THE MATRIX IS REAL - AND YOU ARE IN IT!

Increasingly, in the last two decades of his long career in comedy, the now deceased American comic, George Carlin, used to make a point of mentioning in interviews, and even in his act, that he had a problem with groups of people. He seemed to mean “partisan groups of people” by this remark, even possibly insinuating that groups, by their very nature, were liable to become partisan at all times. In making this point, Carlin would often be sure to remind his audience that he was not being misanthropic by having this attitude. He would often say that if he met individual people he would get on with them fine and without any problems at all. But, according to him, it was when they got together and organised themselves into groups that the trouble would start. This had caused Carlin to back off from society and to treat it, vicariously, as a show put on for his entertainment. He had, he said, ceased to care about outcomes and was now just hoping to be entertained by the destructive behaviour of groups of his fellow human beings and all it was to him was a particularly garish show.

I understand where George Carlin was coming from and, increasingly, as I think about the world we live in and the human beings that populate it, I see no reason to hope for any particular outcome. I won’t say that I go so far as to see it as a show either but, I think, I have learned the wisdom that Carlin learned which is that you can’t fool yourself into hoping for anything in particular from such a species as ours. This has nothing to do with being hopeful or pessimistic or, indeed, even with wanting any particular outcome one way or another in the first place. It just doesn’t seem very appropriate to me to set an entire species a goal and then want them to achieve it. This doesn’t seem remotely true or authentic to life as it actually is to me. In fact, what it does seem like is control and, as a convinced anarchist, control is never a good thing. Control is an authoritarian thing, a huge red flag to any anarchist.

Of course, control is the norm, as in the vision conjured up by the Wachowskis in their series of films set in “the matrix”. The matrix is a technological prison, the result of a war against sentient machines, but it has much to teach simple human beings in our world too. One issue that I think about a lot is the one that the character Morpheus addresses when it is suggested that all those imprisoned in the matrix, human beings grown from birth in pods whose bodies act as batteries powering the very system which enslaves them, should simply be released. Wouldn’t this both free the people and cripple the matrix at the same time? Morpheus’ answer is one that we should think about for a very long time for he explains that most people simply don’t want to be unplugged and that, after a certain time, they just become too used to their surroundings to be unplugged from them anyway. They become dependent on that which enslaves them and they have no idea that its a matrix which they live their whole lives within.

This, I think, is very much the situation in our world right now, in the world in which I observe the social media back and forth of millions of people all plugged into a matrix of their own. They watch TV, they read newspapers, they respond to mainstream media, they follow the latest “trending topics”, they are entirely led by the nose through the “bread and circuses” by a capitalist media who tell them what to talk about and what’s good to think in a never-ending scroll of life. But do you know what’s almost entirely lacking from these places? Original thought or even thought that the people have had themselves without being told what to think about or what to react to by somebody else. Everything today is about adding to a hashtag or repeating the same old topics and if you have your own thoughts or do your own thinking its probably not going to be about such things. Because its going to be about you and your own thoughts on what matters to you or your life. It might even have some emotional authenticity or some meaningfulness rather than being the utterly shallow and vapid stuff the mainstream regurgitates on a loop to never let go of your attention as it constantly massages your in-built prejudices.

And the point is the point Morpheus made: many people, most people, simply don’t want to be unplugged from this matrix - even if they ever did. They aren’t equipped to think for themselves, to imagine alternatives or to have an original idea. They can’t think outside the box for they do not even realise they are in one. They have been grown as talking bobbleheads who constantly yack about today’s talking points. And nothing else. They are on the merry-go-round of talk shows, newspapers and social media and they don’t want to get off. And why would they when they have been groomed to be addicted to these things? In that case, very much as in The Matrix itself, it is only very few people indeed who would ever have even the intuition that things could be another way or who could survive being introduced to it for the first time after a life of being force fed a narrative of what it was even possible to think about or discuss. And, by the by, such a situation does not encourage thinking for yourself, questioning, imagining, having ideas. There’s a good reason for this, too, for it might take you outside the controlled bounds of what’s thought acceptable and decent to this mainstream. You might start having rogue ideas or even simply other ideas and that’s very dangerous in a world based on control - not least to the controllers and the media they use to control it. So becoming unplugged from such controlling media might then be seen to be the most revolutionary and potentially dangerous act you could undertake… which is why people like Morpheus, Trinity and Neo are being hunted down in the first place for they are outside the matrix and so free to think what they like and even to act upon it.

Now the matrix, as we learn more fully and intricately in the sequels to the original film, is actually a grand construction for the purposes of misdirection. The reason for building it was to fool as many human beings as possible into accepting what was being fed into their minds so that they would function normally completely under the control of their overlords and in a completely docile way. Docility, of course, was absolutely vital for their control and we know that this was not always the case in various former iterations of the matrix where human beings refused to accept what they were being told - and either refused to take part or actively resisted it. This resulted in many deaths and, as the character The Architect says in the second film, “whole crops were lost”. The matrix is a system of control and its genius is entirely in not being recognised for what it is. What is the best means of control? The means you do not even recognise as control or that, even if you do, you cannot unplug yourself from. An example of the latter in The Matrix is Cypher. He knows what the matrix is, he even discusses it with agents of the system, but he prefers imprisoned ignorance to taking responsibility for his own life in the harsh reality outside it. Cypher is a powerful metaphor for many millions of people in our own world, even many millions who label themselves as concerned about the world, but who find themselves joined at the hip to this world and its system of control and cannot see any other way to live but by that system. Cypher just doesn’t want to face up to the harshness [and responsibility] of reality outside of the system [think capitalism, leaders, the authoritarianism of doing as you are told] so he will plug himself into whatever it is that fills his day and blinds him to it instead. He welcomes the misdirection because it at least doesn’t cause him any real trouble or require anything more of him but to play the role others have assigned to him. He becomes willingly docile in this respect, even to the point of betraying others to achieve it. I know you can think of those in our world who do exactly the same as this.

Yet I see another disturbing analogy to this in the many people who interact with various forms of media who label themselves as politically concerned. Some, of course, the conservatives, right wingers and fascists, use such media on purpose. They are dishonest actors who will lie, deceive and misdirect entirely to get what they want. They are goal-focused and their only goal is to win, to control and to possess the power. In this they partly act as willing agents of the matrix. They are people who have been grown and, in some cases, turned to become agents of the grand system of misdirection. They are those who want this system to dominate and they play their part in it. If you remember back to the films, anybody in the system can at any time become an agent of the system and, as Morpheus teaches Neo in one of his training sessions, “Anyone who is not one of us, is one of them.” We who are unplugged from this matrix should take note of this for, if we ever step back inside it, getting wrapped up in social media discussions or news stories this matrix has itself generated, we soon realise how completely controlled and misdirected many who think themselves on the side of right have become. They do not realise they have become Pavlov’s dogs trained to respond to the slightest stimulus and to react in predictable ways to a whole set of cues and, more to the point, they don’t realise they’ve been disabled from meaningful action - which is always physical action in the real world - by being locked into a never-ending conversation they can never win - because the point is it plays out forever: the conversation is itself control. Remember back to the matrix constructed in the film: it is destroyed not by being plugged into it but by unplugging and taking actions to destroy it and its control. It cannot be destroyed from within. It has enslaved too many people and too many have been turned into those who will willingly keep others enslaved or destroy them instead. Or maybe just keep them talking and so misdirected and distracted.

One thing we should notice about its control, however, is that it is necessarily quite sophisticated. The matrix does not stop you having your own thoughts. It doesn’t stop you imagining freedom or rebellion. In fact, these even play a part in its construction as The Architect informs us. In the same way, our own matrix does not deny us the choice The Architect informs Neo it became vital to include in the iteration of the matrix from which he himself was released and which The Oracle, another agent of the system, encouraged him to pursue. The point, however, was that even this choice was a function of the enslaving control the matrix was built to serve. The machines who controlled the human population had realised that people need to at least think they are free and have the choice to not do, as well as do, what they are told. If given this choice, they learned, people could become better controlled, better coerced, even if, in fact, they were just as controlled and coerced in reality as they always had been. 

