What kind of racist country is America even?! Everyone who is racist knows how much of the country is black!
And she said she's going to try to run again in 2028!
Someone's going to have to explain to me exactly what she thinks she's going to bring to the table in 2028 that she wasn't able to this year.
Someone's going to have to explain to me exactly what she thinks she's going to bring to the table in 2028 that she wasn't able to this year.
Which fitness test measures how much you masturbate?
"Hung lo! You are strong, smart, brave, but you failed the masturbation test! We will not let you fight in World War 3"
"Not allowed to join World War 3 due to grip strength too strong"
"Hung lo! You are strong, smart, brave, but you failed the masturbation test! We will not let you fight in World War 3"
"Not allowed to join World War 3 due to grip strength too strong"
One of the important meta-lessons of the matrix movies is to have a new set of values ready because once you tear down what such people know they'll be horrible without anything to replace it.
Which would be classical virtue ethics paired with Christian guilt ethics I think.
Which would be classical virtue ethics paired with Christian guilt ethics I think.
Well I think that there's two points to be made here.
The first is that a lot of the issues in Japan today are a direct effect of modernist ideology. The fact that you can use modern ideology to get everyone together to push for a certain goal is one of the reasons for the acceptance of an extremely poor work-life balance, everyone ends up focusing on ganbatte as a cultural touchstone, and the reality is that modernisms focus on productivity and a shared cultural goal and certain elements of Life has those same negative connotations. The fact that kids work so hard in school and then leave school and go to work so hard at work is exactly because modernism tends to drive everything towards the one goal of modernism.
Japanese democracy and rule of law are arguably just as corrupted as for example Victorian England's corruption of democracy and rule of law. Both are parliamentary democracies with a relatively weak emperor or King at the top of the hierarchy. Modern society during the Western modern age was also dramatically imperfect, which is one of the reasons that the World wars ended up happening.
The other point I think is that it doesn't really matter whether Japan is truly successful or is just maintaining face, in terms of acting as a repository of modernist ideology for a fallen postmodern West. We can see absolutely the problems with postmodernism in the west, whereas Japan is a very orderly society perhaps too much so, the West is accepting of a lot of horrific crimes without really judging those crimes to the extent that they should because postmodernism rejects Grand narratives and most values. If you'd rather walk outside at night in a postmodern society or a modern society the question is absolutely indisputable.
But a return to mere modernism definitely isn't going to save the West. We can see from both modern and postmodern societies that both ideologies have massive blind spots that end up with the extinction of its people. However, what is undoubtedly necessary in the west is for a return to an ideology that at least recognizes that virtue exists and is something worth striving towards and that some ideas are good and some are bad and goodness and badness of ideas does exist.
A lot of your criticisms could be levied against the Arab world, they are absolutely tribal, in a lot of ways they are backwards, they ended up facing a period of massive humiliation because in spite of a fairly warlike ethos they we're just rolled over by the West in the world wars, and that's one of the reasons why they've returned to the highly conservative religious doctrines that they're in right now. None of the criticisms of the Arabs change the fact that their work ended up helping to fuel the Western Renaissance.
Also note that the advancements of the Renaissance were not towards a return to classical culture. What resulted was a synthesis of Christian culture and classical culture which actually ultimately resulted in modernism. This suggests that the west, even if strongly affected by Japanese modernism, isn't going to just move into that but into something different based on the cultural zeitgeist at the time, for better or for worse.
The first is that a lot of the issues in Japan today are a direct effect of modernist ideology. The fact that you can use modern ideology to get everyone together to push for a certain goal is one of the reasons for the acceptance of an extremely poor work-life balance, everyone ends up focusing on ganbatte as a cultural touchstone, and the reality is that modernisms focus on productivity and a shared cultural goal and certain elements of Life has those same negative connotations. The fact that kids work so hard in school and then leave school and go to work so hard at work is exactly because modernism tends to drive everything towards the one goal of modernism.
Japanese democracy and rule of law are arguably just as corrupted as for example Victorian England's corruption of democracy and rule of law. Both are parliamentary democracies with a relatively weak emperor or King at the top of the hierarchy. Modern society during the Western modern age was also dramatically imperfect, which is one of the reasons that the World wars ended up happening.
The other point I think is that it doesn't really matter whether Japan is truly successful or is just maintaining face, in terms of acting as a repository of modernist ideology for a fallen postmodern West. We can see absolutely the problems with postmodernism in the west, whereas Japan is a very orderly society perhaps too much so, the West is accepting of a lot of horrific crimes without really judging those crimes to the extent that they should because postmodernism rejects Grand narratives and most values. If you'd rather walk outside at night in a postmodern society or a modern society the question is absolutely indisputable.
But a return to mere modernism definitely isn't going to save the West. We can see from both modern and postmodern societies that both ideologies have massive blind spots that end up with the extinction of its people. However, what is undoubtedly necessary in the west is for a return to an ideology that at least recognizes that virtue exists and is something worth striving towards and that some ideas are good and some are bad and goodness and badness of ideas does exist.
A lot of your criticisms could be levied against the Arab world, they are absolutely tribal, in a lot of ways they are backwards, they ended up facing a period of massive humiliation because in spite of a fairly warlike ethos they we're just rolled over by the West in the world wars, and that's one of the reasons why they've returned to the highly conservative religious doctrines that they're in right now. None of the criticisms of the Arabs change the fact that their work ended up helping to fuel the Western Renaissance.
Also note that the advancements of the Renaissance were not towards a return to classical culture. What resulted was a synthesis of Christian culture and classical culture which actually ultimately resulted in modernism. This suggests that the west, even if strongly affected by Japanese modernism, isn't going to just move into that but into something different based on the cultural zeitgeist at the time, for better or for worse.
Historically, it makes sense to consider Japan as a contemporary modern state, and the west's nations as contemporary postmodern states. The people who rebuilt Japan after World War 2 were somewhat conservative -- businessmen and military men -- and so rebuilt the world to the ethos they understood, which was modernism. You can see this in their media which may question narratives but does not wholesale reject them. Japan is a fundamentally conservative country who modernized because they realized if they did not the colonial powers would eat them whole just as they did to much of the modern world in the era before World War 1.
Both the west and Japan use the trope of the bad guy who turns out not to have been a bad guy after all. There's a big difference in how the two accomplish this trope, however. The west believes in destroying existing standards and narratives, so it asks the question "Maybe what Dr. Evil is trying to do isn't so bad after all? From another perspective maybe trying to stop him from using his moon laser to blow up the earth is wrong?". Japan derives this trope from the Chinese stories "Journey to the west" in which the evil can be chastened to understand they have been wrong and convinced (through either force or reason) to change their evil ways and become good, suggesting that there is a good and that people ought to strive towards that good.
Modernism isn't perfect, mind you. There's a reason why it ultimately failed in the west despite its overwhelming successes. It helps align entire peoples towards a set goal, it has a focus on rationality and moral certitude which helps ensure modernist people are good people. It has a drive towards progress with a positive end goal in mind but that drive can push a people to feel morally justified to go well beyond what would normally be considered just. The world wars shattered the modernist mindset in part because they showed that the European man was not as morally perfect as his modernist ideals suggest he was.
On the other hand, modernism is incredibly powerful as an ideology. It allowed tiny Great Britain, an island nation so tiny you could barely find it on a map if you weren't looking carefully, to take over an empire so massive the sun never set on it. It produced almost every technology we consider important today. It massively increased the human population and increased the quality of life of people. Look at Japan, and consider that a tiny island nation is a cultural and manufacturing powerhouse, renowned around the world despite the country being an insular backwater just 200 years ago before the arrival of Commodore Perry's ironclad steamships.
I sometimes think of Japan as similar to the Muslim world during its golden age during the time after the fall of the Roman empire. The west lost a lot during the fall of that empire, but the Muslim world was still carrying on philosophical traditions of antiquity -- both maintaining transcripts and building on them. When that work finally made it back to the west, it sparked the renaissance as the wisdom of antiquity combined with the internal advancements of Europe at that time to produce something new and powerful. I tend to think that Japan is successful in part because there's a thirst for the positive traits of modernism in the west. Entire generations of kids are growing up not watching the dreck being produced by Hollywood for the most part, and instead is gravitating towards the modern storytelling of Japan. It's only a matter of time until that fact ends up leeching into the culture and media of the west, perhaps seeing a postmodern resurgence of modernism.
Both the west and Japan use the trope of the bad guy who turns out not to have been a bad guy after all. There's a big difference in how the two accomplish this trope, however. The west believes in destroying existing standards and narratives, so it asks the question "Maybe what Dr. Evil is trying to do isn't so bad after all? From another perspective maybe trying to stop him from using his moon laser to blow up the earth is wrong?". Japan derives this trope from the Chinese stories "Journey to the west" in which the evil can be chastened to understand they have been wrong and convinced (through either force or reason) to change their evil ways and become good, suggesting that there is a good and that people ought to strive towards that good.
