First off, this article does not concern the Wachowski popcult item. Read further if you want to make an attempt at understanding "what this article is about"; you likely won't, but if you do, you also don't need me matrixsplainin' stuff to you. So as is the case with most items on this, or in fact any blog, take them as a personal notes. And you know me.
So a while ago I've stumbled upon these guys (archived). I'll leave aside for now the fact that they're using the system to fuck the system1: I mean sure, they have to eat and they figured selling ads would be the best way for them to do that, only y'know, that'll only serve to prove my point. But that aside, I wholly appreciate the fact that they at least seem to be trying really hard to get to the bottom of things. I get it that it's hard these days to write for "the people", where "the people" is some particular demographic coagulated through osmosis, and I mean that it's hard to do that without spouting the usual slogans; and they're trying and I really appreciate it, despite the fact that their work isn't really mindblowing. It's hard work though, make no mistake. Yet the way they approach things in the linked article is to my eye a sign that they're really going about it the wrong way, which goes back to my previous point, that they're just as "the system" as the system itself... or should I say, just as "the Matrix" as the Matrix itself?
I'm not going to translate their article, because I don't think it deserves such a laborious treatment, but also because likely you're going to find the same stuff somewhere else on the web. I'm not going to analyze it in too much depth either, because I believe that for all its detailed analysis, it lacks depth, and depth is all I'm going for. Sorry if you're not able to read it, but for what it's worth, I'll have you know Romanian isn't as bad a language as they tell you over at them TVs, it just looks and sounds different, even with the whole anglicization process going on.
Anyway, I don't mind, say, the blackpilling: I agree with them that Trump and Ciolacu are part of the same "Matrix" and that Călin Georgescu is... wait a second, is the Matrix just another signifier for the same thing as The Reality TV show? Well then I agree that everything's fake these days, but fakery isn't really the point of the so-called Matrix. Since we're doing metaphors, the Matrix, or the system if you'd like, is the software that runs a civilization, the sum of its people's thoughts and the interactions arising between them (the thoughts). In particular, in today's democracy one programs this software using a nifty tool called PR: when you become popular, someone else is going to say something about you and (depending on the someone and the say) they'll cause a memory corruption in a variable, thus co-opting your control flow and causing another image of you to spring forth. And when they do, that's "reality" y'know, that is, summing up to the Matrix.
Well, it seems that the problem with Matrices is that you can't have a civilization without one. The Greeks and the Romans had one, and you're able to see parts of it through, say, Aristotle or Marcus Aurelius' writings; the Christians had and at least they claim to still be having one; and so on and so forth, each culture came with a blueprint that influenced or downright led to the spawning of people's thoughts. Just as in today's society you can't live without "democracy", in yesterday's society you couldn't live without God. Although in principle living with or without something was almost always a matter of economy. If you're smart and wealthy enough, you can always turn off the TV and the internets, move to a plot of land of your own choosing and live your life without being bothered by anyone, well, at least until you are. So in that sense, sure, one can "reach out of the Matrix". You can only imagine how the folks in the camps managed to survive their harsh environment back in the day, 'cause if you start to imagine how their Matrices looked, you'd shudder. In that sense, yes, the Matrix that aimed to completely obliterate thought was much more brutal than the one who tries only to domesticate it. Still, they're both Matrices and the whole story of humanity is based upon such premises. The folks over at Davos have been agreeing with you for a while now: didn't that Harari guy say that people like to guide themselves through myth and story? Well, that's exactly what "they"'ve been doing, they've been working on a good story!
At the end of the day, I guess we can all agree that totalitarianism is bad, mmkay. But here's the real black pill for you: it's big enough that it can't be destroyed, so you can't deal with it, you have to cope with it. And the best thing you can do at this point is wait for everything to be played out to an inevitable demise, which may come in a few more decades anyway, decades during which everything will only get worse for you and it'll get you to grow old before your time. Well, John told you, didn't he? Except seriously, neither Trump nor Georgescu are the saviours we've been told about -- if anything, they're precisely the False Prophet of ye olde Revelation.
