Where Freud believed that an individual’s psychological mechanism could be explained in relation to the individual’s past, childhood experiences and repressions leading to certain types of behaviour in adult life. This may help to explain the construction of our realities as individuals, but in order to follow the Leibniz model of harmonious reality that encompasses us all it is necessary to examine the writings of Jung. While Freud believed behaviour was based on the individual, Jung maintained that all humans share a collective unconscious. Inherited feelings, thoughts and more significantly, memories, shared by the whole of mankind. Jung believed that this collective unconscious is made up of universally held images known as ‘archetypes’.
These images, he believed, relate to experiences such as facing death, finding a lover, confronting a foe and so on. He states that the evidence for these binding archetypes are the common issues found in myths, legends, religions and folklore from around the globe.
The realities considered in Leibniz’s theory have a definite mathematical and
scientific base, he himself is described by McLuhan in the following terms:
“Leibniz, that mathematical spirit, saw in the mystic elegance of the binary system that counts only the zero and the one, the very image of creation. The unity of the supreme being, operating by binary function in nothingness, would have sufficed to bring out of it all the beings.”
Comparing this with the theory of archetypes, we realise that the Jungian view of reality construction is based much more in the world of art and literature and how these may be used to communicate ideas of reality. Myths, along with proverbs and fables are the encryption of archetypes. They are touchstones of reality, which can be applied to a multitude of situations, communicating a shared perception of reality. It is this communication of realities that exposes the limitations of a reality code. While the individual may use all manner of codes to decipher his surroundings, it is the communication of his findings and inspirations that cause problems. Communication primarily takes the form of language, but in this form the thought must be converted into a code of language (possibly inaccurately) that must then be interpreted (possibly inaccurately) by the listener. As Huxley says:
“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition…the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”
Despite Plato’s view that art can never achieve the accuracy of the thought in the artist’s mind, the inadequacies of language led mankind to use art as a method of communicating the individual’s perception of reality. John Berger discusses the significance of art in the development of human communication in detail in Ways of Seeing . Berger explains how art became a unique form of presentation and initially was used only for religious and spiritual purposes and was inseparable from the place and purpose for which it was created. At this stage, I believe art was as far away from the code of communication as is possible. Of course individuals could observe, and impose upon it their own reality defining codes, but art stood alone communicating as accurately as possible the realities of its creator. Later art was taken into the houses of the wealthy, partly to enhance the self image of the owner and also to confirm the role of ownership, owning the image of a thing translating to actual ownership. It is here that art entered the world of the code. It was used by the wealthy as a sign of their wealth part of their self-defined code by which they judged themselves and were perceived by others. Modern reproduction and distribution techniques have removed art from any preserve it once had. As Benjamin believed, when art is reproduced it loses its original ‘aura’ and enters a new role. It has become ubiquitous, part of the code and used with such regularity that we use it to define ourselves or present our ideas. It has been reduced to the level of the proverb in providing a template for our realities.
We live our lives and form our realities based upon numerous codes. These may take the form of myths, religions and status symbols. Leibniz believed that the universe itself was an infinite code of interdependent microcosms and that that code, if completely comprehended could predict the future and know the past. The code can be liberating or restricting and how we perceive it goes a long way towards how we construct our realities. Milton is right; the mind can interpret the codes in many ways and form infinite conclusions. The question is, how accurate is the code that we receive?
Chapter 2: Maintaining Reality
“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television…It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Everyday we are confronted with ‘the real’. In the previous chapter I discussed the manner in which we construct our realities and the truths upon which we base the information that we are presented with. The point that is raised in the above quote is that all that you take to be ‘real’ may not necessarily be so. Now, more than ever the amount of information that reaches us is so great that while not necessarily in a sinister sense, our lives are directly influenced by stimulating factors outside our control. The world of advertising for example, presents images, and projects thoughts. It convinces us that our lives would be richer if we purchased a certain item and while we know we are witnessing a sales pitch, we cannot help but be affected by it. Advertisements influence our decisions on what to eat and drink, where to go on holiday and how to live our lives. While it is true that we retain a choice over what we buy and where we go, but in order for that choice to be made it must have appeared within the initial stimulation. If a product is unknown it is unlikely to be bought. In Ways of Seeing, Berger suggests that advertising and publicity are processes of manufacturing glamour. Publicity creates an intangible element of desire, which is based on the human emotion of envy. The product is presented in a manner that promotes envy in the viewer, and by association will afford the purchaser the envy of others. It is in this way that glamour is sold. We are unconsciously informed of what it is we will envy in others and what it is about ourselves that others will envy. Berger comments on this situation:
“Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of the future is endlessly deferred.”
