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What is left when honor is lost? - Desperation.

Damn pretty eclipse.

Fresh from The Matrix: Reloaded. Much talk of people not understanding it, not absorbing it all.
It. Made. Perfect. Complete. Logical. Sense.
I want to give my interpretations of it, but I don't want to spoil it for people. So if you haven't seen it, stop reading. Now. Ok, I really mean that. Stop reading. NOW. Ok. No, I mean it. Really. Stop reading.
*looks around* Ok, all clear.
Want to know why the movie makes sense? It’s simple, really, if you understand two points. First, the Matrix is a self perpetuating system with an almost perfect form of error handling - it monitors the one outlier in its system cannot handle already to determine how best to recreate its self in the next version. Every time this outlier occurs, i.e. there is a new "One" in the system, the impulse has been implanted both within the system, through the Oracle, and within the support system, Zion and the Prophecy, for "the One" to return to the source and be analyzed, and recreate the system and the support system in the new version. Secondly, Machines, in any form possible, are finite in terms of their understanding. There are, for machines, no matter how complicated, only numbers. Human beings are, in terms of behavior, nearly infinite in terms of statistical relations. Given enough time in such a system, a nearly infinite outlier will be observed in the data, a data point so outside the mean it is beyond the third or even fourth or fifth standard deviation of a data set. Theoretically, this is very easy for humans to understand - for a machine, this is impossible to understand, as it cannot be described by numbers, except perhaps by a probability so small it would be beyond the computing power of any system imaginable to process it to a precise enough point to be predicted as anything but a zero probability.
That outlier is Neo.
He is the system anomaly, yes, but a system anomaly severe that he was completely unpredicted. The Architect and the Oracle both function to upgrade and maintain the Matrix. The machines allow Zion to exist as the support system for "the One" when he occurs, a society founded by the previous "One" with the soul purpose of perpetuating the process of the error checking function that is the Prophecy. Then why destroy Zion again and again? Simple - free humans are dangerous, especially in large numbers. Thus, a continual cycle of purges occurs, with Zion purged every 60 to 70 years (just longer than the average human life span once freed from the Matrix), repopulated by the new "One" and his chosen.
Now, to the "problem of choice" which is so talked about in the movie. As I said before, humans have a fear of falsehood, that they are being manipulated in some way so that what they perceive is false. We are conditioned to never accept things when they seem too good, to doubt, to fear that which seems too perfect. Perhaps it is because we are terrified of disappointment. That is, quite possibly, the reason humans failed to accept the first Matrix, as Agent Smith describes in the first movie, and the Architect discusses in this. "The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from," according to Agent Smith. Humans could not accept perfection, thus, imperfections have to be continually added to the system to make it "real" to the human mind.
What the hell does this have to do with choice? Simple. Humans _HAVE_ to be free to fuck up their own lives, else we aren't truly free, and, thus, we are not happy. We have to have the illusion of free will, even if it means making a choice which will destroy us. And thus, the true flaw in what the Machines designed as their error mechanism becomes apparent - eventually, an outlier would arise that was _SO_ abhorrent to the forced choice of "save humanity, destroy humanity" that they would chose to destroy the whole of mankind rather than perpetuate the slavery of the human race in the illusion of freedom.
That outlier, as I said, is Neo.
There is, however, a truly terrifying implication that should not be overlooked. What if, in fact, Neo is not so totally outside of the system design at all? What if, instead, he is the ultimate purge system? Just as Zion is purged every 60 to 70 years, what if the Matrix is purged every, say, 600 or 1000 years? A total system shutdown, the purge of all elements within the system (humans), and a sort of full reset initialized, allowing the system to reestablish it’s self in fresh soil, as it were. If there have been six versions of the Matrix, then it must be nearly due for the first purge. Fresh human stock could be started from scratch, more than likely from whatever stock new humans are inserted into the existing system already, and the world reset back to the starting point of its timeline. The Architect claims he designed the Matrix. But this may be the ultimate result of the Oracle’s error correction system, and nothing he designed. Outliers, are, after all, nearly impossible to predict in a system.
Ok, with all of this, and the creepy feeling of the plug back in my skull coming on again, I have one last thing to say. It was pointed out to me the reason we have the fear of the falseness of reality. If our perceptions are false, then what we do does not have any impact. Including reproduction. No reproduction, no passing of on genes, no self perpetuation. That is the source of the fear. Strangely logical.
So what will happen? Neo has, obviously, thrown himself back into the Matrix somehow in his coma. So has Bane, the “host” of Agent Smith (now obviously gone viral), who was the source of the aberrant emp which cost humanity the battle for Zion. The battle in the city will happen. The storm will range, and darkness will cover everything within the Matrix, as it does Earth. What will become of this?
All I know is that the storm rages. And all things which have a beginning, also have an end. The end is coming.

