Friday, June 10, 2011

Platonic Theories In The Matrix

Platonic Theories In The Matrix
In Between the Lines of the Script



Some Hollywood movies have meaning behind their kung-fu choreography and explosions of violence. In the movie, The Matrix, there are a great amount of psychology meanings in between the lines of the script. The characters and plot of the movie tie in and connect with Philosopher’s theories, beliefs and scenarios. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Theory of Forms relate and differ in several ways to the psychology of The Matrix.

The 1999 science-fiction film, The Matrix, is about a computer hacker named Neo who is brought into “reality” from a dream world; this “reality” is known as The Matrix. Morpheus defies, “The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room...It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Neo is brought into the Matrix because he is believed to be “the one.” Neo’s former reality was created by machines so they could control the human population.

  
Plato wrote a fictional dialogue called Allegory of the Cave, which was designed to teach,
as Plato said, "our nature in its education and want of education.” The Allegory of the Cave
[1]describes a group of imprisoned individuals who live their whole lives in a cave, facing a wall.
Their hands and legs are chained together and their head is adjusted to only stare at the wall.
And all they know of the world and reality are the sounds they hear and shadows they see
cast upon the walls of the cave. Plato imagined one of the prisoners was to be released,
how would he act in the real world? If the released prisoner was shown
the objects they have seen upon the wall of the cave, they would not
recognize it because the shadow is what’s real to the prisoner, not the actual
object. The prisoner believes that the cave is reality and reality is a dream world. Socrates
states, “…is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when – with his sight still dim and before
he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness.” (Socrates). But the
prisoner would recognize the Sun and know what it is and that it gives everything,
including life and ener
gy.

The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix relate because Morpheus
emphasized to Neo that the reality he once lived in wasn’t real and the released prisoner
from the cave was convinced that the outside world wasn’t reality. Neo unconsciously
lived in a cave, shielded from their real world, the Matrix. And all he saw was what was
in front of him. Morpheus stated, “I promised you the truth, Neo, and the truth is that
the world you were living in was a lie.” When Neo was birthed into the Matrix; he didn’t
believe he was in their reality because everything is computer operated and their
whole world revolves around electronics, something Neo isn’t used to, even though
he is a computer hacker. The screen writers describe, ‘It is a swamp of bizarre
electronic equipment. Vines of coaxial hang and snake to and from huge monolithic
battery slabs, a black portable satellite dish and banks of little systems and
computer monitors’ (Wachowski), in their stage directions. As the released prisoner
believed that the cave was reality, and the real world was imaginary,Neo believed
that the former reality he was living was real, and the Matrix was fantasy. Until
Morpheus showed him
that the Matrix is in fact real, through belief. “You have
to let it all go, Neo. F
ear...doubt...and disbelief,” states Morpheus. Allegory of the Cave
also differs from The Matrix as well. The released prisoner was let go against
his will, yet Neo was released into the Matrix by choice. But this theory is not
the only Platonic one
related to the Matrix.

The Allegory of the Cave also has to do with the Theory of Forms, in the sense
that Plato believes that there are perfect and pure forms outside of this materialistic realm.
Reality isn’t perfect, so there would never be a perfectly shaped object, in the real world
there is only duplicates. Plato believes that no one would have access to the intelligible
world. Just like in Allegory of the Cave, the prisoners in the cave believe that the shadows
are real, when they are actually projections of the real thing. In “Plato’s Cave,” an article
by T.F Morris, he brings up Plato’s Analogy of the Divided Line; which is an illustrated version
of the Theory of Forms. Plato believes the universe is divided into two levels; the world of
appearances/the visible world and the intelligible world. In the visible world, the only objects
there are are visible things and images. In the mental state, there’s only belief and imagining.
In the intelligible world, the only objects there are are the good, the forms and mathematical
objects. In the mental state, there’s intelligence or knowledge and thinking.
 

The Theory of Forms relate to the psychology of The Matrix because the humans in the world that were once real to Neo, were only people brainwashed by the system. Morpheus says, “…most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependant on the system, that they will fight to protect it.” Just like Plato believes there’s a visible world and an intelligible world; the visible world is our world and the intelligible world is the Matrix. Morpheus states, “We are, right now, miles below the earth's surface. The only place humans can survive outside the Matrix is underground.” In the Matrix, that’s where everything is pure, just like in the intelligible world. Tank states, “Me and my brother Dozer, we are 100 percent pure…” In the visible world, people are the same thing as objects; they are the duplicates of purity that lies in the Matrix. If one is born in the Matrix or the intelligible world, one is considered pure because its that individual’s real world. The Theory of Forms also differs from The Matrix. Plato believes that in the Visible World, in people’s mental state, there is belief and imagining. But in the Matrix, that’s what their world revolved around, belief and imagining.

 
        Plato’s Theory of Forms and Allegory of the Cave compare and contrast to The Matrix in
many ways. Nevertheless, Theory of the Forms and the analogy of the divided line would.
The Matrix isn’t actually the intelligible world, but to Morpheus and his crew, it is. It’s real life
to them. Welcome to the real world!”


[1] Also known as, Analogy of the Cave, Parable of the Cave or Plato’s Cave.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Allegory of the Cave/ Theory of Forms

Here is a visual of The Allegory of the Cave.



Here is a diagram of The Theory of Forms.

How does imagination lend meaning to our lives and experiences?

In one of the Twilight Zone episodes, "Walking Distance," the main character, Martin Sloan goes back to the town he grew up in to recollect all of his childhood memories. But when he goes there, all of the people that were there when he was little, are still there. In the park, he sees himself as a little kid and on the Ferris wheel. He also sees his parents but they don't know who he is because hes an adult. Going back to his hometown, Martin sees how much of his childhood he wasted and if he could do it all over again, he would. If he lived his childhood differently, his adulthood would be different. That's how his imagination led to the meanings of our lives.

