[discuss-dan] Matrix

[allenbutcher@netzero.net]

Doug
Thanks for this explanation and analysis.  It addresses much of how 
we got to where we are in "contemporary reality."  There is more, I 
think, in feminist analysis of patriarchal society that I didn't read 
here, but that's another story.


What I also didn't find was any real discussion or even clear 
introduction to the answer to the implied question of "how do we 
escape the Matrix."  The unanswered question is "how should we then 
live?"


It is good to have a clear and detailed analysis of the roots and 
sources of the problem, but what is the solution?


You state (I assume that these are your words) at the end of your 
post:


"The movement to end elite rule and establish livable societies, if 
it is to succeed, will need to evolve a democratic process, and to 
use that process to develop a program of consensus reform that
harmonizes the interests of its constituencies."


Well that's a good generalization of the solution, but what we need 
is work on that "program of consensus reform" that you mention.  Now 
I have started presenting here on discuss-DAN elements of my program, 
what is yours?  What I think it is essential at some point is to get 
beyond analysis and beyond resistance against the "Matrix" and to 
start actually building a consensus on the type of world in which we 
want to live, and then, whoever among us is ready and willing to 
agree, start creating that new reality, in parallel to that dominant 
culture of the "Matrix."


Then, if indeed we create something that is better, it will have an 
influence upon that larger culture.  It may not destroy it, since as 
we know, co-optation is the game of dominant cultures, taking new 
ideas from the cultural innovators and adapting them to the desires 
and agenda of the dominant culture, but the result there is change 
just the same.  However, the primary goal has to remain creating and 
maintaining a parallel culture outside of the dominance of 
the "Matrix," with the secondary goal being to change the "Matrix."  
If the primary goal is to destroy the "Matrix" then we will need an 
alternative with which to replace it.  And we can't expect people to 
go along with destroying what feeds them if we don't have an 
alternative ready for them to latch onto.  

Creating the alternative must be a goal in and of itself, regardless 
of what happens in the dominant culture of the "Matrix."  The process 
for this is called "intentional community."  And such communities 
have existed all through the history of civilization, with new models 
of community created in response to each era of civilization.  This 
is really nothing new, and in fact this whole field of "utopian 
societies" and "utopian studies" have had important influences upon 
the development of civilization.  They are sometimes subtle, and it 
is hard to gage their exact impact, but they have an influence, from 
the model of spiritual monasticism in various religious traditions to 
secular utopian and communitarian ideals and experiences from 
Plato's "Republic" to the contemporary cohousing movement.  (Note 
that the story line of the "Matrix" is somewhat similar the 
stories "Feherinheit 451" where they burned books to maintain 
the "collective illusion," and similar to "1984" where Big 
Brother's "double-speak" served the same purpose.


My personal interest is using analysis of our history and our 
contemporary situation to build a culture free of the "Matrix."  In a 
sense, of course, what is needed is to build a new "Matrix" to take 
place of the old in our lives, or to build an alternative to the 
existing "Matrix," since what we are talking about is a shared 
perspective or paradigm on how best to live.  Anarchism is one such 
paradigm, if we could ever get to where we all understood the concept 
in the same way and were able to act upon that consensus.  But I 
can't see that anarchism really provides for that level of 
agreement.  My goal has been to help facilitate more work on this new 
paradigm .....


Allen



At 03:44 PM 02/07/2001 -0700, you wrote:
Escaping the Matrix What if consensus reality is a fabricated 
illusion? Are you ready for the red pill?
By Richard K. Moore
(Whole Earth Summer 2000)


Richard K. Moore is an expatriate software programmer from Silicon 
Valley who has lived for the past six years in rural Ireland. 
However, capitalizing on one of the better side effects of 
globalization, he and Canadian collaborator Jan Slakov have 
coordinated Internet discussions about new economic and political 
paradigms among hundreds of people worldwide, via e-mail lists and 
the Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance Web site. This article is a 
distillation of Moore's book-in-progress, which can be found in 
fuller form at <http://cyberjournal.org.>http://cyberjournal.org. 
Richard can be reached at richard@cyberjournal.org.
            The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix 
[Warner Bros., 1999] occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose 
between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, 
nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality—something 
utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have 
expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turns out to be only a 
collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population 
that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods.





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