I had a lot of fun writing this and always enjoy
feedback from anyone who's seen this movie or has a particular interest in
the themes I discuss. I wrote this the night I saw the film, staying up until
around 5 in the morning doing so. I interpret the film particularly in light
of two assumptions, the first being that American civilization is distinctly
modern and the second that modernity carries with it certain risks to our
moral well being that we tend to gloss over. I'm fascinated by the film, as
I think it wonderfully poses certain questions, such as:
One: How do certain aspects of our society which are distinctly
modern negatively effect our moral freedom? Thinking about this requires that
we reflect on the difference between political freedom and free will.
Two: In what ways and to what degree are our lives determined
because we assume, in an unthinking way, that modernity in general and modern
technology in particular are unambiguously good for us?
Three: How is the knowledge and lack thereof of
the causes which play out in our lives, both as individuals
as well as collectively, related to the moral and spiritual quality of our
lives? This is one of the more important and subtle issues the film deals
with. It is a basic premise of modern thought that knowledge of the causes
is always a good thing. The computer code upon which the Matrix is based
is predicated on a complete knowledge of all relevant causes. The stance we
as viewers are supposed to take towards this is that the coming to consciousness
of this knowledge has had disastrous consequences for mankind. To know the
causes operative in the physical world without also having a grasp of how
such knowledge impacts our moral and spiritual well being threatens to bring
us to a kind of dead end. Stated another way, a knowledge of efficient causes,
or physics, without also having a grasp of a telos; a final causality, results
in our living, in Pope John's language, like mere animate nature.
I begin
with a few short quotes from philosophy and the Bible. The first quote is
from Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave,' central to the Matrix. I number the quotes,
as I will refer to them throughout the essay.
Excerpt One: Next, said I, here is a parable
to illustrate the degrees in which our nature may be enlightened or unenlightened.
Imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous chamber underground,
with an entrance open to the light and a long passage down to the cave. Here
they have been from childhood, chained by the leg and also by the neck, so that
they cannot move and see only what is in front of them, because the chains will
not let them turn their heads. At some distance higher up is the light of a
fire burning behind them; and between the prisoners and the fire is a track
with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet-show, which hides
the performers while they show their puppets over the top. Plato, Allegory of
the Cave, The Republic, Book VII
Excerpt Two: Since everything that is in
motion must be moved by something else, let us take the case in which a thing
is in motion and is in turn moved by something that is itself in motion, and
that thing again is moved by something else that is in motion, and so on continually:
then the series [of causes and effects] cannot go on to infinity, but there
must be some first mover... Aristotle, Physics, Book I
Excerpt Three: If then there is some end of the things we do in life which we desire for its own sake, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something further - for at that rate the process of our desiring would go on to infinity so that our desire would be empty and vain - clearly this end must be the good and the chief good. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
Excerpt Four: In the intelligible world
[the world of mind; of reason], the last thing to be intellected and only
with great difficulty is the essential Form of Goodness. Once this
is grasped, the conclusion must follow that for all things, this Form is the
Cause of whatever is [morally] right and good: In the visible [physical]
world it gives birth to light and to the lord of light [it is the cause of
the sun], while it is itself sovereign in the intelligible world [the realm
of mind; reason; spirit] and the parent of intelligence and truth. Without
having had a vision of this Form of Goodness no one can act with wisdom in
either his own life or in matters of state [politics]. Plato, The Republic
Book VI
Excerpt Five: I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the One who is and who was and is to come, the Almighty. Revelations, Chapter
I
Excerpt Six: ...it is not only where human reason exhibits genuine causality, and where ideas are operative causes (of actions and their objects), namely, in the moral sphere, but also in regard to nature itself, that Plato rightly discerns clear proofs of an origin from ideas. A plant, an animal, the orderly arrangement of the cosmos -- presumably therefore the entire natural world -- clearly show that they are possible only according to ideas... From The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanual Kant.