In the story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" the "unreliable" narrator, kills an elderly man because the man supposedly had an "EVIL EYE". After he killed him, he was paranoid that he could hear the old man's heart beating. His imagination led him to turn himself in to the police. His act of selfish killing led him to regret his wrong doing. His conscious ate up his inside. That's how his imagination led to the meanings of our lives.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World Summary

This was definitely the weirdest story I've ever read.

This odd story was about a dead man who washed up on shore of a beach, in a small village. But this wasn't an ordinary man, he was a BIG man. So big he barely fit through the door of the house and he couldn't properly fit on the table neither, "...almost as much as a horse."
The village only had 20 houses and there were only 7 men, so they knew that this man was a stranger. The village woman decided to have a funeral for him because it would be the right thing to do. So they cleaned all of the seaweed and scales off of him. But none of their clothes could fit him, so they had to sew clothes from a boat sail. As they cleaned him up, they noticed that he was extremely handsome. And he was "...the tallest, strongest, most vile, and best built man they had ever seen..." They started comparing their husbands to "Esteban" (that's what they named him) and said men are "...the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth."
The woman then started to think what life he lived before he died. They thought it must have been difficult for him to go through doors or sit in normal chairs because he was so big, how could he fit.
When the woman finished dressing him for his funeral, one of them put a handkerchief on his face for respect. When one of them took it off, even the men agreed that he was handsome. The women's friends came, with flowers after flowers. And finally they tossed him overboard back into the water.
"Esteban" definitely didn't do say anything to have an effect on the village people. But he opened their eyes to things they didn't see before he arrived. They re-did all of the houses and made them big, in honor of "Esteban's" size. They widened the doorway, they made their floors steadier, paint the houses bright happy colors and make the ceiling higher. They considered the village, "Esteban's" .

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Research Papers = Not cool !

I’ve learned that research is very complex and if you don't do it right, it could mess up your entire paper. You can't just get research from any place, especially online. There are some websites that don't state facts that can be proven, their just people's opinion on a topic. Some sites that end in EDU or GOV are the most reliable. EDU stands for education and GOV stands for government. Www.About.com and www.ask.com aren’t the world’s best reliable sources for a research paper because the information is based on people’s points of view.

Writing a research paper was definitely a learning experience for me, considering I wrote my first one for Psychology. I knew nothing about it and I didn’t know at exactly what angle to start from. High School never prepared me for research papers. I actually had to Google how to write a research paper because I had no clue. After looking at about 5 examples and formats, I started to get the hang of how to start it and how to expand a 4 word question into a 4 page research paper.

If writing a research paper is difficult, don’t wait till the last minute to do it. The time frame and not knowing what to write will stress you out and cause you to break down and most likely give up. Start ahead of time, so you have time to review it and to edit if you see you could add more or take out some.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Rough Draft : Platonic & The Matrix

Thesis: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Theory of Forms relate in many ways to the psychology of the Matrix.

     
 
 
    The 1999 science-fiction film, The Matrix, is about a computer hacker named 
 
Neo who is brought into “reality” from a dream world; this “reality” is known as 
 
The Matrix. “The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this 
 
room...It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the 
 
truth,” states Morpheus. The dream world was created by machines so they 
 
could control the human population. But in the dream world humans were free 
 
to do and be whoever they wanted.  

Plato and Socrates wrote a fictional dialogue called Allegory of the Cave,

which was designed to teach, as Plato said, "our nature in its education and want

of education.” The Allegory of the Cave (also known as, Analogy of the Cave/

Parable of the Cave/ Plato’s Cave) describes a group of imprisoned individuals

who live their whole lives in a cave, facing a wall. Their hands and legs are

chained together and their head is adjusted to only stare at the wall. And all they

know of the world and reality are the sounds they hear and shadows they see

cast upon the walls of the cave. Plato and Socrates imagined one of the prisoners

was to be released; how would he act in the real world? If the released prisoner

was shown the objects they have seen upon the wall of the cave, they would not

recognize it because the shadow is what’s real to the prisoner, not the actual

object. The prisoner believes that the cave is reality and reality is a dream world.

“…is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when – with his sight still dim and

before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness” states

Socrates. But the prisoner would recognize the Sun and know what it is and that

it gives everything life and energy.

The Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix relate because Morpheus

emphasized to Neo that the reality he thought he lived in, wasn’t real and the r

released prisoner from the cave was convinced that the outside world wasn’t

reality. Neo subliminally lived in a cave, shielded from the real world, or the

Matrix. And all he saw was what was in front of him. When Neo was released

into the Matrix, he didn’t believe he was in reality because everything is

computer operated and he isn’t used to that.

Allegory of the Cave also has to do with the Theory of Forms, in the sense

that the forms have to do with the world of revolution being presented to us

through sensation, takes the highest and most basic kind of reality.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Possible Topics for The Matrix Paper

1. What is real? - vague

2. Comparing and contrasting Alice in Wonderland to the Matrix
Alice ==> Neo

3. Trinity is the real hero
If she wasn't a character, some events wouldn't have accord


4. Lukan's theory ==> the Matrix


5. Neo's birth into the "real world"


6. Plato's theory ==>the Matrix


7. Red pill and blue pill


8. Comparing & contrasting Neo and Trinity
there is no Neo w|o Trinity


9. Solopsism ==> the Matrix


10. Trinity plays masculine role


11. virtual reality & physical reality


12. Compare Neo to Jesus/ Oracle to God


13.Compare the evil deceiver to the matrix