Modernism isn't perfect, mind you. There's a reason why it ultimately failed in the west despite its overwhelming successes. It helps align entire peoples towards a set goal, it has a focus on rationality and moral certitude which helps ensure modernist people are good people. It has a drive towards progress with a positive end goal in mind but that drive can push a people to feel morally justified to go well beyond what would normally be considered just. The world wars shattered the modernist mindset in part because they showed that the European man was not as morally perfect as his modernist ideals suggest he was.
On the other hand, modernism is incredibly powerful as an ideology. It allowed tiny Great Britain, an island nation so tiny you could barely find it on a map if you weren't looking carefully, to take over an empire so massive the sun never set on it. It produced almost every technology we consider important today. It massively increased the human population and increased the quality of life of people. Look at Japan, and consider that a tiny island nation is a cultural and manufacturing powerhouse, renowned around the world despite the country being an insular backwater just 200 years ago before the arrival of Commodore Perry's ironclad steamships.
I sometimes think of Japan as similar to the Muslim world during its golden age during the time after the fall of the Roman empire. The west lost a lot during the fall of that empire, but the Muslim world was still carrying on philosophical traditions of antiquity -- both maintaining transcripts and building on them. When that work finally made it back to the west, it sparked the renaissance as the wisdom of antiquity combined with the internal advancements of Europe at that time to produce something new and powerful. I tend to think that Japan is successful in part because there's a thirst for the positive traits of modernism in the west. Entire generations of kids are growing up not watching the dreck being produced by Hollywood for the most part, and instead is gravitating towards the modern storytelling of Japan. It's only a matter of time until that fact ends up leeching into the culture and media of the west, perhaps seeing a postmodern resurgence of modernism.
I was reading "Enough with this slow life! I was reincarnated as a High elf and now I'm bored volume 7" the same day I wrote the article about the Matrix, and it had a great scene in the first third of the book that proves my point. Spoilers, I guess.
In the story, we've seen the main character spend decades learning to fight with a sword to honor his teacher. We've seen him master magic with a great mage. We've seen him make friends with many different people, and become a world-class blacksmith and later learn to make magical weapons. We've seen him help build a nation, and we've seen him help to win a war.
He is approached by one of four true dragons in this world asking "Do you want me to destroy this world?", and he had previously made friends with that dragon but he said "No, and if you try I'll fight you". The dragon was his friend and took that as proof that the world was still worth saving so they go off to fight another high elf who wanted to destroy the planet to kill all the humans.
The two of them in their capacity as high elves are roughly equal, but he's slightly stronger with a bow. His opponent is surrounded by the spirits of dead high elves from the war that broke her heart and made her want to destroy the world. With his century of mastery of the sword he learned from the humans, coupled with the sword he crafted with lessons he learned from the dwarves teaching him blacksmithing imbued with magic the mages taught him, he was stronger than the other high elf and would be capable of beating her, except with the spirits of the dead high elves around her he'd have to kill her, and he despaired because he didn't want to kill her. As he prepared to do what was required, the spirits from his village alongside all the spirits he'd met in the blacksmithing forges, and in the waters he sailed, and in the wind against his back as he walked, and in the statues he created from stone came to back him up. It never said it out loud, but it was obvious that this battle was actually about the connections each fighter had gained, and it wasn't even close. With all the connections he'd formed with all kinds of people through his travels he was able to stop the other high elf without killing her, and that thread of the story ended (One of the story's core themes is that there's a lot going on because the high elf lives for 1000 years, 300 years longer than even the elves, so we revisit people and places and their descendants, so there's another book and a half)
It hits so many different points I mentioned in that post -- winning through superior diligence and industriousness, winning through connections with everyone you've met along the way, focusing not just on winning but on being just in doing so. One side had the angry spirits of dead soldiers, the other side had the spirits of nature. One side actively sent its spirits to attack, the other only used its spirits to defend.
I actually got a bit misty eyed at the whole thing, because it was a beautiful moment after 7 volumes, even if it was just a tiny piece of the book (I said in another post that this series of books are super dense)
In the story, we've seen the main character spend decades learning to fight with a sword to honor his teacher. We've seen him master magic with a great mage. We've seen him make friends with many different people, and become a world-class blacksmith and later learn to make magical weapons. We've seen him help build a nation, and we've seen him help to win a war.