I was so excited
by the second of the three Matrix films (Reloaded), perhaps given my low expectations
due to the bad reviews it got, that I wanted to immediately write down my thoughts
on it. As some of you may know, the first of the trilogy is fairly philosophical
and sophisticated in a way rare for Hollywood, of course formatted in a highly
entertaining package. The specific philosophically interesting element of the
Matrix I regards Plato's notion that the world we live in is only an "appearance".
The Matrix takes Plato's Allegory and makes a significant revision, the significance
of which becomes explained better in Matrix Reloaded (II). Whereas for Plato
the real world is the intelligible world - e.g. the world of spirit; reason
and mind - a transcendent realm, while the world of appearances is the physical
and social-political world we live in, in the Matrix the real world is physical
and the world of appearances is a product of mind. (Christians have familiarity
with Plato's understanding of a transcendent realm at an intuitive level in
the concepts of heaven and immortality and the concept of a soul being apart
from the physical body, as well as social-morally in the notion that the most
important things in life are not money or material things, but something spiritual.)
The change in the Matrix of this essential aspect of Platonic thought in particular
and Western civilization more generally may suggest the influence of Descartes,
for whom there is only mind and matter. In any event, whatever the respective
influence of Descartes and Plato on the film's portrayal of the physical world
in relation to the realm of the mind, in the second Matrix what seemed to be
an exaggerated Cartesian dualism in the first Matrix no longer looks like an
unconscious concession to modernity but integral to a delivery of an account
of an aspect of our own culture which we as a society are not for the most part
aware of. In Plato's thought, the physical world we experience
is not ultimately real. What I wish the suggest in this article is that the
Matrix points, in a manner involving much paradox, in the direction of a "retrieval"
of the classical understanding that human beings only live well when in relation
to a transcendent realm; e.g. when they strive after a moral-spiritual idea.
A world in which only the physical is real; in which matter alone determines
human reality, is not a world worth living in. In the classical and Christian
view, what is ultimately real is a transcendent world apart from anything physical.
Without giving the issue of Platonic-Cartesian dualism as present in the film
the much longer discussion it could warrant, the next few paragraphs attempt
to explain the basics of the Matrix in light of the preceding discussion.
In the Matrix, in a variation on a theme which reflects a key change from pre-modernity to modernity in the West, what is real is in fact the physical world, and what is only an appearance (Plato's technical word for unreality) is the experiences the humans have which are generated by a computer program. But there's an ironic twist in the role this dualism plays in the story, or perhaps a paradox, and it is this paradox which is key to understanding the first two in the series. That paradox is a central theme of this essay. A computer program is a product of mind, or reason. As a phenomenon in Western culture in general computer coding and systems need to be explained as a product of Western philosophy (technology is a product of western science and western science is a product of western philosophy alone.) For Plato and Aristotle, by contrast, the realm of reason, which I have just said is in the film the source of the Computer Program, the latter a manifestation of western modernity, was real and the ground of the good in human existence. As for Christians, the physical world was fleeting and not of ultimate importance. There was a final good higher than the physical. To strive after the improvement of our souls for the pre-moderns means to focus on reason in philosophy and spirit, or soul and doing God's will in religion.