As for the Reacțiunea folks, there's precisely three possible paths for them. Either they become irrelevant after a while, like most such projects do; or they become big enough to become "the Matrix"; or they get absorbed into "the Matrix", like most other popular publications tend to do.
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This, by the way is a reference to Aphrodite's Child. This particular album, 666, was launched at the same time all great rock albums were launched, i.e. in the first years of the seventies. It presents a sort-of satyrical account of John's Apocalypse, which used to provoke quite the outrage back in the day. So it's not like these guys had no experience dealing with the so-called system. ↩
I've been thinking this for a long time. It seems the only stableish way for humans to organize is fascism of one sort of another. In other words, civilization is fascism and viceversa. Ya can't escape it. Even hermits are subject to the ultrafascism of Mother Nature.
That doesn't mean, though, that one can't push for a fascism more to one's liking. The wiser activist sees figures like Trump or Georgescu not as messiahs that are in themselves good or will do what they promised; but rather as tools to destabilize the system and open up a chance for change to occur. Which is why it's still painful when the system successfully defends itself and eliminates that chance for the time being.
Do you know about jumping beans? They're not just something invented in cartoons, they're real. Basically you have this larva that takes up residence inside a bean while it develops. The jumping is a fascinating solution to a simple problem: if the bean stays too long in direct sunlight, the larva will overheat. Thus, the larva has the reflex that when too much light hits the bean (the walls are somewhat transluscent), it will trash inside the bean and send it flying in a random direction, hence the jumping.
The fascinating bit is that even though the larva has no idea where the sun is or where the shadows are, nor can it control the direction of the jump at all, nevertheless this stochastic strategy works perfectly. If you timelapse a collection of jumping beans, you will see them closely follow the shadows exactly like in those timelapse videos of cats moving with the rays of the sun. In fact this type of stochastic strategy is used all throughout nature, including for bacteria trying to navigate to a food source even when they have no complex sensors or locomotion systems onboard.
I believe revolutions, and all meaningful political change in fact, ultimately work the same way. Nobody can predict the outcome of a revolution. It can indeed fail or backfire. They are a roll of the die. Nevertheless, if you don't roll the die you will surely get more of the same. It's better, I think, to keep rolling the die until you hit a better state (a fascism more to your liking). Then stop.
It sure worked for EU accession votes, after all.
> It seems the only stableish way for humans to organize is fascism of one sort of another
I happen to think (but am too lazy to sit to demonstrate at length) that the default mode of humanity is feudalism. People are by their nature unequal (or "diverse", if we were to employ an Imperial symbol), and hierarchy arises from these inequalities, i.e. they give birth to certain structures which are defined within the hierarchy and a set of environmental constraints. In practice, people in the past used to fight over plots of land -- sure, they still do, but that's beside the point; not even a decade ago, folks still believed that this generation would not get to see war --, because that's where you would grow food or harvest some other resources, or in any case, it held some value.
Nowadays land still holds value, but there's a whole bunch of other things that do, and the variety ("diversity"!) and the complexity arising between those things is bound to fuck the average man even more than "back in the day". The abundance of yore encouraged various socialisms which are either shifting towards autocracy (see the recent move by Ciolacu et al.) or are on the way to being wiped altogether. Let's wait another year or two (or maybe a couple of months?), you'll see what I mean. If this is what you mean by fascism, then I agree.
On the other hand, while I find your jumping beans metaphor entirely fit for this discussion, I'm in the tribe of those who believe that this larva has long turned into a moth and set herself on a course towards the proverbial fire. Best case, she dies of cold on the way, but either way, the unstoppable thing which you at some point called entropy, is going to get the poor animal killed. Then nature will take its course, as some other beings will consume its corpse and thrive. And if what's going on around us is any guide, I think I have an idea how this is going to play out. There's at least two possible ways ahead, and neither of them will make us happier, except maybe through a shitton of drugs.