The Matrix of Revelation
23 July 2007
“Cypher, the Matrix isn’t real!”
“Oh, I disagree, Trinity; I think the Matrix can be more real than this world.”
Lately, I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading in memory and social theory, and I’ve been working my way through Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality. The thoughts here are inspired by Berger and Luckmann’s work from 40 years ago, but I’ve taken the liberty of combining them with some of my recent work on the book of Revelation and with the Wachowski Brothers’ trilogy of Matrix films.
Berger and Luckmann argued that practically from birth, what we understand to be “real” is a social construction that is imposed on us through a variety of instruments of the dominant culture of the world that we find ourselves in. When that dominant culture ultimately has the power to impose its cultural perspective (or worldview) on other ones, and proceeds to do so, the result is a programmatic presentation of “the real” that says “our” reality, whatever it is, is the ultimate one, and this by necessity must replace any alternative ones. In other words, once a culture establishes a hegemony over others that would not normally be inclined to share, appreciate, or employ the instruments that the culture uses to construct reality at home, it is in a position to say to everyone else that the way we are is the way everyone should be. This kind of imperialism doesn’t have to be through military force or violence against earth, air, and flesh (although it can be, and often is); more pervasive and dangerous is the seductive nature of the instruments of cultural imperialism. Violence and seduction are, and have always been, two of the most potent agents of social control and the imposition of “reality.”
To viewers of the Matrix, this should sound familiar, and one wonders whether the Wachowski Brothers had a copy of Social Construction of Reality around when they produced the films. The entire trilogy turns on the questions of What is Real, and What is the Matrix? In the trilogy, we learn that the Matrix is the reality constructed by the dominant Machine World that, through violence and seduction, is imposed on the world of human beings in order for the Machine World to maintain its hegemony and its control of human life. Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, recognizes that there are at least these two realities, and he challenges Neo (Keanu Reeves) to recognize that he has to choose which reality he is going to accept, since both are Real. In Berger and Luckmann’s terms, the Machine World is able to force its worldview, its reality, onto the Human through the instrumentality of the Matrix. For those living in the Machine World, the majority of humans do not realize that their reality is artificial and constructed and have no need for or interest in knowing otherwise. The dominant culture of technocracy, as it were, has defined what is real and literally constructed the instruments to make sure that things stay the way they are. Theirs is the “ultimate reality,” as Tillich might express it.
In any event, the story of the Matrix is that the reality imposed by the dominant Machine World is not the only reality, and in fact needs to be challenged because the human race is not destined to be batteries and puppets that empower the force of empire and its artificial instruments of violence and seduction to keep control over those who resist.
And if this sounds like a familiar story, you’re right. This is exactly the story of the book of Revelation. Revelation is a call to see the Matrix for what it is and an invitation to look behind the screen to see the ugliness of the reality of its version of the Machine World, that is to say, the Empire, the violence of the Beast and the seductions of the Whore that are the instruments of imperial worldviews of reality. For the author of Revelation, the Roman Empire is the latest version of the Matrix, an artificially constructed reality that had plagued Israel in a number of x.0 versions since the days of Egyptian bondage. But as with the theatrical Matrix, Revelation recognizes the reality of the Empire/Machine world every bit as much as it recognizes the world of the Saints/Zion. Both realities exist and coexist and join together through complex processes of mimicry and symbiosis and are locked in a struggle that simultaneously defends and destroys the other. The Matrix and the Empire are paragons of the power and order of the Machine World and the dominant force of Imperialism in all its forms. The heroes of Zion and the persevering Saints of first century Asia, on the other hand, recognize the reality of the Matrix of Empire, but refuse to accommodate themselves to imperial control; for Morpheus, Neo, Trinity, John of Patmos, Christ, and the embattled saints of Asia, imperial reality is a Beast operating the machine mainframe, a reality that ultimately will lead to nothing but the utter destruction and annihilation of this world as well as the other. Revelation and The Matrix thus show that these competing worlds exist in symbiotic opposition to each other, but are not condemned to eternal conflict. As the Oracle tells Neo, “One way or another, Neo, the war is going to end.”