In modernity, which is Western in general but ultimately American in its being lived and fully experienced, there is what we might think of as a monkey wrench thrown into the this traditional western philosophical-religious outlook, or world view. This ‘monkey wrench' is in the form of a kind of reversal in modernity of the original definitions of what was real and unreal; important and unimportant. We can grasp this ‘monkey wrench' which will be integral to the paradox central to the film, if we keep in the back of our minds while thinking about the film the simple fact that philosophy as thinking is the source (e.g. relative first cause) of all computer programming language. (I say "philosophy" here because the movie at a very simple level is just an interpretation of the history of western philosophy as 'gone bad.' It is, as so many artistic creations starting with Rousseau, a critique of modernity, but as with all critiques, in deferring to the Opinions of their respective societies - and ours as being thoroughly modern the deferring must be more pronounced - such critiques, if they have any meat on the bone, must be made "between the lines". They otherwise risk being relegated to irrelevance, e.g. effectively marginalized. This "writing between the lines" happens often times in our culture in the form of what appears to by "only entertainment", and the fact that the medium is perceived "for the most part" as irrelevant to "real life" is what constitutes the esoteric foundation of the conveyance of ideas within American civilization.) The content of the ideas which constitute the heart of modernity, then, may be considered a kind of monkey wrench which has caused a partial "rotting" of Western philosophy - and the key to understanding all sorts of social-cultural critiques usually on the left but increasingly on the right can be gleaned from asking: What makes modernity modern - or that is, what makes modernity so distinct that it gets a new label all to itself? What makes modernity 'modern' is that all of human life in that time which is called 'modernity' comes to be explained by physics, or physical cause and effect. (See Excerpt Two) No longer is mind or God going to be the factor which explains the respective phenomena. This implies that reason will no longer be the locus, or source of human living. (Excerpt Three, Four). No longer is God as logos, the giver of meaning, or Virtue primary (Excerpt Five and Four) - e.g. salvation of the soul or living well both inwardly and in relation to others. These things are of ultimate importance for the tradition. Now body and external well being come to take precedence: e.g. wealth and order. This stress is so strong that it gives birth to a label in the West: the system. This new definition the highest end of philosophy to be the creation of a well functioning system is not in accord with anything in the pre-modern tradition. (Aside: There is always a relative emphasis on one or the other of material and spiritual goods - the outer and the inner; the goods of the body and society and the good of the inner person, and when one is emphasized, the other(s) will tend on the whole to be de-emphasized. Modernity stresses the external world, e.g. physics and material well being. Point being that in considering the meaning of these thoughts and the Matrix we ought not think that simply stressing one side or the other can give the whole truth of human existence. This, precisely, is what is being criticized in modernity. It not-so-subtly points to a "sacrifice" of soul, mind and reason, and free will, for the preservation of "body". Furthermore, this definition of sacrifice is pagan, not Christian.)
A point with an amount of subtlety such that I can only do it scant justice: all philosophies have an inherently moral quality, e.g a purposive aspect. This is true even of a science which sees itself as strictly descriptive of a reality it conceives to be wholly independent of the mind which grasps it. This is simply because philosophies, of which science(s) are a subcategory, come from the part of man whose function is to posit purposes for himself, e.g. his reason. We can evaluate a philosophy as good or bad on the whole by using standards regarding how well they facilitate or hinder the development of human good. (Excerpt Four) But the content of modern philosophy tells us that the world is an object merely to be described, and this means that it has no moral significance and is not a home for man as man. (Excerpt Two vs. Three). Such a philosophy tells us that the realm in which man exists, e.g. nature and the social-political realm, is merely a "thing-like" entity or an object to be manipulated by the understanding of physical Cause and Effect (Excerpt Two vs. Three). Because the content of our current philosophy tells us human life is essentially to be explained along the lines of a solely physical phenomena, we - both the thinking class and the society at large - fall under a trance of thinking or believing that the world is in fact controlled by external factors; by physics alone. (Excerpt Two) This is the philosophy implicit in those who say we are "like all animals", which is simply another Opinion of modernity, and not any necessary truth. The Pope has this to say on the issue of modern western civilization:
"There is the danger of a fundamental illusion, that of man imagining that, thanks to the exclusive development of material civilization, he has become increasingly the master of the visible world, even of the cosmos, without noticing that at the same time he has made himself dependent on this world... that he is becoming the object of all kinds of manipulations against which he can do nothing, precisely because he has completely delivered up to the 'world' his conscience and his liberty..."
