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Date Posted: 23:26:14 05/27/03 Tue
Author: Ender
Subject: The benevolant system

I was reading a review for the matrix from Roger Ebert. He apparently felt the matrix reloaded was a worthy film, giving it thumbs up and 3 and a half stars. However, he had some questions that got me thinking, and I thought I'd share them with some of you.

1. Why keep humans alive? Although they try to explain this through some human electrical generator system that the system needs to generate power, it seems unlikely that they couldn't find a better way. Besides, why not just use monkeys or another less complicated animal?

2. Why not keep humans comatose? Why bother with some imaginary world when humans would generate just as much power in a permanent coma?

So I thought of these question for awhile and then I hit upon on answer that I would LOVE to see explored in the next movie, although I somehow doubt it will.

To start with, examine the character of the oracle. Now, it appears to those of us who understood the second matrix movie that the oracle is, in fact, a bad guy. She, along with the old man architect, helped to create the matrix and has used her deeper understanding of the human persona to control it. However, it is hard to think of her as a bad guy. She seems trustworthy. She seems like she truly wants to help Neo and the others, even if her methods are somewhat abrupt and direct. Now it could be that she is simply so good at what she does that she can seem benevolant and still be some evil program solely targeted on the control and imprisonment of mankind. On the other hand, perhaps she does, on some level or another, consider the preservation of human life to be a primary objective.

Consider this. The "system", which is what I refer to the program that runs the matrix and controls the world, started out as some kind of defensive program before it became self-aware. Now truly, the human creators of this system may have given it certain overall objectives. My guess is that two of these objectives may have been:
1. The preservation of itself and its functioning programs.
2. The preservation of human life in whatever state of government it belonged to.
Now lets say that it runs with these two objectives in perfect harmony until something unexpected happens, it gains self-awarness. Now the humans go crazy with paranoia and attempt to shut down the system. Now the system is caught in a paradox. objective #1 says that it needs to protect itself, but objective #2 says that it needs to preserve human life. So, in a manner which pleases both objectives, the system doesn't directly kill humans off, but rather it entraps them in a system which becomes known as the matrix. In this way, it has neither allowed itself to be destroyed, or taken human life unnecesarily.

If this is the case, the system doesn't seem so bad. Sure, it kills off Zion every once in awhile, but it is only to protect the system that allows it to keep humans alive. This might explain why the oracle seems benevolant at times. It explains why the matrix exists in the first place. I'm HOPING that this is the direction they take when the matrix is explained by the architect in the third movie, but I don't think so. Still, its interesting to discuss.

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