The story, of course, continues now. The Matrix of Empire is a constructed instrument of persuasion designed to convince others that the pax romana and pax americana is the ordained and one legitimate ultimate reality. But Revelation and the Matrix show us that, confronted with the reality of imperial pax, we who were called out of Egypt now need to be called out of Babylon, out of the power fields of the Machine world. And here in the Matrix, there are too many who know that something is seriously wrong with the seductive doings of empire, who know that we ourselves are complicit in the violence done to the earth and to each other in the name of maintaining things “as it was was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever more.” We feel the splinter in the mind and its driving us mad. And if we are truly to come out of Babylon, as the Seer of Revelation cries out to us that we must, we have to take the plunge, and find the courage to take the Red Pill, and hack into the Matrix.
Entry Filed under: Apocalypticism, Christianity, Church, Community, Empire, Eschatology, Faith, Mythology, Politics, Pop culture, Revelation, Theology, Worldview. .
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1.
Ken | 24 July 2007 at 8:42 am
I envy the opportunity you have to think about and write about such topics in your professional field.
I think the connection you are analyzing between Berger’s and Luckmans work in the Social Construction of Reality, the Matrix and Revelation is relevant and informative.
I think that in Berger’s later work his own view of the power of social constructions of reality is different from the view of the Matrix movie creators. My impression is that Berger believes that all truths are socially constructed, but that in a pluralistic free society that we are not oppressed by those constructions but instead are forced to choose between them. He sees us in a situation where we can have conflicting beliefs and change our beliefs like we do our clothes, but that we are never able to fully believe one version of reality. All of our beliefs remain tentative and voluntary. He thinks that this causes us anxiety, but that anxiety comes with freedom and so should not be resisted. I think of Berger as a champion of freedom. I think of Berger as believing that freedom enables us to overcome the inevitable oppressions of social constructions.
I think that Bellah also has a different view from the Matrix movie creators and different from Berger. I read in Bellah a concern that social constructions of reality are becoming weaker. I read in Bellah a great fear of individualism. I believe he fears that individualism threatens egalitarianism and Bellah is a champion of equality, where Berger is a champion of freedom. (I know they both desire both, but I just think they emphasize them in different proportions.) What Bellah seems to seek is creating a world in which we have a much stronger single or dominant social construction of reality, and that is the opposite of what Berger seeks.
I think that the movie Matrix can be interpreted as a modern apocalyptic work in the way that Revelation has been interpreted as such. I think the movie Matrix connected with contemporary fears of globablization and technology. I think the current wave of populism in American politics connects with those fears. Although Bellah and Berger each have their own fears, I don’t see either of them as expressing them in apocalyptic terms.
I am wondering if you have found a way to include the work of Mary Douglas in your analysis. Interestingly, her analysis involves several matrices of another kind perhaps. Her work strikes me as a way to see the problem in a historical perspective in which modern perspectives are not privileged in the way that they are in both Bellah and Berger. My tendency is to see the works of Berger and Bellah, as well as apocalyptic visions such as the movie Matrix, as varied responses to or analyses of the modern or postmodern condition. The work of Mary Douglas, her analysis of symbols and communication, of social controls and lack thereof, helps me to see what is going on in our lives, from a different perspective, in a more timeless way.
I also see some relevance here of Foucault. Unlike Matrix and Revelation, I don’t think of his work as apocalyptic. He advocates resistance, but acknowledges an inevitability of oppression rather than envisioning an escape to a better world. He strikes me as holding a position somewhere between Bellah and Berger, as holding freedom and equality in tension. Although he writes so revealingly about modern forms of oppression and alienation, he does not write apocalyptically.
I sense in your writing the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr and perhaps other neo-orthodox theologians. Is that true?