This "illusion" which results from holding that we are in actual reality controlled by external factors alone, whether they be instinct, the unconscious, our psychology, or our needs and wants, can be truthfully described as a trance - as a dream and not reality - not because we know this view is not true that physics controls all things ultimately, but because we do know that it is we who have created this philosophy. It is not necessary for the destruction of our freedom that we live in a purely mechanistic universe (Excerpt Two vs. Three), but it is sufficient to negate morality in our lives to hold a philosophy which says we do. (God may be necessary to the salvation of our souls, e.g. grace, but our minds are sufficient to our own moral and social decrepitude.) It is our modern understanding of reason-ing which has brought us low. (I don't mean 'we' as in you and I, but "we" as our collective culture over 2,500 years. In the language of Greek Mythology and Christian theology, the modern understanding of Reason might be viewed as man revolting against the gods or God but as suggested, this ends up being not a revolt against something "out there", but against ourselves. This is a Promethean revolt, and again smacks of Paganism more than anything Christian. The image of Machines against Man is really about what happens when we think ourselves into a bad philosophy. No one and no "thing" has done this. We have. Man has. Or at least, American man has.) ....
In the language of the antagonists, Agent Smith and the Merovingian in Matrix II, it is our reason, our purpose, then, which has told us that the content of human existence is pre-determined. (This is a main theme of the Pope's.) The essential point is that moral purpose lies in both the inward articulation of an idea as well as its execution and by definition this two-fold reality is not pre-determined. As a corrollary, those qualities which make our lives good lives cannot be built into any system. The founders of modern political philosophy may have been overly optimistic that the good could be assured - that it could be artificially created if only the right "formula" were found. But if something is assured there is no room for chance, e.g. the necessary space for free will to "live and breathe". Perhaps the real reason for the American stress on external freedom is not so much because there is any real danger that something outside of us will take our political freedom away, e.g. the government or some foreign force, but rather because there are forces which we create and which are organically related to a philosophical idea still in gestation which we now have doubts are good for us. Stated another way, we are not sure if there is a difference between an idea; a foundation for a society not being good for us, on the one hand, and being positively bad for us, or if these are one and the same. The active application of our moral freedom in our lives and the attendant cultivation of good philosophy allows us to question this and take the question seriously. The role of the Hero is to portray the truth that we are ultimately free in the face of a force which appears to be only or primarily external, but which is always and everywhere internal. The truth that the Hero brings with him is portrayed both formally and substantially - in both his choosing to act in accord with a higher standard than any given by animate nature or any external force, as well as in the content of his choices, e.g what he lives for. What Neo lives for he does not know. He can have faith, but he does not and cannot know. And the fact that Faith plays a role in the Matrix is another sign of its pre-modern, Christian, not pagan, roots. (By ‘pagan', I mean pre-Socratic. Catholicism in my view too easily lumps the pre-Socratics in with Socratic philosophizing.) In his not knowing, the Hero, and in the Matrix that is Neo, continue a theme from Greek philosophy and the ideals of Christian humility and faith in acting on the basis of an "inscrutable" principle, as well as hints at the breach in the chain of causality in which lies the possibility alone of human redemption in a world of a nature unredeemed by grace.
Continuing on the meditation on a theme:...... Listen carefully to all talk in the film about reason as purposeful. I don't want to specify the claims as to leave the reader to listen for them on their own. What really means something in these claims is something formal: that this talk comes out of a computer program and not the humans, which should, if the viewer is thoughtful, strike them as odd, since a computer program can have no purpose. (Excerpt Two vs. Three.) But here we are, seeing computers talk about purpose and having an idea of what it is. (Excerpt Three.) But it is clear that a computer program can have no purpose as we speak of purpose in moral philosophy - that is, strictly - since it does not make (write) itself. (And unless we want to remain at the level of falsity, or artifice by saying "But in the movie the computer does write its own code", we must refer the content of the ideas in the movie to reality as we know it. As mature viewers we ought not watch the film as if we are in Hollywood, Disney World, or Kansas....) A necessary condition of having moral purpose is being able to praise and blame someone for an action. This is the meaning behind the term "choice"; behind "decision". Computers don't make choices or decisions, not in the strict sense of these terms. Now, though, when we go up to a meta-level; that is, when we back up and get some detachment, or attempt a birds-eye view, we can get a glimpse into the paradox within the film, the paradox in the fact that the computers are presented as writing their own code. We can see that when we are within the labyrinth which is the Matrix as a metaphor for being "within" our own culture - this culture a product of modern philosophy - the fact that a computer program can have no purpose but is presented as having one should not seem odd or even paradoxical. As suggested above, it is our philosophy which is the primary determining factor of the quality of our lives. The Computer Program which runs the Matrix is simply a metaphor for the quality of the philosophy by which we live today.