He is approached by one of four true dragons in this world asking "Do you want me to destroy this world?", and he had previously made friends with that dragon but he said "No, and if you try I'll fight you". The dragon was his friend and took that as proof that the world was still worth saving so they go off to fight another high elf who wanted to destroy the planet to kill all the humans.
The two of them in their capacity as high elves are roughly equal, but he's slightly stronger with a bow. His opponent is surrounded by the spirits of dead high elves from the war that broke her heart and made her want to destroy the world. With his century of mastery of the sword he learned from the humans, coupled with the sword he crafted with lessons he learned from the dwarves teaching him blacksmithing imbued with magic the mages taught him, he was stronger than the other high elf and would be capable of beating her, except with the spirits of the dead high elves around her he'd have to kill her, and he despaired because he didn't want to kill her. As he prepared to do what was required, the spirits from his village alongside all the spirits he'd met in the blacksmithing forges, and in the waters he sailed, and in the wind against his back as he walked, and in the statues he created from stone came to back him up. It never said it out loud, but it was obvious that this battle was actually about the connections each fighter had gained, and it wasn't even close. With all the connections he'd formed with all kinds of people through his travels he was able to stop the other high elf without killing her, and that thread of the story ended (One of the story's core themes is that there's a lot going on because the high elf lives for 1000 years, 300 years longer than even the elves, so we revisit people and places and their descendants, so there's another book and a half)
It hits so many different points I mentioned in that post -- winning through superior diligence and industriousness, winning through connections with everyone you've met along the way, focusing not just on winning but on being just in doing so. One side had the angry spirits of dead soldiers, the other side had the spirits of nature. One side actively sent its spirits to attack, the other only used its spirits to defend.
I actually got a bit misty eyed at the whole thing, because it was a beautiful moment after 7 volumes, even if it was just a tiny piece of the book (I said in another post that this series of books are super dense)
So I just had a neat thought as to how the US could help solve several problems at once.
Something like 50% of land in the west is owned by the federal government. Look up a map of it, it's nuts.
Just sell the land.
1. Massive money immediately
2. Lots of land to build new homes or industrial plants or whatever, probably a baby boomers and an economic bump
3. Reduced overhead from having to deal with all that land
A new wild west.
Something like 50% of land in the west is owned by the federal government. Look up a map of it, it's nuts.
Just sell the land.
1. Massive money immediately
2. Lots of land to build new homes or industrial plants or whatever, probably a baby boomers and an economic bump
3. Reduced overhead from having to deal with all that land
A new wild west.
Why? Because it's current year little Timmy! Now take your violent assault like a good little subject!
The New York Times, the Washington Post and MSNBC put out articles telling us how yummy it is on the same day I'm sure it's really delicious and nutritious and everyone will eat it.
No offense to these people being all self sufficient and shit, but other than the first guy who at least has it in its own location, the second guy can't bathe and the third wakes up in the morning smelling like chicken shit and piss...
Build a shed, bro....
Build a shed, bro....
The Matrix is interesting because arguably only the first movie was classic. The movies that came afterwards were big and flashy but lacked the impact of the first.
I remember seeing Matrix 2 in theatres, and the scene on the highway is really a good example. There was a massive car chase, a fight on a transport truck, lots of explosions and flash and kung-fu fighting, but I was bored. Back then, televisions were vacuum tubes, and I was watching the movie on a giant movie theatre screen in high definition, but I was bored.
The first film had quiet moments, but it also had tension because a lot of the characters in the movie do die. We see several people die over the course of the movie and they don't come back, they aren't saved by a deus ex machina. It seemed contrived the way in Matrix 2 they basically needed to teleport Neo to the other side of the planet so he could be kept out of a scene and he had to superman it back.
Ironically though, you *can* do a great story about a character on God mode. Japan has an entire genre of anime where the main character gets cheat powers.
Another way isekai handles the "god mode" problem is to make it so you don't care the MC is overpowered. In The Matrix, the end of the first movie chastens the Matrix. They know Neo is The One, and they respect him deeply even though they're opposing him. It sort of means there's nowhere to go. He's overpowered and everyone knows he's overpowered and everyone is scared of him. By contrast, in isekai often the enemies think they stand a chance and so they use the perceived imbalance to really kick the dog, really make the audience hate them. The fun of a "God Mode" character is seeing an overconfident and really evil antagonist get their comeuppance. They thought they were in control, but in reality they were just a fly buzzing around the MC waiting to be righteously swatted.
Isekai can also make their cheat powers interesting by making learning them an arc. Matrix 2 for example could have shown that the two things Neo did at the end of Matrix 1 were not enough to deal with the strongest threats the Matrix could muster, and so he'd have to use hard work and diligence to learn the fundamentals of his powers and become much more powerful so he could overcome the greatest threats. This could have an inherent tension in The Matrix because he could only train on his powers while inside The Matrix, but being inside the Matrix would also be the one time he was actually at risk from it as well. Instead, we got a whole Zion subplot.
One of the reasons this kind of training arc also works is that it demonstrates that the power alone isn't what makes the hero heroic. Most isekai protagonists with cheat powers are often told their powers are useless and won't be beneficial to anyone. The reason the protagonist is successful isn't just the cheat powers, but because of the hard work, diligence, and ingenuity that helped them master their powers. Outside of Isekai, consider Naruto. He starts off as hated, then has this gross red chakra that makes him more powerful but takes away his humanity and doesn't make him all-powerful as most high-level opponents defeat him in that state. He has to learn how to master chakra and the rasengan, but he also has to use his innate virtue to communicate with, tame, and later befriend the nine tails to change the nasty red chakra into something that turns him into a glowing being of overwhelming power. He never would have earned that power without his innate virtue and his clever intuitions about how to connect with a being that is a prisoner inside of him (with the help of other jinkurichi like Killer Bee).
The final movie could have meant finally transcending the Matrix altogether and having Neo (and his friends who could have been somewhat powered up by the new wisdom Neo gains during his training to keep them relevant) entering the machine mind. The concept of an Agent Smith who sucks people up like a virus is still acceptable, but the movies never investigate the idea that Smith gains his power through non-virtuous means while Neo would earn his power through acts of virtue. In the actual movie, Neo gains real-world Matrix powers that are not in any way investigated or explained for no apparent reason than he's special. Smith ultimately wins because he's more powerful, and only through a philosophical deus ex machina does Neo defeat Smith. It was a cool fight, but it doesn't feel like a good payoff, and it doesn't really feel earned. If instead Neo gains some measure of control over the robots in the physical world because of his brave actions in the virtual world, then that could help resolve part of the Zion plot. In the end, you could still have a major fight between The One Neo and The Many Smith, but it could be framed in such a way that Neo's fight is with power he gained through discipline, virtue, and bravery and the support and love of his friends while Smith's powers were gained through greed, vice, and cowardice but rejecting friendship, and in the end Neo wins because of the attributes inherent to that virtuous rise to power, and Smith would lose due to the attributes inherent to his vicious rise to power.
One final thing is you could tie the concept of virtue vs. vice, of the one among many vs. many subsuming the one and you could help win the war against the machines by convincing the ruling class of the machines that humans and machines can work together after all. There could even be a character who similar to how Dozer and Tank exist entirely in the real world exist entirely in the Matrix. I mean a main character who can join in on Matrix adventures, perhaps Neo's teacher in the second film who is a rogue AI program or something. In that way, the end of the machine war and the end of The Matrix would be representative of Neo's virtue rather than just the fact he's machine Jesus.
I think the reason the Wachowskis didn't go this route lies in the first movie: "Simulations and Simulacra", one of the defining tomes of postmodernism. The rejection of overarching narratives means that ultimately they couldn't accept the victory being because the good guy was virtuous and the bad guy was vicious, because that conception breaks the ideology. This explains to an extent why the Matrix movies have been so disappointing since the first one, and it also explains why they didn't take these clear and obvious steps that would have made the trilogy likely one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. Their ideology simply couldn't accept a broad narrative like that.
I remember seeing Matrix 2 in theatres, and the scene on the highway is really a good example. There was a massive car chase, a fight on a transport truck, lots of explosions and flash and kung-fu fighting, but I was bored. Back then, televisions were vacuum tubes, and I was watching the movie on a giant movie theatre screen in high definition, but I was bored.
The first film had quiet moments, but it also had tension because a lot of the characters in the movie do die. We see several people die over the course of the movie and they don't come back, they aren't saved by a deus ex machina. It seemed contrived the way in Matrix 2 they basically needed to teleport Neo to the other side of the planet so he could be kept out of a scene and he had to superman it back.
Ironically though, you *can* do a great story about a character on God mode. Japan has an entire genre of anime where the main character gets cheat powers.
Another way isekai handles the "god mode" problem is to make it so you don't care the MC is overpowered. In The Matrix, the end of the first movie chastens the Matrix. They know Neo is The One, and they respect him deeply even though they're opposing him. It sort of means there's nowhere to go. He's overpowered and everyone knows he's overpowered and everyone is scared of him. By contrast, in isekai often the enemies think they stand a chance and so they use the perceived imbalance to really kick the dog, really make the audience hate them. The fun of a "God Mode" character is seeing an overconfident and really evil antagonist get their comeuppance. They thought they were in control, but in reality they were just a fly buzzing around the MC waiting to be righteously swatted.
Isekai can also make their cheat powers interesting by making learning them an arc. Matrix 2 for example could have shown that the two things Neo did at the end of Matrix 1 were not enough to deal with the strongest threats the Matrix could muster, and so he'd have to use hard work and diligence to learn the fundamentals of his powers and become much more powerful so he could overcome the greatest threats. This could have an inherent tension in The Matrix because he could only train on his powers while inside The Matrix, but being inside the Matrix would also be the one time he was actually at risk from it as well. Instead, we got a whole Zion subplot.
One of the reasons this kind of training arc also works is that it demonstrates that the power alone isn't what makes the hero heroic. Most isekai protagonists with cheat powers are often told their powers are useless and won't be beneficial to anyone. The reason the protagonist is successful isn't just the cheat powers, but because of the hard work, diligence, and ingenuity that helped them master their powers. Outside of Isekai, consider Naruto. He starts off as hated, then has this gross red chakra that makes him more powerful but takes away his humanity and doesn't make him all-powerful as most high-level opponents defeat him in that state. He has to learn how to master chakra and the rasengan, but he also has to use his innate virtue to communicate with, tame, and later befriend the nine tails to change the nasty red chakra into something that turns him into a glowing being of overwhelming power. He never would have earned that power without his innate virtue and his clever intuitions about how to connect with a being that is a prisoner inside of him (with the help of other jinkurichi like Killer Bee).
The final movie could have meant finally transcending the Matrix altogether and having Neo (and his friends who could have been somewhat powered up by the new wisdom Neo gains during his training to keep them relevant) entering the machine mind. The concept of an Agent Smith who sucks people up like a virus is still acceptable, but the movies never investigate the idea that Smith gains his power through non-virtuous means while Neo would earn his power through acts of virtue. In the actual movie, Neo gains real-world Matrix powers that are not in any way investigated or explained for no apparent reason than he's special. Smith ultimately wins because he's more powerful, and only through a philosophical deus ex machina does Neo defeat Smith. It was a cool fight, but it doesn't feel like a good payoff, and it doesn't really feel earned. If instead Neo gains some measure of control over the robots in the physical world because of his brave actions in the virtual world, then that could help resolve part of the Zion plot. In the end, you could still have a major fight between The One Neo and The Many Smith, but it could be framed in such a way that Neo's fight is with power he gained through discipline, virtue, and bravery and the support and love of his friends while Smith's powers were gained through greed, vice, and cowardice but rejecting friendship, and in the end Neo wins because of the attributes inherent to that virtuous rise to power, and Smith would lose due to the attributes inherent to his vicious rise to power.
One final thing is you could tie the concept of virtue vs. vice, of the one among many vs. many subsuming the one and you could help win the war against the machines by convincing the ruling class of the machines that humans and machines can work together after all. There could even be a character who similar to how Dozer and Tank exist entirely in the real world exist entirely in the Matrix. I mean a main character who can join in on Matrix adventures, perhaps Neo's teacher in the second film who is a rogue AI program or something. In that way, the end of the machine war and the end of The Matrix would be representative of Neo's virtue rather than just the fact he's machine Jesus.
I think the reason the Wachowskis didn't go this route lies in the first movie: "Simulations and Simulacra", one of the defining tomes of postmodernism. The rejection of overarching narratives means that ultimately they couldn't accept the victory being because the good guy was virtuous and the bad guy was vicious, because that conception breaks the ideology. This explains to an extent why the Matrix movies have been so disappointing since the first one, and it also explains why they didn't take these clear and obvious steps that would have made the trilogy likely one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. Their ideology simply couldn't accept a broad narrative like that.
I still don't know how that guy sits like that.
Sitting like that would cause me tremendous amounts of pain.
Sitting like that would cause me tremendous amounts of pain.