2.
Benedict | 25 July 2007 at 4:30 pm
Well, my friend, you rightly detect a number of influences here, particularly Bellah and Foucault. I’m not reall much of a Douglasian, so to speak, although I admit to influence of her earlier material, particularly Purity and Danger. I honestly wasn’t thinking much of Douglas or Foucault very much with this, but I think you have correctly patched them into the discussion and into my own influences.
As for the neo-orthodox guys like Niebuhr, I have only read snippets of Niebuhr and Barth as well. I can’t say I’m aware of any major indebtedness to the neo-orthodox line of thinking, except for possibly their role in discussions of the social origins of morality, although it’s certainly possible through literary osmosis.
3.
totaltransformation | 28 July 2007 at 9:23 pm
The only potential problem I see with your comparison is that post-modernists like Foucault (and possibly the two authors you cite) is that while they believed that these social constructs were socially imposed by culture, they did not believe in any objective truth. They only believed in the ability to shape new truths based on their own intuitive standards (and often directed by the constructs of marginalized groups).
The book of revelation, while it might be urging us to pull back the curtain points us toward objective truth. Objective truth is something that men like Foucault would not agree with. Does your research recognize this difference? How do you deal with it?
4.
Benedict | 29 July 2007 at 10:01 am
This is a perceptive question, and I’ll take it up later in the day. Right now, though, I’m off to enjoy the truth of great weather and clear waters and the presence of fish.
Back later!
5.
Benedict | 3 August 2007 at 7:55 pm
Hey, sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Just started a new teaching term for the summer and the weather has been great when I’m not working, so the computer has taken a back seat.
Anyway, I thought I’d do a quick response to TotalTransformation’s comment/question. My first reaction here is that the notion that “the postmodernists” and “men like Foucault” do not believe in “any objective truth” is more of a caricature than anything else. I guess I can see where the impression and caricature comes from, but I’m more struck by something that seems to me to run deeper, specifically that thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, and others challenge the notion that we as humans can possibly know and express in any complete form what that truth is. In other words, when Foucault analyzes the power relations of reality and the claims to truth of both those in power and those who seek it, he’s not suggesting that “there is no objective truth.” What he’s saying, I think, is that these expressions by various camps, parties, societies, and so forth, all are attempting to know the truth as they see it, and as they seek to claim it and, often enough, to control it. What Berger and Luckmann are doing a decade or so before Foucault was pointing out that these expressions, culturally and socially defined and constructed as they are, essentially become the objective truth, “the world as I see it,” as it were.
Second comment regarding Revelation as “pointing the way to objective truth:” well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that Revelation is, indeed pulling back the curtain for viewers to gaze on the truth in all its horrific cruelty in the “Matrix”, as well as the spectacle of light, beauty and music in Zion, and the truth is behind the curtain. But if you mean that Revelation points to objective truth in the sense that the book acts as a textbook with answers in it about what’s going to happen in some unknown future, then I’d have to disagree. Truth is more than this, and it can never be completely described or defined by language. Not even Jesus himself could answer Pilate’s question, which I think should be a warning to us.
Back to work here…
6.
Ernesto Sartorius | 5 May 2008 at 5:03 pm
I’m living in Mexico and the online bookstores refuse to send books to my country for some reason. I’m very interested in reading the The Social Construction of Reality book.
Does any one of you know where I can get an online copy (pdf or other).
By the way, I totally agree with your article. I’ve been working on a slightly different approach through the reality statement/construction that are generated by the interaction of humans and the time matrixes that emerge from the mayan calendar.
When I’m finished with that material I will be glad to send you a copy
7.
Benedict | 5 May 2008 at 6:35 pm
Wow, Ernesto, this sounds like a great project. I think I got my copy of the book through Barnes and Noble, but it is a fairly old book, and it’s possible that you might be able to get it through Ebay, which (I believe) does ship internationally.
Perhaps other readers will have suggestions, as well.