revisiting the Matrix

Preface

More than 10 years later, I'm well aware that mining the Matrix movies for religious illustrations isn't groundbreaking anymore. Neither has it ever been insightful, since the movies invite it by borrowing much inspiration, imagery, and symbolism from various religions and then leaving the borrowings strewn about in clear view for the audience ("Zion"? "Trinity"?). Also obvious is that despite all the iconography the movies are not uplifting or evangelistic (not for biblical Christianity anyway) in purpose or design or content; the base ingredient of philosophy combines with heavy dollops of mayhem, lasciviousness, and profanity. Lastly, many of the premises of the movies are present in other works that aren't as broadly-known.

Nevertheless, the Matrix has undoubtedly popularized an idea at its core that's shared by many supernatural belief systems: the reality of the senses isn't the entirety of existence and in one way or another can act as an illusion that hides something more important. This is literally portrayed in the Matrix as the "Matrix", a fake reality maintained by machines to subjugate humans. This is achieved by a direct electrical connection from the human bodies to the electric impulses that simulate the Matrix, so that in effect the humans' "senses" simply have never experienced anything real. The implication is that by hijacking the nervous system a person's mind is completely trapped in a convincing fantasy. In effect, to trap the brain is to trap the mind.

Disconnect

For completeness (and self-indulgence's sake) it's worth mentioning that as the storyline progresses, the movies increasingly undermine and downplay the entrapment of the nervous system as a simple explanation of the Matrix's functioning. Readers who haven't seen the movies and/or wish to avoid getting any geek splattered on them can skip ahead.

• When the Matrix simulates someone's "death", the person's real body is said to die also because "the body cannot live without the mind". Similarly, when a person's body is suddenly unplugged from the Matrix, both the body and the Matrix "virtual body" drop dead. But if the Matrix is just fakery for the body, then how could it be separating the mind from the body in either case? The most straightforward though mysterious rationale is that when a person connects to the Matrix his or her mind actually leaves the body, which is quite distinct from the concept of the Matrix as electrical signals directly relayed into the person.
• The opposition "agent" programs of the Matrix somehow occupy people's virtual bodies in the Matrix, but only those who've never been unplugged. Agent Smith, who unlike other agents can reproduce, manages to continue to inhabit an unplugged actual human body. While it's unclear why this "possession" by the agents is necessary at all when many other sentient programs exist in the Matrix without it, still more unclear is how a person's identity could be overwritten through the Matrix mechanism. What stream of sensations could accomplish this? Talk about rapid personal change! More on this at the end.
  
• As Neo develops into an advanced stage, he demonstrates the astounding capability of observing and affecting real machines without any physical connector whatsoever, and as if to underline this point he can do it after losing his vision. He can also be in a virtual reality known as "limbo", although this is involuntary. Unless the viewer assumes that the environment previously presented by the movies as "reality" is truly a Matrix within a Matrix (an inventive yet tricky story twist), Neo's later feats presume that his mind extends beyond his nervous system.
  
• In the climaxes of the first two movies, plugged-in people are revived from lethal wounds sustained by their Matrix virtual "bodies". The status of someone's virtual "body" must have a strange relationship indeed to the status of his or her body, in order for death and resuscitation to sometimes flow one way and sometimes another. There could be a couple loopholes: either being plugged-in isn't a genuine total takeover of the nervous system or the association between a person's mind and body isn't fully based in the nervous system at all.
  

Soulfulness

Coming to the point after laying aside the movies' own increasingly complicated stance toward the concept, the Matrix analogy raises a provocative question that perplexes me. If the Matrix is like the physical reality of the Christian and a mind in the Matrix is like the soul of a Christian, then how can a Christian soul distinguish physical reality from spiritual reality any more effectively than a plugged-in person in the Matrix can distinguish the (mostly) seamless Matrix from reality? Falling even farther down the rabbit hole, how can a Christian soul distinguish whether the source of his or her thoughts is natural or supernatural? How does a Christian increase soulfulness in practice so he or she lives not in human "strength" (or brainpower) but instead in divine insight as contacted by the soul?

The question isn't theoretical or academic! It should be confronted by all Christians who believe in a living and active tripartite God, for their answer will shape how they respond when they have a thought that might be from Him. Is a sudden impulse to do a specific good act a supernatural "nudge" by the Spirit or the end result of an undirected (subliminally-triggered?) series of neuron "tickles"? Is a "crazy" idea a mission from God or is it from the same peculiar part of consciousness that in children suggests jumping off tall structures?

Of course, I'm familiar with many of the usual checkpoints for atypical spiritual directives (atypical meaning it isn't one of the easily-understood universal directives like "stop acting arrogant"). Christians should examine their motivations, compare the directive to the Word, pray more about it, ask other Christians for advice, look for tangible "confirmations" of it, etc. I firmly believe that Christians should also evaluate the foolishness of the directive when deciding if it's from God, but on the other hand many people have built a convincing exegetical case that godly wisdom has a tendency to appear foolish to human minds.

While those checkpoints are excellent, anyone of a scientific bent will quickly reply that falsification is easier than proof; it's easier to say "for sure" that a spiritual "directive" that contradicts the Word isn't from God than to say "for sure" that a spiritual directive that meets the approval of three other Christians is from God. In the end, with our souls encased in the "Matrix" of physical reality, we can't reach absolute certainty about our distinctions. A leap via faith and trust is inevitable. The leap may include a discomforting mental shift from "Does this directive match the God I imagine?" to "Do I need to revise the God I imagine to match this directive from the God who is what He is and not merely whom I imagine?"

