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David Lucifer
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The Libertarian Red Pill
« on: 2003-05-21 11:56:08 » |
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The Libertarian Red Pill
Source: Colorado Freedom Report
Spotted by: JerryLee
The Matrix will go down in history as the One -- the most culturally significant set of films of the era. It explores the nature of reality, the role of religion and politics, and the relationship of humans to the earth and to technology -- and to each other. The film contains so much symbolism, so many layers of meaning, and such universal themes that, perhaps, any intellectual tradition can find within it interesting parallels. Christians, Buddhists, libertarians, and others have claimed the Matrix as their own.
I admit some of the scenes in Reloaded didn't seem to fit, until their purpose became clear to me the next morning. Now, I suffer from the certainty of Morpheus in that I believe I know what will happen in the conclusion of the trilogy. Yet I cannot reveal my prophesy. (I went so far, though, as to seal a copy of my prediction in a dated envelope.)
Two questions nagged at me after I watched the original. First, the matrix seems an awful lot like a perpetual motion machine, and a ridiculously unstable one at that (I mean, why not hook up monkeys or something?). I don't think this problem ever will be resolved (but maybe I'll be surprised), so it is fortunate it serves so well as metaphor. Second, the notion of an Oracle in an otherwise *science* fiction story struck me as inexplicable and frustrating. Reloaded begins to resolve this issue in a way that makes the trilogy a profoundly important comment on modern culture. Taken alone, the original Matrix is little more than an interesting treatment of the philosophical problem of the "brain in a vat." But this is not where the trilogy is going. The critics can say what they will, but Reloaded plugs the trilogy into a vastly more complex set of problems. What we find out about the Oracle in Reloaded may not be as viscerally shocking as Neo's initial ejection from the Matrix, but it is ultimately more profound.
By coincidence, I had been reading about memes for several days prior to seeing Reloaded. The theory of memes fits perfectly with the Matrix' notion of minds plugged into a deceptive system of control. A "meme" basically is another term for concept or idea, only it brings out the evolutionary nature of knowledge as physical self-replication. At the broadest level, then, the Matrix is a metaphor for any false intellectual system that prevents its adherents from grasping reality.
All forms of racism, the labor theory of value (especially as advanced by Marx), and all reactionary religions are systems of memes that fundamentally obscure reality. (I address this issue at greater length in a companion article.) "Taking the red pill," then, means pulling yourself out of an unhealthy meme-plex, detaching from it emotionally, and daring to strive to see reality for what it is. Another name for the "red pill" is skepticism. (I don't mean a deep skepticism that holds nothing can be known, only the tendency to criticize dogmas and accepted paradigms.)
I thus reach a fundamental paradox, given the title of this article is, "The Libertarian Red Pill." Certainly libertarianism is another meme-plex, a complex system of mutually reinforcing ideas. But not all memes are bad. Galileo and Darwin formulated a better set of memes to inoculate against false ones (despite the homicidal co-memes that used to accompany the earth-centered universe). The question, then, is whether libertarianism is an advanced, pro-reality meme, or a regressive, delusional one.
Every meme can be perverted. A good analogy is fraud: the successful perpetration of fraud depends upon the general acceptance of honest trade. A golden calf can be forged even of ideas like science, reason, and skepticism. (The early group surrounding Ayn Rand has been called a "cult of reason.") I think it's obvious there's a reactionary, dogmatic strain of libertarianism, and this should be guarded against.
But there is also a progressive, skeptical, reality-grounded libertarianism that, I believe, is closer to the heart of what it means to be a libertarian. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues one "way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy" (page 277). A large part of the libertarian project, then, is to break down the false ideologies that support the oppressive state. A friend recently forwarded a quote by Harriet Tubman: "I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves." Libertarians and classical liberals have long noted this problem, as the following quotes attest.
"The State is the great fictitious entity by which everyone expects to live at the expense of everyone else."
"Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems!" -- Frederic Bastiat, The State, and The Law (75), original in 1850
"The most effective way of making everybody serve the single system of ends toward which the social plan is directed is to make everybody believe in those ends... If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to. This is, of course, brought about by the various forms of propaganda." -- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (168), original in 1944
"Instead of looking upon the State's progressive absorption of social power with the repugnance and resentment that he would naturally feel towards the activities of a professional-criminal organization, he [the mass-man] tends rather to encourage and glorify it, in the belief that he is somehow identified with the State..." -- Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (83), original in 1962
"If states have everywhere been run by an oligarchic group of predators, how have they been able to maintain their rule over the mass of the population? The answer, as the philosopher David Hume pointed out over two centuries ago, is that in the long run *every* government, no matter how dictatorial, rests on the support of the majority of its subjects." -- Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty (53), original in 1973
Literary precursors to the Matrix include the naked emperor and the man behind the curtain. In an important sense, libertarianism follows in this tradition of questioning existing power structures.
One influential "matrix" is mainstream politics. I nearly titled this article, "The Republocrat Matrix." The meme-plexes people identify as "Republican" and "Democrat" are themselves co-dependent, and they lock people into a particular way of thinking about the world.
The memes that comprise the Republican and Democratic mindsets are not logically interconnected, but they are symbiotic. Republicans, for instance, promote the profoundly liberal agenda of personal self-defense, while Democrats promote the reactionary, anti-liberal agenda of victim disarmament. Why is that? Mostly it has to do with demographics: rural people tend to own more guns than urban people do. At the same time, many Republicans want to arrest people for having unapproved sex or reading unapproved literature. Democrats sometimes defend the right of speech or privacy, but they typically want more state control over economic activity. In practice, usually what happens is the Republicans and Democrats fight over who can impose new controls the fastest.
Ayn Rand captured the nature of the "Republocrat Matrix" perfectly:
The conservatives want freedom to act in the material realm; they tend to oppose government control of production... But they advocate government control of man's spirit; i.e., man's consciousness... The liberals want freedom to act in the spiritual realm; they oppose censorship... But they advocate government control of material production... The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories -- with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe -- but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread... Yet it is the conservatives who are predominantly religionists... [a]nd it is the liberals who are predominantly materialists... *[E]ach camp wants to control the realm it regards as metaphysically important*... (Philosophy: Who Needs It, 186-7, original in 1973)
When he was stuck in the Matrix, Neo led two lives: one as a computer hacker and one as a professional programmer. This is in some respects similar to the split between Democrats and Republicans, the split between pursuing intellectual aims versus economic ones. But it is a false choice. Republicans and Democrats are still part of the same matrix, part of the same delusion.
Libertarian ideas offer a way to strip away the facade and see politics for what it is: mostly a system of control. At the same time, though, libertarians are very concerned with establishing a just, peaceful society. As Neo discovers in Reloaded, it comes down to choice. Of course, once we free our minds to the truth, we can still work within the two-party structure to promote positive change -- or we can work outside the matrix. First, though, you have to decide whether to take the blue pill, or the libertarian red pill.
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Flux
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http://VirianFlux.StumbleUpon.com
  
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Re:The Libertarian Red Pill
« Reply #1 on: 2003-05-21 12:04:39 » |
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The red pill:
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings
for it will destroy the world in which you live. "
-- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
- http://tinyurl.com/69ce
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Live long and prosper,
VirianFlux / Flux
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MoEnzyme
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Re:The Libertarian Red Pill
« Reply #2 on: 2003-06-03 13:35:43 » |
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from tiny url on flux's page,
"Perhaps many of us have not realized the complexity of the world in which we live. It consists of countless objects and ideas, all of which must be incorporated into a coherent structure that will allow us to make sense of it all. And this, I believe, is the main function of the brain. While we are thinking, or simply looking at the world, extremely powerful unconscious processes use our experience to generate a matrix, a coherent map of reality.
[Jake] Or was that the Zen Buddhist red pill? ;-)
simply beside myself. Love, -Jake
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Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Drakeo Vortex
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Re:The Libertarian Red Pill
« Reply #3 on: 2003-06-10 07:03:25 » |
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This complexity is exactly the reason for my hesitant nature and useless objection when creating greater then human intellect.
The Full comprehension of Reality is not just around the corner or in the same solar system or maybe even allowable in this type of existence.
There is no trend towards simplicity and no bounds that paradigms can impose. Humans are just a host as was stated long before me but our host days are comeing to an end. The virus continues.
It is an impossibility to know of things that could not contain the virus. Adventually it will smash head on with the Truth and this must end everything. To begin again? To end again?
Or maybe it will orbit unchanged in it's maximum infection.
Either way, This awnsers nothing for us, it is our nature as a host. Nate
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MoEnzyme
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Re:The Libertarian Red Pill
« Reply #4 on: 2003-06-10 07:45:16 » |
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Quote from: jubungalord on 2003-06-10 07:03:25
This complexity is exactly the reason for my hesitant nature and useless objection when creating greater then human intellect.
The Full comprehension of Reality is not just around the corner or in the same solar system or maybe even allowable in this type of existence.
There is no trend towards simplicity and no bounds that paradigms can impose. Humans are just a host as was stated long before me but our host days are comeing to an end. The virus continues.
It is an impossibility to know of things that could not contain the virus. Adventually it will smash head on with the Truth and this must end everything. To begin again? To end again?
Or maybe it will orbit unchanged in it's maximum infection.
Either way, This awnsers nothing for us, it is our nature as a host. Nate
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These are some interesting thoughts on the ultimate nature of life the universe and anything. I don't really spend lots of time worry too much about this myself as I often find myself in some general contingency that wins out over the grand meaning of life question in the competition for metnal resources. But I do have a vivid memory of something I once heard or read somewhere. This person said that the nature of life over deep time was to steadily increase the possibilities of what can happen next in an evolving system of control and its unintended consequences. But do greater possibilities necessarily equate with more complexity? "Mother nature" tends to play very wastefully, and over 99% of all species that have ever existed have gone extinct. Is not extinction a form of simplification?
Just some idle ramblings. I hope you aren't terrorizing those peaceful Germans over there ;-)
Love,
-Jake
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Drakeo Vortex
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Re:The Libertarian Red Pill
« Reply #5 on: 2003-06-12 05:53:49 » |
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I see your piont, Jake. It would seem as if the lazy couch potatoe finally got off the couch and hit the reset button on his PS2.
However, an argument can be made at each evolutionary point that molecular complexity was further along then at the past point. (hmm interesting I'll have do a little research.
Also some research on co-species meme transer, like the team of 6 different primates working the forests together)
An argument could also be made that complexity only refers to more accuracy. I think diversity would be the better term.
One could argue that the diversity of the virus is continueally increasing. It's position in time ever increasing to the point of it's adventual take over. Such things are impossible to calculate and I spend far to much time wandering.
"Seems silly to give a set of vague sensory perceptions a name" -Hitchiker's Guide
Nate
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