A Thesis Undermined
(May 2, 2005)
I come before you penitent and humbled.
I was wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wretchedly wrong.
It began just like any other difference. Victor Plenty posted a comment (below) claiming that something in my piece was wrong — some minor detail involving the movie, Matrix. Hardly anything remarkable there.
But then....
Ever since this hit me, a scene from another movie has been replaying in my mind:
You know what I've seen? I've seen killers walk free because the eyewitness was an alcoholic. I've seen sex offenders that couldn't be touched because the victim was a call girl. Credibility-- It's the only currency that means anything on this kind of playing field. Dean's got the tape, and he's gonna come out with it; and when he does, I want his credibility. I want people to know he's lying before they hear what he says.
Jon Voight's bloodless spymaster was explaining the way the world works to his team (in Enemy of the State), but now it's as if he was whispering those words into my ear as a warning to me.
To continue.
Plenty went on to defend his claim. There too, of course, nothing out of the ordinary.
Except that.... Well, he was somewhat persuasive. References to the script and all that. And....
Yes.
This is beyond anything observed in the U.S. Senate. With the Bolton matter, a senator was willing to postpone a vote pending further review.
In this matter, however, my difference with Plenty has been entirely reconciled.
So.
I apologize to everyone for the inconvenience.
This is, obviously, bad news from my personal point of view.
But there's a bright side. Humanity's prospects have considerably improved.
Related: Delusion Carries Bush (Nov. 3, 2004)
Article comments
1 - jadester
as Neo would say, "woah"
i think you hit the nail on the head. The real funny thing is, you'd probably find, most people realise this, even if they wouldn't necessarily have put it the same way, or indeed used The Matrix to illustrate their point.
Also, you might want to swap "aliens" with "man-made robots". Perhaps some of the first film's genius lay with that premise - humanity became enslaved by its own creations
2 - Uriel
Thanks for this, but ......
>you might want to swap "aliens" with "man-made robots". Perhaps some of the first film's genius lay with that premise - humanity became enslaved by its own creations
??
I don't believe Mr. Smith et al. were humanity's own creations.
3 - Victor Plenty
You weren't paying attention, then, Uriel.
It's okay, though. I'd rather see your good heavy duty philosophizing and political analysis derived from the Matrix, rather than see someone who gets every nit-picky detail in the film's mythology correct, without being able to apply the ideas to anything of practical value.
4 - Shark
Hmmm. I'm wondering if this couldn't have been:
a) edited
b) broken up into 2 or 3 different essays
c) a little less obtuse..
Either way, I do like the way you take your brain out and play with it in public. We need a lot more of that here at Blogcritics -- assuming most participants actually have a brain...
re: Debate, arguments, convincing one's 'audience', etc.
So many times -- when challenged to produce 'facts' or 'logic' on this site -- I've had to restate my opinion that they're all just opinions dressed up as truisms, facts are bullshit, everything is relative, and logic is some pendant's way of saying he can add.
But enough about me; Tristan Tzara said it best: (and it's my favorite quote)
re: the matrix, a feeling of isolation, lack of communication, etc.
Apropos of nada, I thought I might also mention my theory called "Shark's Fourteen Million Theory" -- which says that:
WHATEVER I'm thinking, feeling, and/or doing at the moment is being felt, thought, and/or done by at least 14 million other people at THIS EXACT MOMENT.
It's true: I can prove it with a paper and a pencil.
But its most important value:
When I hear imaginary blackboots kicking down my door, and I smell imaginary book burnings just outside my cell, It helps me get through the day.
Use it if ya like.
5 - Uriel
>You weren't paying attention, then, Uriel. It's okay, though.
And some are so imbued with their own infallibility, they find it more expedient to grant (unsolicited) dispensation than to attempt reconciliation with those who differ.
6 - Victor Plenty
It's not a question of "infallibility," dude. It's a simple empirical question. The text upon which you base your ruminations (i.e., The Matrix) is readily available for scrutiny so we can resolve any difference of opinion regarding its contents.
If you will examine more carefully the statements made in the film, you will find multiple places where both Agent Smith and Morpheus explain that the entire machine civilization was created by humans. Thus the conflict in the film is not an alien invasion, as you claim in your original post. It is a conflict between humans as creators and the intelligent machines they have created.
So, in brief, you weren't paying attention.
That's a simple statement of fact, not an insult, as you seem to have taken it. No offense to you was intended, Uriel, and you are making extra unnecessary work for yourself and everyone else by laboring so intensely to find cause for offense.
It would be so much simpler and more graceful for you to just admit you made a mistake, and accept the compliment I clearly intended as the main point of my prior comment.
Have a nice day.
7 - Uriel
You're leaving it up to me to substantiate your claim that I'm wrong?
Who are you?
8 - Victor Plenty
I'm your worst nightmare, or your best friend. Take your pick.
I'm someone who pays attention when he watches movies, among other things.
For example, I'm someone with other things to do on a Saturday morning, so I'm going away now. I'll catch up with you later and explain why you're wrong, if you haven't yet mustered the effort to learn why on your own by the time I get back.
Have a nice day.
9 - Uriel
>I'm your worst nightmare, or your best friend. Take your pick.
This, I'm guessing, is a guy who watches a lotta movies.
10 - Victor Plenty
Nah, I don't watch movies all that often. Maybe that's why I'm sometimes able to accurately remember what happens in them.
The mistake you're making here, Uriel, is treating your friends as if they were enemies.
Both Jadester and I complimented you on your philosophical efforts here. We both are quite friendly to your aims when we recommend a change to your post that would make it more factually accurate.
Why? Because the InterWeb is swarming with literally millions of Matrix fans. Many of these will stop taking your erudite pronouncements seriously once they see you talking about these "aliens" which exist only in your own imagination, because they are never once mentioned in even a single line of the film's dialogue.
I verified this fact by doing a simple text search in one of the many copies of the screenplay which are available online and easily found through Google. (You have heard of Google, right?)
If you bother to check any of these sites you can easily find where Morpheus explains how humans created a race of intelligent machines. Just do a search on the word "birth" to find that part. Agent Smith also describes the transition from the human civilization to the machine civilization. Search for the word "dinosaur" to find that part.
You're welcome.
11 - Uriel
>Just do a search on the word "birth"
Damn.
Damn damn damn.
This upends my entire thesis.
12 - shockwave
The whole discussion is a sham to lend credence to the original essay, no?
If not, well, it seems that way. (Perhaps God is way too fond of irony.)
Anyway, Matrix minutia aside, the article was excellent. And the comment about the imaginary jackboots was perhaps the most telling. Don’t forget that real people get really killed over these imaginary ideas. That’s why we tend to think of closed mindedness as a bad thing. An opinion is one thing, a shibboleth is something else. When your self image starts to become indistinguishable from your opinions and you start to think that a different opinion is a personal assault then it becomes easier to react violently to someone you disagree with. Societies who indulge in this kind of thinking usually wind up violent, imperialist, and doomed.
Any idea where I’m going with this?
13 - Dave Nalle
Shark:"When I hear imaginary blackboots kicking down my door, and I smell imaginary book burnings just outside my cell, It helps me get through the day."
It astounds me that you're so aware that you live in a delusional world, yet embrace and literally trumpet the fruits of your self-deception.
I'm working on an essay about this. Can I use you as my poster-child?
Dave
14 - Mark Saleski
it astounds me that you can fit the word 'delusional' in such a high percentage of your comments.
fascinating.
15 - Victor Plenty
Another mistake, Uriel. The sun was never "extinguished" in the story. Morpheus explains that the humans "scorched the sky," effectively blocking the sun's light from reaching the surface of the earth. However, the sun is still up there.
(Nevermind that this is almost as absurd as the bizarre and ridiculous claim about the machines being able to use humans as a "power source" -- at the moment we're discussing the details of the story's premise and it would do no good to complicate our discussion further by debating its plausibility.)
All you are proving here, Uriel, is how difficult it is for anyone to communicate with you. But that's no philosophical feat, because you could also choose not to be so deliberately obtuse and humorless in your approach to the discussion.
16 - Uriel
I still don't see how the sun wasn't extinguished.
But now that my argument has been extinguished (see Addendum above) I can hardly even think about the sun.
I had an exam for my students with questions about The Matrix. (Actually, I was the alien there, in China.) I hope I didn't set them on any wrong paths....
17 - Victor Plenty
Well, I'll admit my case here is not as strong as it was in the question of aliens vs. intelligent machines built by humans. I don't recall any lines of dialogue in the film explicitly stating that the sun is still up there.
My impression is based on the visuals in the scene where Morpheus tells Neo: "welcome to the desert of the real." In that simulation of the planet's surface, there is no direct sunlight, true. The entire sky is permanently shrouded in dark clouds, like the sky in the heaviest part of a severe thunderstorm.
However, there does seem to be some light up there, enough to keep the surface from being completely dark. This indicates to me that the sun was merely blocked by clouds, rather than extinguished.
Not that any of this is all that important, really. I don't think these details have any effect at all on the substance of your thesis. They negatively affect only the superficial persuasiveness, rather than the inherent worthiness of your argument.
18 - gonzo marx
see the third movie, the sun is there..they rise above the clouds for a few seconds (Trinity and Neo, that is)
other than some minor factual corrections which Victor has supplied the original Article gives much food for Thought...
personally, i do tend to disagree that it is impossible to break out of formned Opinions...but i do recognize just how difficult that can be
it is also patently obvious that such blind obedience to one's inner Views fuels the fire of discontent between the "Red" and "Blue" gangs in american politics at this time...
but i digress...
thanx for the Read.."Angel of Fire"
Excelsior!