It should not seem paradoxical since when we go deeper we see the flip side of the illusions; the appearances, of the film and get a glimpse of reality.. it should not seem odd that the idea is suggested that a computer program has after all a purpose since the humans are the ones who created the original programming language which eventually lead to the Matrix. This is to say that form takes precedence over content. The fact that the humans wrote the original program takes precedence in moral significance over the content of the Matrix as a particular program. That is to say that moral freedom cannot be avoided. But it can be evaded in a bad philosophy; in a bad world-view; the Weltanschaaung; the Zeitgeist which tells us there is no free will, only physical causality in metaphysics and monetary profit in the social-moral-political realm. We fall into a trance when we, somewhat naturally, hear the words of this philosophy but fail to see that the words were chosen to be spoken.
Don't confuse the issues by saying "What if" Artificial Intelligence could really exist? Stick to understanding how we live and what is real today, in the here and now. All good science fiction is about how we live here and now. There is no artificial intelligence. (The "program", e.g. our world view, is 'tricking' you if you make this question primary. 'Go back to go': Asking about the possibility of A.I. is the wrong question. Good philosphy is primarily about asking the right questions. One enters onto Alice in Wonderland turf in focusing on whether or not the Matrix is representing the external world, since the very ideas at the heart of the Matrix don't take the external world as the only or ultimate realm which counts as important. What is real, read: morally and spiritually important, is how we live and the standards by which we live....not scientifically observable facts which are wholly external to the moral, spiritual and human realm. The Computer Program - the Matrix - is itself ultimately a product of the human realm, of spirit and mind gone bad. It is not an independent reality of Mind as Cause. To consider A.I. or any of the hard science in the film as a real possibility will undermine your ability to understand what the film is truly about. It is about us, and it is about now, in the guise of science fiction, in the guise of a story about machines taking over humans. ... Get out of DisneyWorld.... )
To continue along on the meditation: The explanation of this "monkey wrench" - this denial of free will in the heart of modernity entailed in the dominance of scientism - the view that physics is the explanation of all phenomena - is of course - and this may easily go unnoticed by even the brightest minds - that it is reason itself which comes up with this understanding of the cosmos. In other words, reason can never free itself, e.g. our selves, of its responsibility, because it is our reason which gives us our "code" by which we live. Entailed within the fact that the choice of our philosophy determines our lives is the fact that we can never escape our moral responsibility to ourselves, individually or social-politically as a nation. If this sounds circular or like a truism, this is natural. All basic truths in some respect or another appear circular, if only because they refer back to something about we humans. When we try to avoid responsibility to the fact that we do choose our own good or bad, bad things happen. While attempting to live well is not sufficient to living well, it is necessary, and this distinction causes us so much anxiety. But then there is Grace which helps us move between the gap, the gap constituted in the choice in the face of what is ultimately inscrutable. Failing to attempt to live well, however - failing to consciously consider what standards one will live by is sufficient to living badly, unless by mere chance one ends up living well. But chance is what modernity attempts to conquer. Another paradox. There is a sense in which modern American culture can be interpreted as an attempt to escape from existence. Part of our Cave consists in the influence of an illusion that being able to do what we want when we want means that we have fully realized the meaning of freedom. Our focus on this external freedom risks making us unable to ask: what ought we do?