Total Hentai
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I still remember going to see The Matrix in the theater, back in 1999. I wasn't there on opening day, or even opening week - I saw it on second run, or near about, by myself, in the little dump of a movie theater in my neighborhood, with its crappy sound, even worse projector, and very sticky floors. But I walked out of the theater with a feeling I couldn't shake: I could almost feel the plug on the back of my skull, and the warm gel of my pod surrounding me. I had goose bumps to the point my goose bumps had goose bumps. Seeing the movie alone, I had felt as though I had been sucked into the world of The Matrix, without an anchor of reality to keep me from loosing perspective. Within my own mind, I started to wonder and doubt the very nature of the reality around me.
In his Meditations, Descartes put forward the idea of the Evil Genius, which it is at least possible that there is an all-powerful evil genius who is deceiving us continually. "I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me...and if this means it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power [i.e. suspend my judgment], and with firm purpose avoid giving credence to any false thing, or being imposed upon by this arch-deceiver, however powerful and deceptive he may be." Is there any better crystallization of the human fear that what we experience, from the input of our senses to the very foundations of our understanding of reality, is somehow false, and that somehow, we are being manipulated or deceived to believe other than what is? Humans have always feared this, from our fear of Dreams to our fear of Death, and even our continual doubt in the nature of the universe. That we even can ask the question "Is what I see what really is?" speaks volumes about the nature of the abstract reasoning ability of the human mind.
There is a “philosophical warning label,” that goes something along the lines of “The reader is advised that he or she may be subject to an illusion generated by an evil genius, and that his or her "sensory fibers" may be falsely manipulated at any time with neither advance warning nor any possible legal remedy.” This is meant, yes, as a joke, a play on the inherent paranoia that comes with exploring the Evil Genius hypothesis. But it has a very serious implication, one that should not be overlooked: nothing should ever be taken at face value, not even data from our own senses. Is something really as we see it, or is it parallax, or gravitational lensing, or our own perceptions distorting what we observe? The Matrix reminds us to do the same, to question the nature of reality – the nature of the system. And, as with any system it has rules, and these rules are, as Morpheus says to Neo, “no different than the rules of a computer system - some of them can be bent...others can be broken.”
I wonder if this lesson will be continued in the second of these movies. The general public has been too well conditioned to take things on face value, to rely on the input of “experts” and “professionals” and I fear for the possible dumbing down of the lesson that the Wachowski brothers tried so hard to convey in the first move for the sake of more box office draw. We shall see on Thursday when I go see it. This time, on opening day.

Why am I still awake? I was so tired earlier, and now, I am awake again.
That thing below came out of watching the second to last episode of Trigun, and thinking just how much like Roland Vash is. Or is it the other way around. But Roland will kill, Vash will not.
Sinners, saints - does it really make a diference?
Watching Reign now. "The existence of all things is but a reflection of its most perfect form." But, as I say over and over, that Most Perfect Form is an illusion we have blinded ourselves with. Yet in this case, Illusion is as Real as Existence.
The strange thing is, I am making real sense. If only I can find what I am looking for, then all will be well again in the world. If I cling to that illusion, maby then I can make it Real.

[Vash walkes into the desert, Wolfwood's cross strapped to his back, the twin suns blazing overhead.]
(April is the cruellest month, breeding)
that - that was how the Jesus man walked - walked into the desert
Claim what you will, this is the way the world turns, the wheel around the spoak that is the Tower.
(Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing)
"'Thou shall not kill' remember?! What kind of church man are you anyway??"
[Of course its heavy, its filled with mercy...]
The man in black fled across the desrt, and the gunslinger followed.
"We're nothing like God. Not only do we have limited powers, we sometimes are driven to become the devil himself."
(Memory and desire, stirring)
"And if you keep your vision clear, you will see the future. What happens in our future is our own responsiblity."
Go then, there are other worlds than these.
[Paradise, Sin, Live Through, Under the Endless Blue Sky....]
(Dull roots with spring rain.)
"No one has the right to take the life of another..."


-- With apologies to Stephen King, Trigun, and Other various sources.

Strange. To feel like a Real Academic today. Ran into an old professor of mine, who I had not seen in a long while. The one who I had for intro to Philosophy back in spring of 2000. So long ago. But I wasn't just a past student, I was almost... well, and equal. It was nice. Had dinner at the resturant we ran into each other at. Long talk over duck and ginger beef.
Wonderful.
One day, I will be in the company of fellow academics, and feel that I am on equal ground with all of them. Not an undergrad, or a grad student - but a Real Academic.

.....
OMG
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth