Baudrillard

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly...from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here....The function of the One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program."

- "The Architect", The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

    The Architect, who appears in the much maligned Matrix sequels, is ultimately the character who evokes the true philosophy Baudrillard was getting at regarding simulacra and simulations.

    The first Matrix movie offered the base premise that our mundane reality was merely the facade for a grim void which mirrors Baudrillard’s warning that there might be no reality at all. The movie ends with Neo telling us that we can break free. However in the next movie Neo is faced with The Architect who, true to Baudrillard’s vision, flat-out tells our hero that even his impressive, Buddha-like awakening against the world of simulation is in itself ALSO a simulation. This is where the Wachowski Brothers get their turn to warn us that our innate revulsion and pushback against phoniness might not be our genuine feelings, but rather another social impulse to “play it by the numbers”.

    It is as if The Architect is looking us, the audience, in the eye and asking: “You honestly believed that hokey that the first movie was trying to peddle to you?”

    Nevertheless, amidst his Moebius strip-like explanation of our non-reality, Baudrillard does not advocate that we simply give up, take the Blue Pill, and become a proverbial battery. That is to say, we should actively participate in the game, fight the good fight, whether we think we’ll arrive at The One Big Truth or not (he’s betting we won’t, by the way). We continue to fight the establishment but, rather than topple it outright, we’re charged with rendering it illegitimate by providing our own narratives, and not the ones the establishment hands us.

    Just as Baudrillard (and perhaps Henry Jenkins) hopes, the end result is that we’ll live in an infinitely nebulous reality where nothing need be taken at face value unless we choose to. In many ways, though, this freedom of ideas can be insidious. Take for instance the actual increase in recent years of Americans who don’t believe in evolution. One would hope that if those people are pushing back against the establishment of science that they aren’t merely retreating to the establishment of religion which is a far gloomier scenario for individual thought.

    Aside from tangible enemies of authority by the few, the other forces we have to fight off are our own mass ignorance and mass complacency. The Architect would have you believe you’re still stuck playing the game, but at least you can bend the rules.