He concludes that this method succeeds because publicity does not speak to reality but to the fantasies of the individual. It could be reasoned that fantasies such as these enable mankind to maintain realities. This refers back to the idea mentioned in the previous chapter where the first Matrix failed because everybody was created happy. Perhaps envy fulfils a vital role that presses us forward, that provides us with the will to live.
But to look on envy as the only means of maintaining reality is rather simplistic. If we take this thought a step further and examine the message that is being projected rather than the emotions it creates it is possible to find a new method of maintaining reality. As John Jervis writes in Exploring the Modern:
“The pleasure is in a vicarious sense of adventure, linked with a satisfaction gained through decoding, ‘reading’, the signs of the city.”
He suggests we are to embrace the information we are presented with. To examine and appreciate its role in the reality in which we live; that ultimately pleasure lies in interpretation rather than direct experience, as Huxley put it:
“the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence”
But how, and to what extent, do ‘naked existence’ and the information we receive and analyse conform to reality? The evidence of reality that exists within our local environment we can interpret ourselves. In constructing our realities we create the codes in which realities communicate. Difficulties arise however, when in attempting to maintain our reality we are confronted with issues that we cannot directly perceive for ourselves. The most basic of images that we are unable to perceive directly is that of ourselves.
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.”
It is here that we come across the importance of the mirror in maintaining reality. During the 1960s and 1970s Neo-Freudianism was a popular movement in France and with it the philosophies of Jacques Lacan became widely known. Among these was the ‘mirror-stage’. Lacan believed that:
“The unified self posited by object relations theory is an illusion. The child begins as fragmented drives, precepts and attachments that eventually congeal into an imaginary identity at the ‘mirror stage’”
It is at this stage, when the child perceives himself in the mirror and acknowledges himself as a single entity separate from his mother and surroundings. In a more abstract sense, this is the process that Neo himself goes through upon suspecting the existence of The Matrix. His suspicions and dissatisfaction with the world as it appears becomes apparent as he receives a reprimand from his employer, Mr Rheinheart:
“You have a problem with authority, Mr Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole.”
As a function of The Matrix, Neo’s software company is attempting to restrict him. To place him in the ‘illusory’ world of object relations theory discussed by Lacan. At this point in the film, the office in which Neo is getting his dressing down is, at the same time, having its mirrored windows cleaned, perhaps echoing Blake’s thought that:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”
This infinity described by Blake may be related to the infinite possibilities open to Neo if he rejects the restrictive world that contains him.
Interestingly, the theme of mirrors as a symbol of release is common throughout the film. Indeed, Neo is released from The Matrix through a mirror, much like Alice going through the looking glass; a reference alluded to by Morpheus. Also, it seems that whenever Neo meets those who are entering The Matrix specifically to talk to him (The Agents, Trinity and Morpheus) he is seen frequently as a mirror image, either in the rear view mirror of the motorcycle that Trinity is riding or in the mirrored sunglasses of Morpheus and The Agents. The mirror is used in this context as it presents an image of the world that appears accurate but is not. It presents a reversed and possibly distorted view of the world. Significantly in terms of the film, it also presents another world, similar to, but very different from, our own. As children, according to Lacan, we learn to identify ourselves in terms of the mirror. Our self-image, that with which we maintain our reality is based upon what we see there and yet the information we are receiving is inaccurate. Our self-image is in fact a reverse copy of the truth and an example of the flawed perceptions with which we maintain our realities.
As technology has evolved, so too have our methods of maintaining reality. Television has provided us with intimate knowledge of the world outside our local environment. While I have discussed the advertising that television brings I have not mentioned the impact of the news reports upon which we depend for maintaining our realities.
George Washington once remarked,
“We haven’t heard from Benjamin Franklin in Paris this year. We should write him a letter.”