Dually Noted

However, the question of how to sift physical reality from spiritual reality (or sift the Matrix from reality in the Matrix) runs deeper than practical concerns. According to direct quotes from experienced leader Morpheus in the Matrix, the reason why the Matrix can be a perfect trap is that all human sensations arise through the internal actions of the nervous system and brain. "If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." "Do you believe that my being stronger or faster has anything to do with my muscles in this place [the Matrix]? Do you think that's air you're breathing now?" "Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."

"Fine," the audience might say. "Regardless of defining mental sensations as nothing more than raw sense data, people can still freely think for themselves. The mind or soul remains an independent piece able to react to sensations however it chooses." Unfortunately, this opinion is flawed under close examination.

Once the audience concedes that sensations are just occurrences in the nervous system, there's no theoretical obstacle to tracing the "lifecycle" of one of those sensations, especially in simplified form. The sensation starts when something outside or inside (infected appendix?) the human body changes. That original change causes a change in a neuron. (Alternatively, the plugged-in human's neurons are jiggled by the Matrix.) The neuron's change has the side effect of changing other neurons. Eventually the chain reaction reaches a part of the brain that receives that category of sensations. Then through the unimaginably dense interconnections that characterize the cortex, the sensation produces "waves" of activity across other brain areas, perhaps including the ones specialized for speech. After a period of time relatively lengthy by the rapid-fire standards of nerve conduction yet considered short by people, some of the motor-control brain areas start another chain reaction among neurons but this time toward the mouth. The mouth says, "Yeowch!" or "Narf!" or whistles "Whew!"

Doubtless some readers anticipate the question this little cartoonish sketch of a sensation's lifecycle is leading up to: in the scenario where and when is the separation between perceiver/brain and decision-maker/mind/soul? Crudely put, how does the brain "make room" for the mind inside the cramped skull? In Matrix terms, doesn't being plugged in mean that someone's very brain is a part of the Matrix, and if so why and how does someone retain the ability to make decisions?

Traditionally, the solution to this conundrums of this sort is to split reality into dual parts, the physical and the non-physical. The brain and the soul reside in opposite realities. Each soul is intimately bound to one brain, and that one brain is its only window into physical reality because souls don't literally see through another's eyes.

Finally, the earnest believer in dual realities faces a last Matrix challenge. It portrays software "agents" occupying the brains of plugged-in people, which has led some to speculate why the machines didn't originally follow Smith's clean solution of agents just replacing everybody. But according to dual realities, if a hypothetical Matrix gained total control of a person's physical-reality brain, would the person's non-physical-reality soul be free and independent regardless? Comparing and contrasting this hypothetical with the biblical accounts of demonic possession is left up to the reader.

better Christianity through foreign languages?

One of my recurring themes here is that words are no more AND no less than symbols. Since the purpose of symbols is to transport ideas, any symbol's value is dependent on: 1) significance, which is the value of the transported idea; 2) precision, which is the success of the symbol in transporting the idea. It's pointless to judge a symbol's value based on other criteria than those two.

That's why I'm flummoxed by Christians who insist on symbolizing Christian ideas with words from languages other than their own (often ancient Hebrew and Greek, and it's apparent that correct pronunciation isn't at all necessary!). I'm not offended by it, but I'm suspicious of their motives. Why do it, especially when equivalent symbols of similar convenience are available in their own languages? I dearly hope their motives aren't one or more of the following.

• Vanity. The ostentatious usage of foreign words can be a peacock-like display to impress others by one's attainment of great knowledge, spirituality, etc.
  
• Cliquishness. An excellent method for members of a clique to differentiate themselves from outsiders is to consistently make the same relatively obscure word choices, such as foreign words specially selected by members of the clique.
  
• Conjuring. The communicator carefully chooses some foreign words and/or languages based on the assumption that God will be more pleased/honored and therefore more likely to respond.

cultural norms and divine norms

In the blog charter (first post ever, back when there were more posts labeled "Mitigating the Objections" than "Christian Errors") I wrote that the online arguments I seek to confront are in fact centuries old. I believe that a similarly ancient history applies to many of the common mistakes committed by people as they seek to live as Christians.

(And to digress momentarily, a third belief of mine is that people who don't learn about the great controversies of Christian theology are destined to relive such. Recently I heard some people giving their opinions about when and how many times baptism should happen, but I strongly suspect none of them knows what "Anabaptist" means.)

Perhaps the most quintessential Christian mistake is to exalt a cultural norm into a divine norm. Examples abound, probably because Christians stumble into it through a variety of routes:

• As a culture and its norms change, Christians accustomed to the previous set of norms may not be willing to fairly evaluate the changes. "In the Christian culture of my past, we'd never ______!"
  
• Christians originally invent a particular practice or prohibition in order to aggressively pursue God or prevent wrongdoing. Then other Christians assume that the practice or prohibition is not only recommended but necessary for all "true" Christians.
  
• Within any culture, conformance to established norms (formal or informal, written or unwritten) is part of indicating one's status. Violating those norms reduces status, and low status reduces credibility, and low credibility reduces the success of evangelism. Therefore, just as Paul's letters instruct, for the purpose of evangelism Christians should adhere to cultural norms that aren't sins. But as they do so, they shouldn't confuse the cultural definition of a "good" person with the Christian definition. "'Everyone' knows that good people don't have that hair style. This is an affront against God!"
• A more contentious category is cultural norms among Christians in regard to prayer, worship, interpersonal interaction, biblical interpretation, and organizational hierarchy. I opt not to delve into it any more than I have in previous entries, except to suggest that these differences often aren't as important or God-pleasing as people assume.