The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and #OWS

So, in the context of OWS, reform and government generally, a friend of mine brought up the speech in the Matrix about human beings being like a virus, destroying everything in their path:



Without getting into an interpretation of the Matrix - which actually I'm kind of dwelling on - I have some initial thoughts.

First, I think one must admit it's a difficult point to deny in light of the state of our environment - we are undoubtedly ravaging our planet, imperiling not only the non-human creatures of the earth, but ultimately, threatening our own existence. However, it's not clear that this is an inescapable facet of human nature. In fact, this recent Naomi Klein piece offers a different, slightly more hopeful, interpretation: Namely, it's not human nature to destroy our environment, it's a symptom of our consumer-driven, grow-or-die economic system.

The fact that the earth’s atmosphere cannot safely absorb the amount of carbon we are pumping into it is a symptom of a much larger crisis, one born of the central fiction on which our economic model is based: that nature is limitless, that we will always be able to find more of what we need, and that if something runs out it can be seamlessly replaced by another resource that we can endlessly extract. But it is not just the atmosphere that we have exploited beyond its capacity to recover—we are doing the same to the oceans, to freshwater, to topsoil and to biodiversity. The expansionist, extractive mindset, which has so long governed our relationship to nature, is what the climate crisis calls into question so fundamentally.

The assumption underlying the above-quoted passage - an assumption that offers at least a glimmer of hope with respect to the humans-as-cancer thesis - is that the cancer isn't humanity, the cancer is neoliberal capitalism. And capitalism is a newcomer to the human scene; despite Thatcherisms to the contrary, radical, neoliberal capitalism is hardly an inevitability.

Okay, second quick point - with respect to the generally dim view of humanity offered by Agent Smith, I was reminded (as I often am) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Specifically, Anya's last big speech in, "End of Days":

Anya: There was this other apocalypse this one time. And, well, I took off. But this time, I don't... I don't know.

Andrew: Well, what's different?

Anya: Well, I guess I was kinda new to being around humans before. And now I've seen a lot more, gotten to know people, seen what they're capable of and I guess I just realize how amazingly... screwed up they all are. I mean, really, really screwed up in a monumental fashion.

Andrew: Oh.

Anya: And they have no purpose that unites them, so they just drift around, blundering through life until they die. Which they-they know is coming, yet every single one of them is surprised when it happens to them. They're incapable of thinking about what they want beyond the moment. They kill each other, which is clearly insane, and yet, here's the thing. When it's something that really matters, they fight. I mean, they're lame morons for fighting. But they do. They never... They never quit. And so I guess I will keep fighting, too.... I don't think I'll be okay. I'm cool with it. I think I'd like to finish out as one of those lame humans trying to do what's right.

There may be very little hope, but every human being has the choice of skipping town or "finish[ing] it out as one of those lame humans trying to do what's right." And we've reached that critical point where one must choose. As Chris Hedges noted early on, neutrality is not an option. Once battle lines have been drawn - and they have been drawn - neutrality equals complicity equals guilt:

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history....

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet.

So, those are my initial thoughts and I might get around to writing something more in-depth later.