The clue in the film to salvation - and which points to a space for grace to occur - is the possibility of a break in the causal sequences in the computer code language which lead to the dominance of the Machines and the Matrix. (Excerpt Two and Three Combined and applied now to human reason.) So long as there is one sequence in the chain of this coding which is not determined by more code (Excerpt Two), there is the possibility of human goodness and morality. Note, not the actuality - but only the possibility. Again, free will is necessary but not sufficient to living a good life. The Hero realizes his unique purpose when he moves from Potentiality; from Possibility, to actualize the moral ideal which comes from his soul; from his mind; from his heart and reason, and which he must freely choose. (Excerpt Three and Four) In relation to our culture, what makes men move from possibility to actuality is the choice of their philosophy collectively. A mystery we must live with is that the causal relation between the necessity of freely chosen actions which contribute to the good of society and the results of these chosen actions in actually furthering the Good is always contingent upon specific concrete individuals who have a vision of the good. By this definition, this relation is not something any single actor has any significant control over. We don't have any direct control over who experiences such visions, nor do we have control over their actions to effect the good and the consequences of their actions. Nor do they for that matter. We have today on the whole chosen to live by a philosophy which says that there is no true freedom because we cannot tolerate these ambiguities. Ironically, in our attempt to control, we threaten ourselves with a loss of both moral and political freedom. Something in Western culture has made us fear-ful of the deep unknowability of the most important aspects of human existence. We deny mystery and want to know, then, and thus treat the merely knowable, conceived by the founders of modern philosophy as external to us, as if it can save us, although we are not sure from what we are to be saved. In so wanting to know as a means of gaining an unattainable security, we risk denying our humanity and "killing" our own souls. At first glance - or that is, at the level of appearances - The Matrix is about the possible death of the human body (the species), but at the level of reality to which it intends to point, beyond a first impression, it is referring to the possibility of the death of the soul in modernity due to the prevalence of a philosophy which denies the reality of free will and the reality of a moral realm.
If you have not seen the film and if you are interested in moral and social-political issues, I highly urge you to do so. Without giving anything away, pay attention to the following: The first major speech is by the councilor. Listen carefully to what he says. The second speech is by the Oracle, and it will help if you keep in mind what the Oracle has said in the first Matrix. Another important speech comes out of the mouth of the antagonist - Agent Smith. He articulates very nicely the idea that there is no free will. Another very significant speech takes place at a fancy restaurant by a French character who seems to allude to Cartesian dualism in his talk about causality. One difficult concept of the movie involves the relationship between the appearances which are generated within the Matrix - which recall is a computer progam - and reality. For example: If all within the Matrix is appearance, e.g. not real, why is it that the humans can potentially really be killed when they are within it? I want to suggest this real possibility adverts to the notion that our ideas can literally lead to our death, but a death of a spiritual nature. The death within the Matrix points not ultimately to physical death, although that is an outcome, but the risk to our souls as ones who live in modernity. In a nice way, then, I want to suggest that by having the possibility of death faced within the Matrix - within a realm of Ideas - within the non-physical world, in another clever twist on Plato's dualism the authors point on a meta-level to the possible death of our souls and the difference between the death of our souls and the death of our bodies... Listen, then, carefully to what the antagonists say about cause and effect, and keep in mind that he is "representing" the most philosophically pertinent idea in the film and key to what makes modernity "modern" (an idea we will want to judge as bad), namely, that all events are completely determined.
Finally, there is another speech by the "architect" of the Matrix: When you listen to his speech, the deep issue being gotten at is - on the assumption that there should not be the "dilemma" he points to as a representative of the Machines: There should not be a free causality entering the chain of causality. There should be no 'breaks' in the sequence of physical causes and effects. If the human mind has made the computer program - and it has - within which there is no free will, isn't the following also true, and the source of the dilemma the Machines face? Isn't it the case that somewhere back in the chain of causes and effects which lead to the creation of the Machines and then the Matrix there is after all a free causality, e.g. free will and that the machines don't rule? (Excerpt Two.) On the possibility of true freedom and living on the basis of its reality, the Pope says:
"[True freedom] is a kind of metaphysical superconductor to transcendence. It is the fissure or breach in being, as we have called it, which opens man to the infinite - this is liberty. Without it, man would be enclosed in the world of nature and robbed of his transcendence. He would be a 'finite' and 'complete' being, totally determined by external forces (Excerpt Two) and subject to the limits imposed on animate nature, and therefore to a death without hope".