This is very much the case today. The controlling system of authoritarian capitalism will tell you that you have a choice and, in theory, abstractly, you do have a choice. But take any action to pursue a choice undesired by these same authoritarian capitalists [such as riots or protests because black lives matter, for example] and action will be taken against you even as it is against people who become too socialist in Latin or South America or if a Sanders appears in US political discourse or a Corbyn does in British political discourse. The matrix doesn’t mind you talking and complaining all day, every day, about these things by means of the various media companies. In fact, it encourages you to - because while you are doing this, and I see this all the time on social media, you are not doing anything to dismantle the matrix and the system of control which it constitutes [even, by the way, as you out yourselves to the powers that be]. In fact, you are actively helping it perform its controlling function by doing so every bit as much as Neo, up to a certain point, was doing so by carrying out the function of “The One” which, lest we forget, was itself a function of the matrix and its system of control. 

This is another lesson to be learned. Every system of control may have those few people it cannot reach or control but this is OK if they never actually defeat the system but are themselves impotent against it. This then acts as a further reinforcing narrative for the system’s truth that it is in control and that there is no prospect of its destruction. And this is then something else to discuss eternally whilst still under its endless control. So long as you never learn the lesson that you should be trying to destroy the very system that you have come to rely on for your own survival - its making you dependent upon the very thing which is your real enemy being entirely part of the plan all along - then why should the system care what you discuss, dream about or imagine whilst still firmly under its control? Such things are actually part of its means of control so long as you don’t try to unplug, once and for all, and then see your real enemy.

In the films, of course, the matrix only comes under real threat once various characters, both “good” and “bad”, rebel from their assigned roles. Agent Smith no longer wants to be an agent of the system and, instead, becomes a threat to it. Neo, likewise, rejects his role as a further [but unknowing] agent of the same system and prefers to make his own choices rather than the coerced ones he had been making up until this point because he had been manipulated into buying into the story that the game of freeing Zion was one that had real stakes. Zion, we learn, is also just another means of control in which those few people who escape the matrix are habitually wiped out so that the cycle can begin again. Here is where we learn that a measure of rebellion is always acceptable to the powers that be for it justifies the mass of authoritarian forces which maintain it as it is and serves to keep the vast mass of unrebellious people under control. Seeing what happens to those who rebel is always a good lesson for everyone else to learn but this, again, is misdirection and its always about learning what the system wants you to learn from this perspective. The last thing the system wants is to lose the upper hand and it will allow pretty much anything which allows it to maintain its advantage and its control. So even at the end of the third matrix film, when Zion is saved and the machines have had to concede to working with Neo in order to defeat Smith, the matrix itself remains intact even at the cost of The Architect agreeing to free all those from it who want to be. But that still leaves untold millions of seemingly willing [or just uninformed] slaves, the many sentinels who are its police in the real world and the agents who patrol its digital pathways enforcing order. The matrix is itself still there as are both The Oracle and The Architect, its “mother” and “father”. Real freedom will only exist when all these do not but even the apparent self-sacrifice of Neo has not achieved that. All he has achieved is, at most, a concession with no promise that things won’t just go back to how they used to be once more.

There is so much that could be learned from this analogy and from going through it in much more detail than I have imagined here in this short essay. Yet the broad outlines are, I hope, clear and the rest of the thinking is up to you for we must each emerge from within the shadow of the matrix by taking responsibility for ourselves, our own lives and our own thoughts. We all need to become self-educating people. For we are all here, in our real world, under a system of control every bit as much as real as the one imagined in The Matrix. These systems of control have the same aims and use many of the same techniques. Their job is to control us, even without us realising we are being controlled if they can, whilst keeping us docile, sleepy, compliant, playing the roles others have decided we will play. In this, us having our own opinions and views, a feeling of free will, is vital for they can be used to keep us locked in interminable conversations that threaten nothing because we have been willingly coopted into eternal impotence. Instead of seeing our true enemy and physically working to disrupt and destroy it [the apparatus of authoritarian capitalist control], we are misdirected into endless talk and other impotent actions such as social media. This utilises the passion we feel but simultaneously disarms it - a very insidious but effective form of control. If there are some few who wake up [the song played at the end of the first film], the forces of control will send their authoritarian sentinels into battle to destroy them. This will both quell the uprising and serve as  a warning to the rest. Control is all the system wants. It will do anything to maintain it.