Nowadays, live communication in both sound and image is possible across the globe. Our horizons have been expanded to the maximum possible extent and we rely upon television to maintain those realities that we have never experienced for ourselves and it is here that we run into complex problems concerning reality. We assume that the images we are watching are an intrinsic part of the information being presented. This is not always the case as Jean Baudrillard explains in The Gulf War did not take place . In this book Baudrillard discusses how the media representation of the Gulf War was in no way an accurate description of the reality.
In his introduction to the book, Patton comments that the first and most basic way in which the media can corrupt reality is in the confusion of past and present. He claims this was achieved unilaterally during the War, the present being portrayed as the past with the whole war as a John Wayne film complete with action-movie language. We also saw the past being represented as the present, video footage of a sea bird, covered in oil from the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 where used to illustrate the ecological problems in the Gulf.
The problems presented by an image of reality is summed up by Baudrillard:
“The same illusion of progress occurred with the appearance of speech and then colour on screen: at each stage of this progress we moved further away from the imaginary intensity of the image. The closer we supposedly approach the real, or the truth, the further we draw away from them both, since neither one nor the other exists. The closer we approach the real time of the event, the more we fall into the illusion of the virtual.”
Once war, or any other event is converted from a directly perceived reality to information it enters the realm of communication and subject to the codes that were discussed in the previous chapter. It becomes open to interpretation. Our failing lies with the fact that our technology has succeeded in creating information so apparently accurate we mistake it for reality. In The Gulf War did not take place Baudrillard has updated Benjamin’s theory on reproducibility negotiating the aura of experience. Much of Baudrillard’s writing has commented on ‘Simulacra’, a scenario in which reality and a simulation have been combined and become unidentifiable from each other. This third order of reality is referred to as ‘Hyperreality’ Through the media, a simulacra of the real has been created and we ourselves enter a hyperreality where the boundaries between what is real and what is a representation of the real become blurred.
This is an area explored almost constantly in The Matrix. In the film The Matrix is the ultimate hyperreality. Inside The Matrix, reality is coded into information so effectively that those to whom it is fed cannot even perceive the reality on which their world is based. Neo acts as a disciple of Baudrillard , attempting to separate the information from the real. In real life, this is harder than it seems. In Simulations Baudrillard refers to hyperreality as a M?bius strip in that:
“All the hypotheses of manipulation are reversible in an endless whirligig”
A condition of the hyperreality is that the two contributing realities are so interdependent that a manipulation in one of the realities causes a reaction in the other which will in turn manipulate the first. It is inside a hyperreality that Neo himself resides. On the one hand there is perceived reality, on the other there is The Matrix code that constructs it. Neo’s quest throughout the film is to mentally separate the two, yet at the same time acknowledge their interdependence. At the end of the film he succeeds and becomes ‘The One’. In a wonderful piece of cinematography we see The Matrix from Neo’s point of view. We see the corridor he is standing in and The Agents at the end of it, yet the entire image is composed of the constantly changing green code that The Matrix uses to construct reality.
It is here that we realise the news reports that we perceive to be separate from ourselves become, in our own minds, united with our own perceptions of reality and will be used in the future to process and evaluate information. However, in doing so we become part of a hyperreality not too dissimilar from The Matrix, where the information we receive as a media defined code must, in order to maintain reality, be separated from our own perceptions. We must see the media for what it is, not only a flawed representation of reality but also the concealment of the fact that reality is questionable.
To this extent at least television and the media can be seen as our own Matrix. We turn on our televisions and at once become,
“hostages of media intoxication.”
It is up to us to maintain our realities by separating the realities we perceive ourselves from those that are presented to us.
Chapter Three: Undermining Reality
Weapons of Mass Distraction.
The popularity of television as entertainment has gone from strength to strength. While we must be aware of its dubious capabilities of maintaining our realities, it provides us with information and stimulation without conscious effort, yet keeps the entire production at a comfortable distance. This nature is explained by Baudrillard. Television has created the cult of ‘the real’ we have developed a need for live broadcasts in Technicolor from around the world. However, at the same time as television has built our need for stimulation, it has cultivated our preference for simulation rather than direct immersion in the reality portrayed: