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The ethics of Immanuel Kant, also called Deontological ethics, came as a challenge to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (i.e. the greatest good for the greatest number of people) during the mid to late 18th century. When considering the philosophy of Kant, one must think about a number of his principles. One of them being Kant’s notion of a morally good action.
For Kant, an action is good if the intent behind it is good. Kant does not consider the consequences as important as the intent behind the action. Furthermore, an action is good if it can be universalized, meaning if one can say that if one can live in a world where everyone does the aforementioned action all the time, it is a good action.
Finally, one has a responsibility to be morally good and one must choose to freely commit morally good acts. There have been many modern films that have raised questions that align with the questions posed by Kant.
1. The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)
“The Dark Knight” poses some of the most intriguing Kantian dilemmas. Batman faces the daunting decision of having to choose between saving the love of his life, Rachel Dawes, or the person who may have the ability to become the true savior of Gotham, Harvey Dent. His choice to save Dent sets forth a chain of events that leads to Dent becoming the notorious villain Two-Face, who is bent on revenge. Batman acted morally, according to Kant. His intention in saving Dent would have resulted there to no longer being a need for Batman, and would help initiate a reform within the corrupt city government.
Though his choice is moral according to Kant, paradoxically, Bruce Wayne does not fit the categorical imperative as he discourages imitators. This creates even more questions and further complicates the nature of Kantian ethics. Batman’s intentions, his message and his symbol to inspire people who can change the system, was initially behind the wave of crime instead of inspiring more vigilantes, which would simply result in more chaos.
The Joker represents the antithesis to Kantian ethics. His actions and intentions are simply aimed at causing chaos throughout the city. He forces Batman to question his own message and symbol through his kidnapping of both Dawes and Dent. He makes Wayne choose between himself as a man and what he stands for as Batman. The Joker’s intention is to question ethics on a whole and bring about a sense of nihilism.
Furthermore, his action of making the citizens of Gotham choose whether or not to blow up the boat of prisoners, and vice versa, represents a challenge of Kantian ethics. Here, the categorical imperative is questioned (i.e. would one live in a world where everyone chose to blow up a boat full of prisoners?), and here utilitarianism is also questioned. Is the greatest good for the greatest number of people worth the bloody consequences?
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Finally, the means by which Batman is able to defeat the Joker presents a Kantian ethical dilemma. Batman uses enhanced, obtrusive monitoring software. This prompts Lucius Fox to give Wayne an ultimatum: if he goes along with this, the software must be destroyed afterward.
Kant’s notion of duty here is put to the test; Batman has a responsibility to defeat the Joker, but the question is how far should that duty extend. In other words, would one care to live in a world in which the only way to deter evil is to have our privacy invaded? In today’s society, this question is hardly a hypothetical.
2. Groundhog Day (1993, Harold Ramis)
“Groundhog Day” presents the two ends of Kantian ethics. The story is known by most moviegoers. Phil Connors, an egotistical weatherman, begins to experience the same day over and over again in the town of Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day. Connors’ initial response to his newfound circumstance is one of hedonism. He steals, drinks heavily, drives recklessly, seduces the town’s women, and attempts to manipulate his attractive coworker, Rita (Andie MacDowell), by finding out more and more about her each day.
Connors eventually comes to the realization that he cannot continue on this way. He sees the hollowness of his actions and even attempts suicide a number of times. Connors comes to a decision that aligns with Kantian ethics.
He eventually decides to make the lives of the townspeople better through his actions. His new actions reflect a Kantian categorical imperative, one in which a person acts without self interest to make the lives of those around him better. Through his new perspective, he is able to escape the recurring cycle.
3. The Insider (1999, Michael Mann)
We now turn to Kantian ethics applied to the corporate world (something that perhaps is not done enough). “The Insider” tells the story of tobacco corporate whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. He appeared on 60 Minutes and stated how the tobacco company Brown & Williamson increased the amount of nicotine in their cigarettes to make them more addictive.
Wigand’s actions led to numerous lawsuits being filed, and his actions bring up a number of important questions relating to Kantian ethics. According to Kant, one has a duty to the common good. In the film, Wigand faces the question of which is more important, his duty to alert the public or his contractual obligation to his employer to keep quiet about the information he knows.
One can also apply Kantian ethics to Wigand’s motives. On the one hand, one can see how he would want to alert the public of such shocking health concerns in his company’s products. However, conversely, Wigand was fired from Brown & Williamson and one has to question whether he would have chosen to breach his contract if he knew he would be fired. Wigand acted correctly according to Kant’s categorical imperative. However, it is still unclear if Kant would deem Wigand’s actions moral because it is so hard to establish his intent.
4. Dead Man Walking (1995, Tim Robbins)
Here, we have another film dealing with the death penalty, but from a very different point of view. In this thought-provoking film, Susan Sarandon plays Sister Helen Prejean, a nun who counsels convicted killer Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn).
Sister Prejean perfectly exemplifies Kant’s notions of duty and intent. She attempts to provide solace to both Poncelet and the victim’s family. She has no personal gain at stake in her actions; she freely chooses, amidst anger coming from both sides, to go to great lengths to provide solace to a lost soul and a grieving family.
Kant himself had a view on capital punishment. He felt that it violated a person’s rights because they were simply being used as a means to promote deterrence, and therefore not being treated as a full person.
5. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
Fans of Woody Allen know that there is always a philosophical edge to his films. After “Interiors”, his 1978 follow-up to “Annie Hall”, he began to delve deeper into darker subject matters. And what subject can be darker than murder?
In the film, Judah (Martin Landau), a successful eye doctor, is at risk of having his family and business torn apart by his mistress (Anjelica Huston). Judah’s response after pondering the situation is to have her killed, and pin the murder on a lifelong criminal, who he has never met. Judah ends up getting away with this but not without internal suffering.
This conclusion is contrary to Kant’s categorical imperative. Judah’s actions cannot be universalized. One may come away from this film thinking, “okay, so being non-virtuous really does pay off”. However, during the final scene as Judah and Allen’s character sit discussing Judah’s crime (in the form of a movie idea), Allen’s character subverts Judah’s idea of rationalization.
Cliff Stern: “Here’s what I would do. I would have him turn himself in. ‘Cause then, you see, your story assumes tragic proportions because, in the absence of a God, he is forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.”
Judah Rosenthal: “But that’s fiction. That’s movies. You see too many movies. I’m talkin’ about reality. I mean, if you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie.”
Here the movie assumes a sort of self-consciousness, and Allen subverts the idea that this conception of murder can be universalized.
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Movie: The Matrix: Neo as the missing link and messiah; Christ's body as the red pill
Audiolabel cover maker 6.0 serial. The Matrix themes, Mythic Godman, The Chosen One
Matrix movie
Movie: The Matrix: Neo as the missing link and messiah; Christ's body as the red pill
>>>Like McKenna liked to point out as archaic revival or re-evolution, this shift in understanding *and* shift in experiencing will in fact be *the* essential 'missing link', more important than the familiar idea of the 'missing link' in the Theory of Evolution.When you look at the forces lined up against this thoroughly entheogenic reconception of religion happening, the conflicts of Church vs. Galileo, or of the right wing against evolution seem almost picayune -- trifling, paltry, and petty.
As a key theorist of the maximal entheogen theory of religion, I am the missing link, the Neo, the one, the savior, the Jewish messiah.You were right, Agent Smith: everything was destined.
I suspect Christianity was largely a later invention based on the Renaissance-era Jewish idea of the messiah.So I am reading not on 'Kabbalah' (yawn) but on broader Jewish mysticism including the 'messiah' metaphor.The movie The Matrix isn't an allusion to Christianity; rather, The Matrix and Christianity are both systems of allusion to entheogenic mystic altered state experiential insight.
Matrix resonates with Christian themes and takes advantage of the resonance but Matrix does not point to Christianity; it points beyond the Christian system of allegory to that which Christianity itself points to: transcendent experiential insight resulting from swallowing the medicine of awakening.The blue pill is the placebo sacrament used in today's fallen and apostate so-called 'churches'.
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>>Morpheus contacts Neo just as the machines (posing as sinister 'agents') are trying to keep Neo from finding out any more. When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question 'what is the Matrix?' (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo 'Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.'
>>The film as a whole and especially the choosing scene is deeply compelling. Why is the choice between what you believe you know and an unknown 'real' truth so fascinating? How could a choice possibly be made? On the one hand everyone you love and everything that you have built you life upon. One the other the promise only of truth.
>>The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do need truth to live. The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth.
>>The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced.
>>However, in order to investigate which course of action to take we need to investigate why the choice is faced. Why should we even have to decide whether to pursue truth?
>>The answer in short, is inquisitiveness. Many people throughout human existence have questioned and enquired. Most of them have not been scientists or doctors or philosophers, but simply ordinary people asking 'what if?' or 'why?' Asking these questions ultimately leads us to a choice. Do you continue to ask and investigate, or do you stop and never ask again? This in essence, is the question posed to Neo in the film.
>>So what are the advantages of taking the blue pill? As one of the characters in the film says, 'ignorance is bliss' Essentially, if the truth is unknown, or you believe that you know the truth, what is there to question or worry about?
The question was written too garbled to answer:
'Can anyone see an allegory of a different kind in the two films ( .. ) choice and free will,symbolism and perhaps drug psychosis,.
Allegory for Christian themes is not different than allegory for choice and free will and allegory for psychotomimetic hallucinogenic drugs.
Choice and freewill is perhaps the central philosophical issue of the Matrix movie series.Many religionists and philosophers agree that there is no issue more important and central than freewill and determinism.
Regarding allegory for drug psychosis, an ancient metaphor is that that ordinary consciousness is unreal, dreaming, and inebriation/drunkenness; whereas the sacred food and drink brings reality, awakening, and sobriety.
Sacred food and drink, metaphorized as'mixed wine', means visionary plants such as opium, datura, cannabis, mushrooms, henbane, thornapple, scopolamine, and salvia.
The Matrix Ethical Issues
The Matrix contains metaphorical allusions to the full standard set of themes, including so-called 'religious' or 'Christian' themes, freewill vs. determinism themes (which are actually core for religion), and entheogenic drug themes.
The meeting with the Architect is a variation of the ego death experiential realization and insight.
A description of this experience styled in the form of meeting the Architect: the person takes entheogens, walks through a maze while thinking about the nature of self-controllership and the power to make a choice, and feels drawn to an inner room (compare the child-eating Minotaur in the labyrinth) as serious doubts about self-controllership power arise, and the feeling of self-controllership is gradually suspended and examined consciously.
The Architect isn't clearly conscious, isn't clearly human, isn't clearly carbon-based -- in fact the chair on which the Architect sits is empty except for a mysterious glow.Thoughts about self-control arise in your mind of their own accord -- your thinking is seized and blinded with perceptual and conceptual feedback.Thoughts arise as from a spring from a hidden source outside the room of your mind -- thoughts about the relationship between time, change, freedom, will, control, and world.
Another perspective arises and is felt: frozen timeless block-universe determinism, with thoughts injected into the room of your mind, thoughts that logically must be laid out, according to this elegant, beautiful, harmonious conception, already in the future.TV scenario images play out all around, and you are drawn toward the exit door.You don't know what scenario is there, and you realize you cannot change it -- it is given to you timelessly by the Architect.
You realize that because you never could have coherently had any metaphysically free will, you are exempt from freewill moral agency ethics, and everyone else is exempt too, with only the Architect to praise or blame.But isn't the Architect morally liable?Perhaps, but how could the Architect be subject to ethics, when the Architect runs the whole world and conventional ethical agency is an illusory logical contradiction?
To 'balance the cosmic accounts' upon eliminating at a sweep all the world's metaphysical freewill moral culpability, the only reward and punishment would have to happen on the mythic plane, and it would have to be the Architect himself, who doesn't even really have a body, and is outside spacetime.
Your will is being led toward the door and you know you cannot but follow it; your hands are tied with respect to originating your own control-thoughts.Fear and distrust, apprehension arises from the hidden spring of thoughts: how can you trust the Architect?The Architect injects thoughts showing you his ability to make you will things that directly and emphatically, specifically contradict your accustomed will.