So, of course, this control, and the system that wants it, is the real enemy. Its not the trending topics on your social media. Its not the shenanigans going on in your favourite political party. Its not the latest injustice. Its not the raft of conspiracy theories tossed out to confuse and engage you. All these intersectional issues are just distractions at the end of the day, fragments randomly distributed to catch and hold your attention in a permanent scroll which misdirects your attention from the fact you are a slave, that you are not free, that you cannot really make your own choices but only the ones you have been allowed to make. This is not because some mad billionaire wants to secretly put a chip in your head. It is because, done right, the system billionaires are a part of will not need to put a chip in your head or physically connect you to a matrix because you will already be under control by other means. When you accept that there are states and governments and leaders and police and rich and poor and economic systems and that you can only have something if you pay someone for it - and, if you don’t have money you may just have to accept starving or having no home or dying for lack of medical care you cannot afford - then you are already under control for none of these things are given and all of them are impositions upon life itself. The system would hate you to realise this and do something about it - such as finding alternative ways to live - for that is what really threatens it and what can really destroy it. So anything that is not that realisation is fine as far as the system is concerned for anything else will not ultimately or fundamentally change it. 

That is the realisation we all finally need to have if we want to escape the systems of control and experience real freedom for the first time. And to refuse to be misdirected by all the media that now surrounds us as a very deliberate and purposeful fog.

INTERVIEW ABOUT "ANARCHY AND ANARCHISMS"

Interviewer: You’ve just written and published a new book called “Anarchy and Anarchisms”. What is the book about and why have you written it?

Anarxistica: The book showcases some examples of things that are either called anarchism by some people today, things like anarchoprimitivism and anarchafeminism, and other things, such as a practical appraisal of how Jesus of Nazareth lived and what he taught or the writings of Chinese Daoists or the meditative lifestyle of Zen Buddhists or the philosophy of self-creation espoused by Friedrich Nietzsche, and uses them to look at the ideas “anarchy” and “anarchism” to ask what they are and what they mean. So, from this angle, its a book about these things that hopes to inspire readers to think about them for themselves.

But there’s another reason for writing the book besides this and that’s to make an argument for anarchism not as some political set of beliefs or goals but as a kind of personal virtue, an ethics of living, a lived character which shows who we are. For me, anarchism can never be relegated to being a set of ideas. For me its something you live and who you are. It comes up from your insides and flows out into the world. Its much, much more than just some ideology to be put on like a coat or cast aside like an old sweater.

Interviewer: Are you against a more traditional description of “anarchism” then as a political desire for no government or the abolition of police and prisons, for example?

Anarxistica: No, not at all. But I do want to go much deeper into the mentality that leads to such conclusions and where it comes from. My context for anarchism is much wider than many others who claim the description “anarchist” today. In addition, many of the more traditional anarchists of 19th century anarchism, those we might think of as having founding roles in what became anarchism, were philosophical people who wanted to give some kind of reasoned or explicatory basis for why they came to the conclusion that anarchism was a reasonable answer to the question, “How should human beings live one with another?” So when people today talk about their political desires - the end of top down government, abolition of police and prisons, etc, - I understand why people come to those conclusions but I want to do work underneath such conclusions and positions and make an argument for why we come to them thinking of us as intelligent beings who live in the world.

Interviewer: You say your context for anarchism is much wider than that of many others who talk about anarchism. What is that context?

Anarxistica: The short version is that it is the cosmos. This I regard as essentially anarchy. Here “anarchy” does not mean “chaos” however or, at least, it does not mean “chaos” understood as the opposition of “order”. In fact, I do not see “chaos” and “order” as opposites but, as a Daoist would, as one thing always entailing the other. It would be very binary thinking to see them as opposites where such thinking is not necessary. Order and chaos can then be seen as versions of the same thing or components of a necessary whole and applied to the cosmos and so everything in it. This is my context of anarchy - and anarchism is what I argue to be an appropriate human response to it, its nature and its manner of operation.

Interviewer: This is a very philosophical or even spiritual conception of anarchy and anarchism. What would you say about this?

Anarxistica: Its a description I would agree with and own. My influences for it are those kinds of influences, things such as a reading of Chinese Daoism and Zen Buddhism or activities of Jesus of Nazareth, things which had spiritual and even philosophical bases but which resulted in certain kinds of lifestyles and practices, and so I see no shame in that. Philosophical and spiritual thought are two types of thought which are remarkably common throughout human history and so they must be attenuating something in the human being that finds itself in need of expression. One thing that is very important to me is having authenticity in our conversations and in our thinking about things. So I feel no shame if my conception of anarchy or anarchism ultimately comes from philosophical or spiritual roots. What’s more important is to be honest and to explain oneself as clearly and honestly as one can and let your authenticity speak for itself. That will do so not only in terms of what it is you say you want but also in terms of where it comes from. 

Interviewer: What do you think are the prospects for anarchism in the world we live in today and where does your conception of anarchism fit into this?

Anarxistica: This is where I say it depends on what you think anarchy and anarchism are. The political anarchist sees anarchism as a list of things they want to bring to pass. They emphasize direct action and taking things into your own hands. Anarchism, on these terms, fails if the things that are wanted do not come to pass. In addition, such anarchism is inherently about conflict and perhaps even violent conflict. Often such anarchism is based on anger and its not anger that I would condemn at all because its anger thats been earned by decades and even centuries of one kind of a person’s domination of another. People are angrily crying out for freedom from oppression and from their literal exploitation and coercion to serve other people’s purposes with the threat that they might even lose their lives if they don’t comply. One cannot condemn and so deny that. One must be open about the problem before one can attempt a solution. One must recognise the pain and anger and the justice it cries out for.

But I think we need to take the bull by the horns and be realistic though. Are the governments of the world going to fall overnight, regardless of how oppressive and how much the tools of capitalists and simple crooks they are? No. Are police and armies just going to put down their guns? No. Are prisons just going to open the doors and then close down? No. Are possessive capitalists going to turn into people who renounce property? No. I think anarchists need to think a lot more closer to home than this. They need to start with themselves and manifest anarchism in their own lives and choices - and not to forget in their own relationships with other people. My view is that the best chance anarchism has is when other people see anarchists living as anarchists and come to the conclusion that it is a better way to live. Now this might include protests, strikes, boycotts and opposing the cruel actions of authoritarians and capitalists. I am not saying these should stop or that they are wrong. In fact, they are often necessary. I’d particularly be in favour of continuous micro-refusals to go along with the prevailing authoritarian and capitalist narrative in society. You should not always do as you are told and its essential that you don’t. But I am saying that anarchism must always be more than such actions, big or small. It must be the life lived as an anarchist existence that examples the values it claims it wants to see victorious in the end. The means is the end and the end is the means.

Interviewer: Can anarchism ever win?

Anarxistica: Again, it depends on your terms. Anarchism wins a million times a day all over the world if you think anarchism is cooperation, helping someone in need, opposing those who want to dominate, coerce or oppress. For, everywhere, all over the world, people do those things every day. Those who think of “anarchism” as toppling the government and only toppling the government, however, have, in my view, completely missed the point. We do not topple the government for its own sake but because it is in the furtherance of values we already live out in our own lives and want to spread as widely in their effects as possible. Anarchism, at least as I understand it, is not just ending physical domination but is ending the idea of domination as a thought anyone would ever have. And so, to come back to your question, my anarchism isn’t about “winning” as if just winning were enough. Its about being but, more than that, its about becoming. Its about becoming non-dominating, non-coercive, non-exploitative. Its about becoming compassionate, peace-loving, cooperative. Its about becoming people for whom “winning” is not even on their radar anymore. Any “win” in a physical conflict that did not also achieve that becoming would be just another battle in an ongoing war. The aim of my anarchism is an end to war.

Interviewer: You discuss a number of different kinds of anarchism in your book. Is there one kind that you favour or would recommend?

Anarxistica: No, there isn't. I am a convinced anarchist. Its not my job to tell you what to do or think. That is strictly a matter for you. I believe in quite a strict notion of personal responsibility when it comes to this. Modern, liberal society breeds lazy people and it wants to lull them into a sleep which about dependency. Because then they are more easily controlled. I take an opposing view. You are responsible for you and no one can take that away. Part of what this means is that you must decide for yourself how you will live and I think that this is one of our best defences against dictatorship and control - when people take responsibility for themselves. So I encourage education. I encourage discussion and conversation. I encourage learning from others and getting to know what other people think about things. But they can’t tell you what to do. They can’t say, “We are doing this now.” What you are doing is up to you - in the context of a whole load of other people who have needs too, of course. So I don’t recommend this view or that although I may certainly say what convinces me and why. I say that if we are all thinkers and talkers who take responsibility for ourselves seriously then we will work something out we can all find mutually beneficial. 

Interviewer: In part of your book you discuss the anarchoprimitivism of John Zerzan which says civilisation is the problem. Do you agree with him in this? How could you possibly convince millions of people that going backwards is an improvement?

Anarxistica: By convincing them that people are very, very fallible and that they make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. In fact, is there a person alive who isn’t already aware of this? All that needs to be done, then, is to convince them that civilisation is one of these mistakes, a mistake so disastrous its now clear it threatens life on the planet generally. If you think that is true then you cannot avoid the conclusion that it is our fault and that, consequently, we need to change. 

This is another area where I think people need to examine their thinking. We like to use words like “progress” and to designate our past selves “primitive” but we are our past selves. Just because we have carpeted our caves and now travel around in cars rather than animal skins it doesn’t make this “progress”. What do you do when the creature creates myriad ways to destroy itself? Do you let it carry on? Give control of it to a few, self-interested examples? Or do you say, “Stop! Look at what we are doing and have done. Look at what will happen if we continue”? I think we say the latter. I think we own up to all this destruction done in civilisation’s name by those who use the term “civilised” as if it were a badge of honour when, in reality, its a badge of shame, something people who went around almost naked in the streets 2300 or 2400 years ago thought was corrupting and illegitimate even then! Civilisation is that thing which is killing us and everything else. The notion it might then be reformed or is even our saviour then becomes simply nonsensical. We need a total revolution of our values and I think anarchism set in a cosmos of anarchy is what that is. I also, by the way, think that surviving is an improvement on slow, but rapidly increasing, suicide. Even better than that would be a reason to survive. A few decades more life so that authoritarians can control us for longer is no achievement to be proud of and neither is that reality soothed because you have Netflix and an XBox whilst, down the street, people look in the bins for their next meal. Seriously, fuck civilisation!

Interviewer: Your book also contains a chapter on “identity”. This is certainly a hot topic today but why is it in a book about anarchism?

Anarxistica: Because, in many ways, this is where it all starts for me, in questions of who we are, where we are, what this situation is. You cannot decide what, if anything, you should do if you haven’t given these things a description which then is a context for your own action. So questions such as these matter a great deal because they set the scene for who you are, where you are and what is to be done. In fact, on an intellectual level, we might see this as simply another way to view the whole. This is important, then, because it shows us our thoughts about ourselves, each other, and where we are. But it also shows them up as thoughts, as interpretations, opinions and beliefs, as things which need not be what they are. I think this view will probably upset quite a lot of people because they become very attached to what I have come to think of as fictions of and about ourselves but I must admit that I can now see such things in no other way. Human beings, for me, are those beings who tell themselves stories and then do their utmost, often regardless of circumstances, to convince themselves that they are true. They think that if they believe hard enough they will be. But I think when we do that we’re always wrong. Its fictions, nothing more. Once we admit to that, we can get to what they are for and where they take us. And that will be a good thing.

Interviewer: This almost sounds like an existential view of life, that people fight themselves in their various existences as they try to survive.

Anarxistica: I think that’s often true and I think the struggle is often to be authentic people in a world that begs you to be anything but authentic because it tells you that that is the only way to get to tomorrow, by constantly betraying yourself. I take the view that it would be better to be authentically me, and authentically free as me, for one day - and not see tomorrow - than to have lived an inauthentic life in which I was constantly coerced to be something else. This is to say that freedom comes from within and is not just about the material conditions of our existence, important as they, of course, are. I see this as being important to everyone although issues such as the current persecution of trans people is something which raises it to my consciousness again and again, as only one example. It is a basic freedom that people should be allowed to be who they are. All anarchists should fight for this even as they do for groups and communities.

Interviewer: What would you like to happen as a result of the book?

Anarxistica: I would be happy if anyone read it and thought about the issues it raises for themselves. That’s my only ambition, such as it is. People certainly don’t have to agree with me. And if they disagree with me, having thought about the issues I raise and for reasons of their own, then that’s a success as well. We all win from people who think, take responsibility and act with virtue. We all lose when they don’t.

You can read or download “Anarchy and Anarchisms” for free HERE!