https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=uEIZXvvMDa4
I heard, I think, is one of the Wachowski sisters by now, I guess, saying that The Matrix is extremely close to that kind of LGBTQ culture because it’s about self-creation. And it was super interesting to hear the creator of The Matrix say that because the self-creation of The Matrix, first of all, happens in The Matrix, which is like the whole movie is about kind of getting out of it, but it happens in The Matrix. Then you realize that there’s a sense in which a lot of this is a desire to self-create, to will yourself into being, to kind of will yourself into the identity that you want to have. But then at the same time, there’s this other narrative, which is to join together, which is like you’re born this way. Like there’s nothing, you can’t change it. This is who you are. This is what you are. So it’s hard to kind of get these two types sometimes. Those things have actually been wrestling with each other. In the 90s, it was more born this way. And then came this new more fluid idea of gender and identity and everything. Although it doesn’t work with race. People get a little bit more worried about you if you, for instance, wear blackface, but nobody gets worried about you if you swap your gender. And I tend to look at them as very parallel experiences in a certain way. Yeah, well, we had a few of the people who had said that they feel a certain race. Like that happened. Yeah, there are a few of them, but they don’t have the support, at least from the same people. It’s interesting because you’re right, it is in a way because race is as much if gender is a construct, like race is way more a construct. Oh, no. And they’ll say that, too. If you really get into reading the Ibraham X. And they’ll say race is a construct forced upon us by the white supremacist. But then they do a weird flip where it’s kind of like it’s like they’re saying, OK, we’re this thing and you can’t criticize us anything we do anymore since you made us this way. But I think that, for instance, one thing I also thought of, and this totally relates to the Wachowskis and such, which is a very Gnostic film about, you know, in classic Gnosticism, you have all these layers between the most divine of the divine and then down here, the mud and the dirt, the gunk. And in some Gnostic theories, down here at the bottom, that’s where the God of the Old Testament was. And Christ was somewhere further up, leading us to another demiurge. But when someone today, you know, we’ve had, you know, decades and decades of the following message, I have to become myself. Yeah. To which my thought is, well, who are you right now? You know, and there’s something very Gnostic about that. So that eventually then we started seeing this break where you can’t define me. Biology can’t define. Nothing defines me, but my imagistic, my symbolic idea of myself. Yeah. Yeah, my imagination about myself, that’s for sure. But in The Matrix, it’s everything is so upside down in The Matrix because and I think that’s why the Wachowskis are even confused about their own work, because in the one hand, the place where you can create and it’s true, like even now, it’s like the only place where you can create your own identity is in a system of absolute, like where everything variable is controlled for you, like every variable is safe. And that’s where you can now create your identity, because like in a world where there’s a lion outside the door and there’s like, there’s, you know, that you have you might miss your crops or you don’t know if you’re going to have enough, if you’re going to have enough wood to spend the winter or whatever. Like in that world, you can’t do that. It’s just you don’t have the luxury of living in a kind of imaginary world. So it’s like The Matrix actually provides the possibility of this weird self creation. So it’s like it’s actually the mechanism of control that unmoor like that. I’ve talked about this quite a bit, that actually the modern world is too extreme. It’s like it’s anarchy and and authoritarianism kind of facing each other and that those two extremes play off each other. So you can only be a punk rocker in a world that is completely square. Like you can’t be a punk rocker in a normal, like in a normal kind of more organic world, because you’re just going to die. You’re just going to die. You’re not going to eat. You’re just going to die. And so there’s a play like between and I think that’s part of it. So once you see that, you kind of understand why there’s a relationship between, let’s say, the Internet systems of control that are becoming fiercer and fiercer. And at the same time, this weird kind of avatar ideology, like kind of metaverse ideology where you create your own identity and you’re free to be whatever you want. But for that to even be possible, you actually need to be completely controlled and completely boxed in. You’re right. There is an authoritarianist where the authoritarian aspect lies is in all this junk we built. All the possibilities of technology, all those hardened building structures, all the systems. And this is what Jacky Lowell spent so much time talking about. And then my feeling is, is that this whole thing of becoming yourself and all the you know, it’s just like, OK, so I’ve got a bone through my nose and I’ve got, you know, I’m and I’ve got tattoos now. Oh, I’m tribal. But what that means is this is the bribe. This is what we’re paying you off with. So you don’t use those parts of yourself that really would bother us like that. That’s interesting. Yeah. So metaverse is a bribe for you to accept like the absolute systems of control. That’s a great way of thinking. Yeah, it’s a great way. It’s absolutely a bribe. And, you know, that’s also how the objectivity and subjectivity thing works is that, you know, there is this objectivity. It’s the stuff that we have built to contain all of the, you know, whenever there’s a new problem. And Lowell says all problems in technology are solved by another technology. Every technology will have another problem. The only way to solve it is through a technology. And that’s just the system. He talks about like if you have a road that goes between New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut, the only thing you can do is widen the road perpetually. You can’t really tell people not to use their cars. Yeah, this doesn’t fit. So technology is always going in one specific kind of direction, which is containment.