Guest post: The whole message was about choosing reality over fiction
Originally a comment by VanitysFiend on Brave New World had the “feelies.”
@Bjarte Foshaug
Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).
The character of Switch was originally intended to be one sex in the matrix and a different sex out of the matrix, the result of a coding error by the machines. That’s as good an explanation for transgenderism as any I guess. It’s a side element though that was dropped in the actual movie. It’s bizarre from my perspective because the whole message of the movie was about choosing reality over fiction, even if reality sucks. The traitor among the crew chooses the fiction over reality and it’s not treated as a heroic decision. I doubt the Wachowskis see the Cypher in themselves.
I think the way a lot of people in geek spaces conceive of the authentic self makes them vulnerable to the teachings of the trans movement. If you’re shy, or a bit of a misfit like a lot of geeks are then the “real you” is often the person you wish you were, more confident, more suave, rather than the person most people see you as. If you’re a Walter Mitty type who works a boring job but has an fantastical imaginary life then which you is the real you? To a lot of geeky people the “real you” is the imaginary you, after all it’s who you are on the inside that counts. So transgenderism makes sense on an intuitive level for a lot of geeks imo.
I think authenticity and honesty go hand in hand, but being honest with the world about ones opinions has no bearing on whether ones opinions are objectively true. A gay person who is open about their homosexuality is being honest with themselves and the world, but what about a trans person or an otherkin/therian? No amount of honesty can override raw biology.
Of course they would say that our world, in which biological sex is real and can’t be changed etc., is the fiction, they’re the ones who have chosen reality (which sucks because of rampant transphobia) over fiction, and the Cypher character is a detransitioner who has sold out and chosen to go back to live a lie.
They do make a certain Freudian slip early on, though. The movie’s main online influencer, Morpheus, famously compares Neo’s experience to Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and promises (from memory) “If you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I’ll show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes”. As we all know Carroll’s story ends with Alice waking up and realizing that the world down the rabbit hole was never real after all.
My own pet theory after the first Matrix movie was that the Matrix was in fact a fiction, an illusion created by the ultimately victorious humans to imprison the unwitting machines who could ultimately be duped into believing that humans could be used as an energy source. A virtual reality within a virtual reality, if you like. As a result, I was very disappointed in the subsequent movies that just went with the whole weird “eh, it’s magic” cop-out.
The more I learn about the Wachowski brothers, the more I appreciate my own genius :-P
And, of course, the fatal Turtle Question: How do you know that the supposedly “real” world (with the Nebuchadnezzar and the sentinels and Zion etc.) is in fact more “real” than the one you left behind? If your perception could be that wrong once, how can you trust it to tell you the truth about anything?
I get so tired of this talk of being your authentic self. A lot of people seem to confuse the ideal that someone has about himself, with their authentic self. If you are a timid person dreaming about being a famous speaker, your authentic self is a timd person dreaming of being a famous speaker. If you really want to become that famous speaker you will have to work on that.
I have no problem with people dreaming about becoming a better versions of themselves, however they see that. But I think that framing that as this better version’s being the authentic you, makes it harder to reach this goal. Why should you work on that goal if essentially that is what you already are. Framing this goal as your authentic self, makes you see yourself as having already achieved what you want to become and seeing the outside world as some force that refuses to recognize your true self, instead of you needing to do the work to actually become what you want to be.
My authentic self is thinner.
Why you monster, THAT’S CONVERSION THERAPY!
That’s really well put. It explains the demand for attention and affirmation without effort or acheivement on the part of the person demanding to be centered (and the sychophantic approbation of their stunly bravitude for nothing but unwarranted wishful thinking against the tide of material reality). To mix theologies, they’re one of the Elect, and saved by Faith, not Works. That the world opposes them is a mark of the world’s Evil, not the outlandishness of their impossible claim. (Mind you,apparently there’s a lifetime of “work” needing to be done on the mishapen, material body in order to carve and beat it into a crude resmblance of its resident Perfect Spiritual Being.)
YNnB, not just them getting attention without doing any work, either. They actively denigrate those who have accomplishments as elitist, colonialist, imperialist, capitalist, Western scum.
It’s a twofer – they get to be treated as stunning and brave, while those who actually accomplish things are treated as the stuff you clean out of the toilet bowl.
@Bjarte Foshang
I don’t even know where to start on a take that tortured…
One thing I quite like about the first Matrix movie is that up until Neo takes the red pill you really don’t know wtf is actually going on. Was the probe thing that was put in Neo an alien device? Are the agents working with aliens? After several seasons of the X-Files and at least one Men in Black movie you could be forgiven for thinking that might be the case. What if Morpheus really was just a terrorist operating in the real world. As a trope it’s probably too played out now to be interesting but I’d love an alternative take on The Matrix in the form of a Black Mirror episode where it turns out the Morpheus character gave the Neo character a hallucinogen and then brainwashed him into believing he was fighting a race of malevolent AIs when in actuality he was just being trained to commit a terrorist attack on a govt building somewhere but we don’t find out until the end or the ep.
In the original script the humans were used as microchips, not batteries, but it was changed because the studio execs thought people wouldn’t get it, supposedly. I liked that the sequels revealed that Neo wasn’t the first one, that he was just something that appears eventually after the Matrix has been left running for awhile, but other than that I don’t remember that much about them other than that they were disappointing at the time.
It’s like there’s two different views on authenticity. One based on embracing objective truths about yourself and another based on subjective truths. Objective truths are materialist and observable, subjective truths are personal, spiritual, non material. I’m not really surprised that most people don’t distinguish between the two when judging someones authenticity, but I was surprised at how many skeptics were willing to embrace subjective authenticity when it suited their politics.
@YNnB
But they’ve already achieved so much by embracing their authentic self and speaking their truth, that takes a lot of effect!
@iknklast
And thus the geeks inherited the Earth. Somehow I thought I’d be happier…