could interpret Neo as a sort of Marxist fighter against the duplicating sales agents, but on closer inspection the rebels aren’t any different from the salesmen.
Anyone who saw the first Matrix must remember the digital-visual presentation and the convincing speech Morpheus makes to Neo in their first meeting, when he explained the history of the matrix and tried to convince him to leave the Matrix and join the rebels. Later, when we are told that the rebels’ main occupation is freeing people, which means convincing people to move to their “real” world, one can understand that Morpheus and Neo are in a way also 9-to-5 salesmen, only with a more sexy product: they sell reality.
The matrix in that case is a battleground between two kinds of sales agents, and in capitalism it doesn’t matter what you buy, the house always wins. This immunity of the capitalistic network of the Matrix could be seen in the scene at the end of the third Matrix, where agent Neo and agent Smith fight the final battle between mythic skyscrapers. The interesting detail here is that, despite the huge shock waves rising from the ground during this titanic battle and moving as fierce storms between the skyscrapers, those skyscrapers continue to stand and the panes continue to shine.
The destructive forces of the titanic battle between the two salesmen move through and get swallowed inside the dark impenetrable skyscraper glass. Capitalism watches the great struggle between the symbolic and the real indifferently. At the movie’s end, when the long awaited redemption finally arrives, the only symbol of it is a little girl standing and looking at the glistening skyscrapers – this is the redemption of capitalism.
But ultimately, why should we immerse ourselves in illusions? After all, we are the ones living among symbolic but also very real skyscrapers. The battle between Neo and Smith symbolizes, perhaps improbably, the visit to the cinema, whose results are also capitalistically preordained. The cinema is then the very cell in which the Matrix imprisons us, where you sit as an inert puppet and produce energy for the capitalistic matrix.
What could be more ludicrous than Neo appearing on the screen, calling us to leave the illusion and selling us the world of the “real”? Neo’s voice comes from the inner depths of the simulation, Neo and Smith are both agents of the capitalistic Matrix, designed to keep us docile in our seat. Who would dare to rise up from his seat and go outside to “reality” after paying good money to get inside the matrix of cinema?
The commandment of the sequel
In a very striking way, the ending of the Matrix is a kind of combination between religious theory and pure commercial interests. The prominent feature of the redemption at the end of the Matrix series is that ultimate redemption has still not come. Religiously one could understand that from the existence of distinguishable entities and the occurrence of redemption within the boundaries of skyscrapers and the existing world. This is a restorative redemption, a redemption which brings things back to their functioning state at the past, but does not bring any new and radical message. Ultimate redemption should result in the world becoming One, eliminating any conflicts and dualities. The problem is made clearer in the conversation between the Oracle and the Architect, the Matrix’s demiurge. The Architect doubts the future of the peace that has been achieved. There is a big religious problem here. Is this the peace we have been waiting for? Or merely a ceasefire?
One possible answer can be found in the kabalistic theory of shmitot. According to this esoteric theory the world exists in 7 cycles of 7,000 years. At the end of each cycle there is a renewed creation. The 7th cycle is like the Jewish Shabbat (the seventh day of the week), the ultimate cycle, at the end of which comes the fiftieth-year jubilee of total redemption.
The Architect tells Neo that he is the sixth in a series of messiahs. The use of this number and the undetermined ending of the matrix make us think that the Wachowsky brothers plan another resurrection of Neo, a seventh redemption battle that would be the Matrix’s Sabbath. Or maybe this is a thought about redemption as a utopian concept which never does fulfill itself as a permanent state but only as a process, similar to the Jewish paradox of an always imminent, yet always absent, redemption.
Either way there is a striking combination of deep religious thought with pure commercial interests, a combination that characterizes the Matrix as a movie which is a meeting point of so many ideologies which coexist on an ideological net – the Matrix.
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Media Anonymous Meetings and MeditationWalk <gk12x12@gmail.com> wrote:
discourse analysis:
1.
the study of the rules or patterns characterizing units of connected speech or writing longer than a sentence.
2.
the study of the rules governing appropriate language use in communicative situations.
==========================================================================
k~g~:
I just remember the subject that I could not access during
our phone lecture was the Metaphysical Kitsch of the new Techno religion of Techno
Mysticism (or Mumbo-Jumboism) and Techno Slavery. Here are a few random
links that will touch on these subject:
http://arnoldkling.com/~arnoldsk/aimst3/aimst326.html
http://digitalmindsblog.blogspot.com/2008/01
/technomysticism-manifesto.html
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/msg00110.html
http://books.google.ca/books?id=wxqJDCwS0QUC&pg=PA211&lpg=PA211&dq=techno+mysticism&source=bl&ots=Ij9usCAG4k&sig=JZns30ZMousL_Iz3IxUJHsL8TjY&hl=en&ei=NkX9S8ivD4OclgfP5ZycCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=techno%20mysticism&f=false
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6447500/Thesis-About-the-Ideas-of-Timothy-Leary
--
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/16/249/American_Era_Of_Techno-Slavery_Warned_Has_Begun.html
http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewPDFInterstitial/384/407
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:fjkmf6OK0OQJ:www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewPDFInterstitial/384/407+Techno+slavery&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShwrf3SULH4RupM0yfq1tuD8jHnKzyzX3W8XPjamxZGkFM9XGdJqttoJfSQLcJk-ejDL-keLCNWOVY1UqEubQsuE6g8XSK2u3jDUYXCeE39KPyrZxh9D7T0bQo6TX_qxwPmwxHj&sig=AHIEtbTNx9ozfp3jAEZJ5Ba-W_SMxYdD9w
http://www.icat-ciat.org/uwe.pdf
http://GeorgeKasey.com
2 comments:
mendel b said...
Good to have you writing again. I would like to learn more about technomystical technics in the future.
February 18, 2008 2:31 PM
Anonymous said...
digitalmindsblog.blogspot.com; You saved my day again.
February 16, 2010 6:58 PM
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