Looking closer at your thoughts or mental constructs than before, even your control-thoughts and feeling-thoughts, they are labelled 'authored by the Architect -- legal property of the Architect -- part of the Architect'.You are made to genuflect in acknowledgement of your relationship as control-agent to the Architect.You are sent out to tell others your experiences, knowing some will be made to understand.
You were injected with excited ecstatic trembling fear, realization of your precarious situation out of your apparent control, but you find that as soon as you are made to genuflect in acknowledgement of your controllership relationship to the Architect, the fear is replaced by joy and calm and amazement.
As you are led by your mysteriously arising will-movements to the exit door, your accustomed natural degree of self-confidence in your controllership returns, though now you are able to remember the other, timeless perspective as well.
The movie series The Matrix is much more mystic and gnostic than the movie series Lord of the Rings.I like Matrix and dislike Rings.Are there any Matrix philosophy books yet that include coverage of the final part of the trilogy?
Matrix movie
My egodeath-related selections from
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Inevitability -- with a more linear accent than timeless frozen block-universe determinism -- is a common theme here.Spiritual cybernetic self-controllership ego death through realizing inevitability.
Neo: You’re programs.
Rama: Oh yes. I am the power plant systems manager for recycling operations. My wife is an interactive software programmer. She is highly creative.
..
R: No, I don’t mind. King of thieves cheats 2019. The answer is simple…I love my daughter very much. I find her to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But where we are from, that is not enough. Every program that is created must have a purpose…if it does not, it is deleted. I went to the Frenchman to save my daughter….You do not understand.
N: I’ve just have never…
R: Heard of programs speak of love.
N: It is a human emotion.
R: No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies…I see that you are in love. Can you tell me what you would give to hold on to that connection?
N: Anything.
R: Then perhaps the reason you are here is not so different from the reason that I am here.
Merv: The eyes of The Oracle. I have told you before there is no escaping the natrue of the universe. It is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where some see coincidence, I see consequence. Where others see chance, I see…cost. Bring me the eyes of The Oracle…and I will give you back your savior. It seems a perfectly fair and reasonable deal to me. Yes…no?
..
Trinity: You want to make a deal? How about this…you give me Neo or we all die right here, right now.
Merv: Interesting deal. You are really ready to die for this man.
T: Believe it.
Persephone: She’ll do it. If she has to she’ll kill every one of us. She’s in love…
Merv: It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.
T: Times up. What’s it going to be Merv?
Smith: The great and powerful oracle. We meet at last. I suppose you’ve been expecting me. The all knowing oracle is never surprised. How can she be…she knows everything. But if that’s true then why is she here, if she knew I was coming why wouldn’t she leave. (Smith throws cookies from the table) Maybe you knew I was going to do that, maybe you didn’t. If you did that means you baked those cookies and set that plate right there deliberately, purposefully…which means that you’re sitting there also deliberately, purposefully.
..
Oracle: Do what you’re here to do.
Matrix Movie Artificial Intelligence
Smith: Yes ma’am.
Smith changes The Oracle into a Smith, gaining the eyes of The Oracle.
The Matrix Philosophy
Smith: This is my world! My world!
Fight, Neo on ground not moving.
Smith: Wait…I’ve seen this is it, this is the end. Yes…you were laying right there, just like that. And I…I…I stand here, right here…and I’m suppose to say something. I say…everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo.
Neo starts to get up.
Smith: What? What’d I just say? No…no, this isn’t right, this can’t be right. Get away from me!
Neo: What are you afraid of?
Smith: It’s a trick.
Neo: You were right Smith…you were always right…it was inevitable.
Smith puts hand into Neo, changing him into a Smith.
Smith: Is it over?
The newly transformed Smith shakes his head “yes.”
Neo is then “crucified” in the real world, there is the appearance of a cross on his chest during this. All the Smiths disappear.
The Source: It is done.
Neo’s body is dragged toward the machine and there is the appearance that Neo’s consciousness still percieves the machine’s light energy.
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