The possibility of true freedom is bad from the perspective of the Machines and good from the perspective of the humans. But it is also the source of the responsibility of the humans and is the locus in which the content of the moral choice Neo faces is to be found. At a higher level, at a "birds eye view" of the film - however - we enter into a "problem" of circularity - as noted above: humans articulated the philosophy-science which lead to the computer programing "model" in the first place. Back at the level of the film: So we are in a circle now: How can this dilemma be escaped? The "dilemma" is presented as a mystery that Neo and the humans in the film (we as the audience?) must figure out, and this mystery in a clever twist is presented by products of the Matrix, suggesting that we must go back to the source to figure out our 'problem'. That source is our philosophy.
Why isn't the solution to the humans' problem suggested by a human? Again: The solution to the human's salvation is hinted at by the Matrix as a computer program, and this nicely points to the "break" in the computer code's series of causality discussed thematically by all the manifestations of the Matrix - e.g. the Oracle as well as the antagonist. (I excerpted the Pope referring to this theme above.) The fact that a morally good idea comes out of a bad phenomena, the Matrix as a representative of modern society as tying itself completely to animate nature is a nice metaphor for the notion the Pope alludes to in telling us that true freedom is a 'breach' in nature which opens us to to the transcendent. The breach in the chain of physical causality which so concerns the Matrix is a specific form of hope for mankind takes in modernity. It is in the "break" - this "missing sequence" in the causal series of the Code Language - which is from the perspective of science a miracle, and which makes room for moral purpose and is the basis of the possibility of goodness. To repeat a theme: The need to solve the dilemma of this "break" is the primary issue or need of the machines in the film. Suffice it to say that there is a "problem" for the Machines due to this breach. This, then, is the perspective, if you will, of the Machines, who deliver their judgment via the Matrix. From their perspective, again, this breach is bad.
In summary - as if some revolt of the gods, the gods being we humans disconnected from any source of transcendence - each of us as single individuals have been fated to be born into a culture and a time which lives by a philosophy which implies that we are not morally free. We humans collectively have given ourselves a 'code', a standard, if you will, to live by which denies our freedom. Reason denying the power of reason... why...??? But at the same time, since humans have created a philosophy which denies the power of morality and goodness, we can also choose to live by a philosophy which affirms the power of reason, mind and spirit. With that, I leave you back with Plato's suggestion that it is our own opinions which create our caves, our unrealities. But the Opinions never get at the final truth. We do not ultimately know 'the most important things', in Socrates words. And this, it turns out, is another way of talking about a 'space', or 'breach', in which moral freedom and goodness can be cultivated both in our own lives and through our own lives diseeminated into the live of the larger culture.
Final Note: Why the bad reviews? Because the themes above are presented in a way which is beguiling simple. It is not clear when the important parts of the script come up that they are as deep as they actually are, and sophisticated in their "covering the bases" of certain core ideas in the history of Western philosophy and culture. I don't think critics will notice this kind of thing unless they have a sufficient background in ideas, or are naturally inclined to be interested in such themes. They will tend to focus on, well, the appearances of such movies. The very stress on technology the film is critiquing will tend on the whole to bring the viewer in our culture to see the film as primarily about something outside of us. Key example: There is one very long action sequence in the film which seems pointless. It must be at least 12 minutes long. I'm told by "reputable sources" that this is aimed at the generation which grew up on computer games. It is, I must say, fun to watch, and the music makes you want to tap your fingers.... I see no reason for the negative critiques the movie has received.
Terence Hoyt
New Orleans