Meditations

[zombyrus]

I have no idea who that is. I have very few memories of the Matrix movies.

I don't very much agree with your statement that you need to look at video games and fan-made movies to fully understand the Matrix. You are defining for yourself that a full understanding includes all of that stuff, but my definition of a full understanding of the Matrix series does not include that stuff. I think stuff like a fan-made movie is just what some fan feels like believing about the series. I don't need to read every fan theory about the Submachines to fully understand the games; they might show me things in a way I hadn't considered, but they don't give me new plot events or anything like that. Similarly, I can't take a fan-made Matrix movie as really being part of the series at all. It's somebody else's thoughts on the series.

I do remember things getting a little nebulous at the end of the series, but I don't remember anything that requires that dude... I have no memory of that dude whatsoever, and as a result, whatever it is that you're trying to tell me makes no sense to me.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Then you should watch the film again.

[zombyrus]

Presently I don't have access to it or time to watch it.

I think it would be better to try to discuss things that don't require prior knowledge that not all of us share.

[Redafro]

Hey all! Nice to see some activity in the Meditations area.

Zombyrus! I'd love to get a top 10 reading list from you: I'm always looking for symbolic stories, though I lean towards symbolic environments not just symbolic people.

If you include ALL Matrix materials in your understanding of the movies, that is inaccurate. What you mean is that all Matrix materials are needed for your understanding of all Matrix materials as a while. But as Zombyrus said, only knowledge of the movies is necessary for the understanding of the movies.

I think WIQ is saying something like that this kid (who woke himself out of the machine according to the Animatrix) knew something because he knew himself.

In the Matrix clip, Neo is not the one because he doesn't yet BELIEVE he is the one. There is a quote on the Youtube page under the clip that says:

Don't put boundaries to yourself so you will never cross them, no one will till you that you can or can't do that..... you are the only one that have to find out if you can or not......and if you believe you can.......you will......know yourself

This is still vague, but helpful. The philosophy WIQ seems to be getting at is that by seeking to know yourself, by being active in that quest, you question everything and see what works in the process. I've realized recently that EVERYTHING we do, from hard science to seeking Christ, has to be done with a first step of faith (as informed trust). The scientist has to believe his scientific methods, his skills, and his tools can do the measurements he believes they can. Once he has taken that first step, he begins to have proof that his faith was well placed. So too the religious person if their religion does in deed change whatever part of their life they are looking to change. And so too the person who is aiming to know themselves. We all agree that requires outside perspectives so we can establish similarities and differences, norms and individualities. Yet another way to look at it is that to know yourself you have to use yourself to know all else, including yourself.

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Presently I don't have access to it or time to watch it.

I think it would be better to try to discuss things that don't require prior knowledge that not all of us share.

Okay, here you go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJRh8n0fQVg

The matrix trilogy is so famous for it being a well written story. For me, I study this film from every possible viewpoint in order to find the balance in this story scale. And I don't obsess over this, I do it as a hobby I been doing ever since I saw the first movie of the Matrix Trilogy.

Yes the Matrix is a work of fiction, but at what point does the fiction end, and the truth begin? I always viewed the film as a giant puzzle. And this kid is the final pieces that keeps the whole film together. Trust me, in both the original trilogy and all, without this character, the whole story falls apart.

[The Abacus]

I've only seen the first movie in the Matrix series and I neither have the time to see any of the others, nor can I access youtube.

Also, the way WIQ is describing his reading isn't really how I read. I don't explore, I analyze. Since, in most of the books I read, the characters are somewhat symbolic of things, putting myself in their place is a little nonsensical. Nothing about me represents a disenfranchised older generation of former Egyptian revolutionary activists. In a lot of my books, it's intentional that you can't see things from every point of view. You don't have enough information to entirely understand every character unless the author explicitly wanted you to.

Agreed, books contain many symbols, motifs and themes whose analysis and exploration are required to gain a greater understanding of the text as well as learn about the world and the nature of things.

I've realized recently that EVERYTHING we do, from hard science to seeking Christ, has to be done with a first step of faith (as informed trust).

And that's exactly what Descartes thought.

[zombyrus]

Having watched that little movie, I've got the gist of that guy's story, but I'm really going to need you to explain to me what makes him integral to the plot of the trilogy. He's a character I didn't even know existed, so my understanding of the story (which I know is very much incomplete, but still) does not require him.

Redafro: I'm not sure I could come up with a really good top 10, but here are some good symbolic books I've read, along with a spoiler-free little summary of what to look for (which, of course, you can skip if you don't want any hints):

Miramar, by Naguib Mahfouz: this is the book I had in mind when I said you can't understand stuff fully. The characters are basically a cross-section of Egyptian society following a revolution sometime in the middle of the 20th century (I don't know the history very well, but my version of the book had a lot of explanatory endnotes that made it sensible). Most of the characters clearly represent a certain group--the people responsible for the revolution, the new generation inheriting old money, the Socialists, etc. However, there are some characters whom you don't seem to get enough to figure out what they represent. All the characters are very well realized and fleshed out, though, making it an extremely enjoyable book.

Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki: this is an early 1900's book from Japan. For an astoundingly long time, Japanese literature has been marked by a conflict between tradition and modernity. Characters and situations will constantly recall this conflict in passing in everything Japanese I've read. Another main thing in this one is that, in the face of their complex situations, characters find themselves unable to act until a point when their actions are meaningless or even detrimental. The two motifs are sometimes related and sometimes not within the book.

Layla and Majnun, by Nizami: This is an old Persian epic about a boy who falls in love with a girl named Layla, and completely loses his mind because they end up separated ("majnun" translates as "possessed by djinn" and usually just means "madman"). (That's not a spoiler; it happens within 5 or 10 pages of the start of the book.) The version of it I read was extremely beautiful, and I'm usually very bad at finding poetic beauty in things, so this is saying something. There are small symbols throughout it, but the main allegory of the work is that it can be read as a the love of a Sufi (Islamic mystic) for God just about as well as it can be read as an ordinary love story. The story is extremely influential; Nizami adapted it from popular lyric poems and expanded on it (mostly because someone offered to pay him quite a lot for his take on the story) and apparently his version may have spawned literally thousands of imitations. I've heard that the song "Layla" by Eric Clapton is actually drawing on this story.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan (translates to Alive, the son of Awake), by Ibn Tufayl: This is a story about a child who grows up completely isolated from all of society--he doesn't meet a human being until he's in his 50's if I recall--but manages through logic alone to reconstruct a great deal of society. It's written by a Sufi and the concept is basically that Sufi practices can be reached through nothing more than careful observation of the surroundings. At times its logic is infuriatingly weak, but as a whole it's an interesting read.

The Baburnama, by Babur: This one is not symbolic at all, but I just wanted to throw it in here because I think it's an amazingly interesting and unique book. It's the autobiography (or maybe a diary; he doesn't ever explain why he's writing at all) of Babur, a 16th-century Turko-Mongolian conqueror who set up a dynasty in India that controlled the region for 300 years (the Mughal dynasty). There's tons and tons of hard-to-read names of unimportant people and places, but looking past that it's a really unique book. Babur is a brutal, murderous conqueror, and yet in his writings he comes off as incredibly human and surprisingly lovable. On one page he tells you that, after several months of being besieged, most of his troops have deserted him and he has to give up the capital that his family had held for generations; on the next page he's talking about how good the melon is he just ate. I think it's unlike any book I've ever read (although I haven't actually read the whole thing) and probably unlike any other book ever written. I mean, how many violent warlords wrote autobiographies?

Most of these books are from a class I'm taking on Islamic literature. Kokoro came from a class I took last semester on Japanese literature. I can't say I've been reading heavily symbolic works for very long, but lately I've had a lot of it.

[Redafro]

Ok, I think I get the gist of the kind of literature your talking about. Thanks for the suggestions! I think you might like 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. There is some wierd sexual stuff, but everything else about it was spot on. In one way, it is about a boy and a girl who shared a moment of intimacy when they where kids, just the holding of each others hands for a moment or two, after which they don't see each other again until near the end of the book, but have always wanted to see each other again. But beyond that is a complex structure of symbolism and an odd mysticism involving strange beings called "the little people" who seem to have some design on the world that is never quite clear. Symbolically, I find it to be about control, and being lost in culture and religion. There are also a couple of short stories in the story which contribute to the overall story. Very complex and rich.

[zombyrus]

I read Norwegian Wood by Murakami for that Japanese literature class. To tremendously oversimplify, it's about a guy who is in love with a mentally unstable girl. I liked it quite a lot. One of the other people in the class warned me, though, that all of Murakami's major books follow the same basic format. I don't know if that's true at all; 1Q84 doesn't sound much like Norwegian Wood to me.

From what I understand, Murakami himself had something of a cultural conflict. If memory serves, he did most of his writing in America despite being from Japan. It was rumored that even when he wrote books in Japanese, he actually wrote them in English first and then translated them to Japanese. I don't know if that's true at all, but it's kinda significant for him to be more at home with English than with Japanese. Ordinarily one learns one's native language in a way that no amount of foreign-language education can replicate; the best someone can do in a foreign language is usually thought of as "near-native fluency."

[WorldisQuiet5256]

Sorry, I was rambling early about the reoccurring bald kid in the original Matrix Trilogy?
That bald kids proves the Chaos theory. The idea that you take one thing out the whole thing falls apart.

Now, despite the story, the fiction, the facts, the works of fiction, everything that you see in the Matrix Trilogy, if you take that reoccurring bald kid from the series, the whole franchise falls apart.