File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0306, message 38


Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 13:05:58 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: The Matrix - Reloaded response to eric and hugh (part 2)


Steve/Eric/All,

I agree with the paragraphs below.  When Lyotard or anyone else talks about
man-made systems as if they were natural systems such as volcanic, tectonic
or weather, I agree with Steve.   The effect is fantasy, or "romantically
obstructive".  Machines do not rule the world, systems do not have their
"own agenda".

To "believe" cyborgs, (man-machine combinations?) make decisions is to
assume a non-human intelligence.  To believe Nature makes decisions about
volcanic, tectonic, or weather is to assume "Nature's intelligence", not
literally, but as metaphor.

Religious believers assume God's intelligence, and thereby subsume natural
law into His powers.

Materialists deny God and, in my opinion, cannot conceive of reality outside
Nature.

Humans use natural phenomena for their benefit, but do not change those
phenomena.

Humans employing computers, artificial intelligence, robotic machinery, form
man-made systems which, unlike natural systems, are subject to man-made
change.  Capitalism has for
more than two centuries, substituted machines for men and built powerful
institutions that increase profits.

Attributing intelligence and purpose to abstract systems beyond human
control, merely increases the power of capitalists.

regards,
Hugh

^*^*^*^*^**^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

Steve wrote:

So then given the above how could I respond to the following quotes
positively? "For who is Neo if not a cyborg who straddles both the flesh
meat world and the virtual realm? Both human and avatar?"  Precisely not:
for even within the debased virtual world that constitutes the Matrix, the
point is that Neo and Smith are merely human, Neo maybe the bohemian radical
whilst Smith is the elitist fascist. Consequently the term 'cyborg' is
romantically obstructive as what is represented here is simply . If you wish
to produce a radical misreading of the text - then the human batteries are
the Iraqis, once again forcibly colonised as the daisy cutters fall.

"The latent fear the Matrix plays upon is that machines now rule the world
and there is no real place for humans except in a subservient role as power
serfs whose energy is required to keep the machine world running.  How far
is this from those critiques of globalism that argue the system has its own
agenda in terms of the flow of capital and free markets to which human and
ecological needs remain merely secondary?  How far is it from Lyotard's own
arguments about complexification when he says:

"The pursuit of greater complexity asks not for the perfecting of the Human,
but its mutation or its defeat for the benefit of a better performing
system,  Humans are very mistaken in their presuming to be the motors of
development and in confusing development with the progress of consciousness
and civilization,  They are its products, vehicles, and witnesses.  Even the
criticisms they may make of development, its inequality, its inconsistency,
its fatality, its inhumanity, even these criticisms are expressions of
development and contribute to it."




   

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