Morpheus to Neo in Matrix:
The Matrix is a system, Neo. This system is our enemy. But when you're inside, when you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very souls of the people we're trying to save. But until that happens, these people are part of the system and therefore our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be disconnected. And many of them are so hopelessly dependent on the system that they are willing to fight to protect it.
A most interesting quote. The question I ask myself is, who in my reality is Neo, who is Morpheus?
I don't think anyone is.
There is no Neo or his friends, we all are the system.
To save people, to save all, is in principle already an insane idea.
It is a fixed idea. The reason why the expression "fixed idea" exists is this: It is a tied up mental construction, because in the world, there cannot and never will be the simultaneous saving of all men by men. It is a beautiful heroic fantasy.
And as a fantasy it is unbeatable, very meaningful, exceedingly clear, because it is so wonderfully exaggerated.
What is fixed in this idea?
Exactly that: an event of simultaneity. The occurrence of this event simultaneously for all inhabitants of the planet. This is of course nonsense. The only simultaneous event that could occur simultaneously for all humanity would be a cosmic event of destructive proportions.
This does not mean that a nearly destructive event could not also be made by humans. Not because one is the devil, but out of cowardice and stupidity or ignorance and confusion. One could also say for reasons of gossip.
Yes, that is probably a reason for the worldwide lockdowns: You are afraid that people will gossip about you. How do you even realize that, that talking badly about someone?
It takes a stupidity on the part of one nation, which as a so-called "world power" has somehow made it into people's heads (and it's really not difficult to comprehend, because the media managed to call all these world leaders by name again and again in penetrating repetition), and the other so-called nations, which don't recognize this as stupidity, to imitate such folly.
The term "stupid" originates in the latin word "stupidus" or "stupēre", which means to freeze, to become immobile.
So, when I talk about stupidity, it is not meant as an insult but a form of immobility of the mind which refuses to stay open towards various perspectives of a matter.
If you stay stupid (frozen) towards what became common sense, do not question it in one way or the other, this may lead to a superficial treatment of a common thing, it may lead to use something out of habit, which then results in gossip (which stands for any form of people talking behind other peoples backs).
One already has a domino gossip effect, because the nations - that is, the people who see themselves as their representatives and are seen as such - do not want to be seen as stupid.
But the people, that is, all those who, so to speak, absorbed the media repetitions into their language, which went into their blood without noticing it, are of course just as much involved in the spreading of gossip.
Gossip thrives from indignity or negative felt and meant terms. Storytelling, on the other hand, thrives from events unexpected and adventurous.
It's a little like Harry Potter, who is upset that no one wants to mention Voldemort's name and makes brisk use of it himself, even though everyone puts their finger on their lips in horror.
So if you take up words like "the world power China" or "global competition" and repeat them constantly, they become common knowledge, a habit, and we know: Everything that has become a habit becomes a right at some point. The so-called customary law. Such customary law cannot really be broken somehow, for where something has been in the offing for a long time, in cases certainly for centuries (or more?), one cannot at once say that it is wrong when common sense, however misguided it may be, suggests otherwise.
Common sense, therefore, can be utterly mislead, because the starting point of the first sense, has been long forgotten. A first sense of something became common for the very reason of its repetition. But repeating what seems to be sensical does not mean that it's all right. All = for all people.
In that sense, Harry's companions are (all) right to ban the name "Voldemort" from their lips. His name stands for something which ought not to become a custom. Of course, Harry is also right to lead the name, as he is the exception of the rule not to mention what ought not to become regular. Both handle it correctly, as Harrys people never go so far as to punish someone who nevertheless uses the name, inside or outside. Once they punish or damage or even kill someone who uses a banned word, they become what they tried to avoid to be.
So, when Morpheus says to Neo "This system is our enemy" I feel it's not coherent.
For, how can the system be the enemy when everyone is the system him or herself? You cannot put yourself out of the system as the system is everything you've got and are.
Voldemort is, in that sense, the same as the machines. They are internal parts of us, and in order to become visible and reflectable, we externalized them as placeholders, they represent what is in each and everyone of us present.
What is present, then?
It's the dark side, the shadow, the undetected part of our own various characters. Our blind spots. The machines in the matrix are the ice cold parts of ourselves which make themselves distant to any form of emotion. Voldemort is the part of ourselves which wants to withstand death.
Voldemort creates several of the "Horkruxe" - splits his soul into seven - as to stay alive even when one or more of this seven soul parts are going to be destroyed. To always have another open door to immortality.
The machine beings in the Matrix I do not understand literally. They represent my fears of becoming obsolete by machines and artificial intelligence. Also, they stand for my resistance that other people may think that machines will be capable of replacing humans. A stance I do not share.
I disagree with the intention of what swings along with Morpheus words:
The very souls of the people we're trying to save.
No. I try to save myself by getting in touch with others as I am deeply dependent on their company as "the many". I cannot say, from this point of view, if they truly suffer or not. I only know, now, that I see myself in that tub, that I do suffer.
Imagine, you would be the first one to wake up, who finds himself in this tub and tears off the hose that is in the back of your head. I mean, what kind of horror would I feel? And my need, since I see myself surrounded by millions of tubs, what would that be? To save others? Probably not. My strongest need would be not to stay alone. I would only be able to continue living if I could disconnect enough pipes to form a community around me.
If it wasn't about me I very well could fall asleep again and bend myself to destiny. For, as long as the others do sleep, I can only assume they would feel as lonely as I do but I wouldn't know. But what I can say for sure, is my wish that people want to be together.
So who saves whom?
The story behind the story, it remains opaque, because who was the first to awaken and by what or whom did the first one wake up? Who woke up Morpheus? Was it he himself, out of coincidence, out of unknown reasons?
A real awakening, how is that possible at all, if at the same time it must be assumed that someone is coming from outside and wants to leave the free decision to you, whether you want to be awakened or continue sleeping? But how can a human being judge such a thing at all, if his whole world view is already consolidated and he has a doubt, which another person would be able to motivate about this world view, if this other person also exists in the system? For me, therefore, the figure of Morpheus and those who have seen through the system is not to be taken literally in any case.
From my human perspective, not a single person is capable of really understanding the system,
of awakening from it, or of making it free by saving the many sleepers. Since freedom from the shackle, which remains invisible to me because I am mortal and therefore finite, lies in death itself. So the story of the Matrix would be for me personally a translation whose title would probably read:
"He who is not afraid to live is not afraid to die".
The system as a living mysterious environment cannot be understood itself. You can only understand the broken parts of a system but that does not mean the whole thing is broken.
Remorse is probably worse than guilt. The opportunity to feel truly alive, perhaps it lies in taking risks, not in avoiding them. But to what extent I personally prefer risk to safety is a very intimate matter. To prescribe it to me, a violation of my humanity, in which I, and only I, stand before myself and ask myself: How do I want to live?
So there is hardly any difference whether someone wants to prescribe me a risk or a security, since one or the other must remain my free decision.
Transferred to the present situation, nobody can force me to feel that a rescue operation is protective for me just because the person who feels this way expects it of me. Likewise, I cannot force someone else to feel that the rescue is harmful if they feel protected under it.
But that, already, is a confusion.
It leaves out the very question why protection itself is seen as a valid demand in the first place?
In order to be protected it needs a protector, right? Once, I accept that someone else is needed to protect me from this or that I give up my sovereignty, I externalize it.
But I can expect the other to believe me as I feel it, and he can expect me to believe him. It all depends on what seems to him to be common sense, and in so far as our two senses differ from each other, wen can decide to leave us in co-existence until we forgot about the drama.
We can decide upon that we are not alike in our senses but that we are alike in being human. Wich, in itself, is a vague term as nobody can define what a "human" is, if he cannot define what "life" is.
Neither he nor I are specialists on "health". And so no one is. Nobody can be a specialist on health. For there is no such thing as "health" to be defined by anyone. It just can't.
Health is simply Nature, and no naturalist ought to have the impudence to understand it. Health, one may say, is God; and no agnostic has any right to claim His acquaintance. For God must mean, among other things, that mystical and multitudinous balance of all things, by which they are at least able to stand up straight and endure; and any scientist who pretends to have exhausted this subject of ultimate sanity, I will call the lowest of religious fanatics.
I will allow him to understand the madman, for the madman is an exception. But if he says he understands the sane man, then he says he has the secret of the Creator. For whenever you and I feel fully sane, we are quite incapable of naming the elements that make up that mysterious simplicity. We can no more analyse such peace in the soul than we can conceive in our heads the whole enormous and dizzy equilibrium by which, out of suns roaring like infernos and heavens toppling like precipices, He has hanged the world upon nothing.
I find the quote particularly fitting, though I would not use the term "God" but maybe ... "creation", or "consciousness", or ... well, not easy to find a term for the inexplicable, right?
One is an expert on city planing but not on cities.
A man is an expert on maintaining a certain park as a gardener, but he is not an expert on parks. One is an expert on broken legs but not on legs. One is an expert on sequencing DNA strands but not on human heritage. One is an expert on defective motor engines but not on cars.
The whole system became abruptly stirred. That is something I would describe as a matter of fact for the present time. Maybe it wants to regulate itself.
Some of the common senses right now are being questioned to their core. If this is helpful or not helpful, again, a decision made by me. Whom else?
A strong (common) sense, I feel surrounds me, is that death is rejected.
My statements are:
- In order to prevent to die, one has to prevent to get sick.
- In order to prevent to become sick, sickness has to be put under surveillance.
- In order to observe all sick people, technical device has to be attached to each and every one as not to lose a single case of sickness.
- In order to be able to visualize all the sick I must use numbers, probabilities and projections into the future as to become certain about the total and the single and the estimated numbers alike.
- In order to treat the sick, one needs the same remedies and cures for all of them and productions in high numbers.
- As to produce high numbers of the same medicine, I must make the people all alike (receptive).
- As this scenario never again actually allows for healthy people, because, after all, everyone gets and will get sick eventually, health becomes the state of exception and sickness becomes the regular state.
Now, as we saw above, nobody knows what health actually is and so the starting point already is flawed, if you ask me.
What you create with this is horror of becoming sick. How much more horror can you expect once you face death?
It's not "just" uneasiness to feel that one may develop a cough or might feel a scratchy throat. To feel these kind of symptoms already create anxiety and a deep feeling of being stuck in a trap.
If you deny this, you are maybe more afraid of death and sickness than of becoming an isolated human being. Maybe you are already in that way socialized as you accepted anonymity and social distance as a usual way of lifestyle before the year 2020.
Picture sources:
Von Jamie Zawinski, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3792993
Von wachowski brothers - http://www.seeklogo.com/the-matrix-logo-138764.html, Logo, https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6070665
Source animated Matrix display:
Von TheMatrix.png: Kroninderivative work: Sapindnoel (talk) - TheMatrix.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15171981
Von Karen Roe from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK - The Making of Harry Potter 29-05-2012Uploaded by SunOfErat, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30482326