The Matrix Revolutions Explained (part 3)
The last movie in the Matrix trilogy is the climax of the story. Machines versus humans, Smith versus Neo, Neo transcending his culture. This is where Neo rises to the realm of god like.
Neo is lost in between the worlds of the matrix and the wonderland. There he meets a family made from programs. The family is supposed to return to the Machine city which means being deleted. Dad has made a deal with the Merovingian to ensure that his daughter could stay in the matrix. Neo finds it strange that a program would want to sacrifice himself for the sake of his “offspring” and so he inquired into his motivation. The answer was simple — he did it because “he loves his daughter very much.” Neo was taken a back and said:
“It [love] is a human emotion.”
To which the program answers:
“No, it is a word, what matters is the connection the word implies.”
What the program here is trying to point to, is that there’s an infinite distance between the word or any other symbol and the thing it’s pointing to. It’s something I referred to in my previous article. From a certain point of view, that’s the plot of the matrix. Words and symbols point to things, if people start confusing words for the real thing that they point to, they act in a misguided manner. As an example: money in your wallet isn’t wealth, it merely points to the fact that you’re owed wealth. We’re cheated out of this wealth every year for around 2% which is the target inflation for most central banks. If you think that money is wealth then your likely to have a lot of money laying around and in turn you’ll be the one losing the most. Our antagonist, Smith, whose searching for purpose is cheating himself as well. He’s confusing the word purpose with the real thing. Anyhow, Trinity and friends do the 12 labors to get Neo out of the in between land.
In the end of the last movie Neo destroyed 4 sentinels with his mind and by doing so got in the in between land. Additionally he got to the source as he was supposed to do but that didn’t do much to stop the war. Neo has questions, the Oracle has answers therefor it’s time for a meeting. She explains that the power of the One extends beyond the matrix. More importantly though, she’s all about Smith being a bad guy — Smith is the darkness and the death himself.
Smithy — the Death Himself
In the previous article I tackled Smith’s intellectual side, his personal development and struggles with finding purpose. In the second movie we got a taste of what free reigning intellect looks like. In the third movie we’re getting a full meal. There’s a special kind of nature to intellect, it’s reductive and all encompassing. It’s reductive because all ideas present a reduced form of reality and it’s all encompassing because anything can be put into words… There is nothing wrong with intellect or reasoning per se, where the problem lies, is in placing intellect as the highest value.
Our antagonist — Smith, is a modern day version of Lucifer — the angel of light. They are the same, both of these characters place intellect as the highest value and all of their detriment stems from it. I don’t want to get too far ahead of the story but I have to take part of the conversation from Smith and Neo in the final battle:
“Do you believe you’re fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is ? Do you even know? Is it freedom, is it truth, perhaps peace, could it be for love? Illusions Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception, temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately justifying existence that is without meaning or purpose.
This is funny from multiple different angels. First of all Smith starts with the assumption that life is meaningless, if Smith got out of his head for once then he would experience meaning all around him. Eating is meaningful, it keeps you alive, reading is meaningful, you get to learn something new. Jugging his presented sources of meaning — freedom, truth, peace, love, he’s not looking for meaning rather he’s looking for something that would transcend his feeble intellect. He’s desperately looking for a divine purpose. He mocks all the “trivially” meaningful acts that are necessary for life whilst looking for divine purpose via the help of the intellect, he want’s something that transcends intellect and can at the same time be understood by intellect — that right there is a joke. Smith has created for himself a world that is meaningless and insufferable, there’s nothing left in it that could make living worth it. There’s nothing left to do but to destroy it.
Neo vs Commander Lock
Right after Neo leaves Oracle, Smith comes and incorporates her into the fold. While all of the previous things were happening, Zion was being attacked by the machines. In charge of the defense of Zion is Commander Lock. Lock has been in the background for a while now, what I want to contrast is his and Neo’s approach to saving Zion and by proxy human race. Commander Lock is a down to earth, practical and pragmatic fellow. When it comes to fighting machines, he’s all about how many ships, guns and people he has. He’s a spartan figure even his speech is laconic (laconic coming from Greek Lakōnikos, meaning a “native of Laconia”, Laconia is a different name for Sparta.) Lock’s approach to defining Zion is reasonable, practical and absolutely ineffective.
The human race in Zion knows how absolutely outmatched they are. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that if machines really wanted to wipe out Zion, they could at any moment. Sometimes the technological and numerical upper hand is so wast that a military victory is a delusion. The approach of Lock is the one which is absolutely in denial of reality. Aren’t we as human species all the time in a similar position? Sure, we’re not jet under the threat of artificial intelligence but how about nukes, plagues, volcano eruption, meteoroids and God knows what else. In 536 AD there was a volcano eruption in Iceland that caused the Sun to be behind clouds for 18 months, the temperature doped for more than 2 degrees, crops failed and humans died. In the Yellowstone national park there’s a supervolcano and cause something similar. There are more then a dozen supervolcanoes known to us and all of them could cause a disaster at a level unknown to us. I’ll restrain myself from going to plagues, the point is that if you are only into solving problems that are already in your face then your already dead you just don’t know it yet.
Neo vs Smith
Lock is content with trying to solve the problem in front of his face. What Neo is doing is trying to find a way to solve the underlying problem between humans and the machines. He’s trying to find a way for machines and humans to live in peace. Neo does the unthinkable and goes to the Machine city — a place where no human has been in over a century. Neo gets to the Machine city and makes a deal where if he beats Smith there will be peace.
The way Smith defeats his enemies is by spreading himself into them and then seizing control — that’s exactly how ideas spread. You can have a normal person living his life, not harming anyone, just minding his own businesses, living his life. But then someone comes and spreads some wisdom and the person changes so much that he’s no longer himself. The way ideas can change people is truly amazing. Just look at a documentary about a cult and you’ll be able to see the power of Smith in real life. If you live in a country with a strong political divide such as US, you can also just turn on the news and you’ll see people possessed by ideas. By knowing their political orientation you know their opinion on pretty much all of the matters, their individuality is gone, they’re like a copy of one another, like Smiths are.
Smith is incapable of understanding Neo, he can’t see his purpose:
”Why Mr. Anderson, why, why, why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? […] You must be able to see it now, you can’t win, it’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson why, why do you persist?”
The answer by Neo was short and sweet:
“Because I chose to.”[…]“You were right Smith, you’re always right. It is inevitable.”
Neo doesn’t have an formulated ideology, his actions aren’t guided by an ideal. Before deciding to go to the Machine city he spent time alone in his room and it took quit a while until he came up with his decision. He’s not limited by the intellect and that’s why he can see trough Smith’s bullshit. Therefor when Smith tries to copy himself over Neo, he fails. I find it quite fitting, the way in which Smith ends. After Smith posses Neo, he starts glowing with light until he explodes. What it symbolized is enlightenment, there was a part in Neo which when taken in by Smith destroyed his intellectual worldview. That’s how it feels like to believe something false and then realize that you were wrong — it’s like an explosion.
Final conclusions
The Matrix trilogy is a story reflecting the state of our modern era, it’s fundamental problems and a potential future. The Matrix zeroes in to the over exaggerated role of the intellect as the central problem causing people to lose meaning, purpose, become susceptible to intellectual possession and cause great havoc as a result. The Matrix isn’t merely a bringer of a pessimistic look at our present and future state, it also presents a path forward. It presents us with the heroes journey which has been the antidote to great perils for as long as human race has existed. The only way forward is to face the unknown, to embark on the path of the One, to visit the wonderland, to transcend yourself and your culture and to ultimately change the course of the world.
