MINOR MATRIX SPOILERS**
the matrix became the pop culture source of philosophical discussion for the last few years. I think the reason is that it was a fairly simple story with a broad appeal, alot of people’s deepest fantasy:
there is something fundimentally wrong with the world, its all a trick by someone else… your diffrent, you can see past it, here, have super powers and fix the problems in your life caused by higher up people controling things.
plus it had kicking and bullet time and such. matrix II also was equally “deep” but I have never heard much of anyone talk about it in the same way. possibly because the moral was not nearly as ego strokeing as the first one… it kind of boiled down to:
special? pfff, not really your as much a part of the machine as everyone your ‘better’ than… we just make you feel better by makeing you think your escapeing and being a REAL individual… but really your the same as the hundreds of rebels before you and every bit a function of society as the ‘sheeple’ you thought you rose above.
realisticly, do you think thats a fairly valid message… are rebels just as well defined as the people they feel they are above? is their action just as scripted as britney spears watching ‘sheep’. is it probobly true that any society thats going to be around for any length of time should know a way to deal with ‘rebels’ and the easiest way is to make sure they feel they have broken away and become individuals without actually breaking free from anything but the lowest levels of control. its definitly so that the average american rebel are often full of ideas that coincidentally prevent them from changing things. such as seeing finantial success as wicked, and seeing political office as sleazy and something unworthy of their attempts at gaining… even voteing is something not often done by the run of the mill rebel.
if this is so does it require a planned conspericy to be that way, or is it likely that if you just drew the atributes of a society out of a hat that if that society had effective rebels then that is how the society would become and this would simply continue untill it just happened to get stuck one day with ineffective rebels?
I don’t really hope this to be a disscussion of the movies… just a good frame of referance