Matrix Reloaded: Calvinist

Another Reloaded point, why I think it’s kinda Calvinist.

So one point I think the movie makes that I really like is that just because you feel like you have free will doesn’t mean that you actually do. I think the movie keeps pounding the point that everyone has a purpose and function, and they end up doing it whether they realize it or not. A lot of the machine programs clearly and explicitly realize their purpose and how they’re fulfilling it. The humans, especially Neo, reject fate and whatever, but they still end up doing what’s predicted. So it doesn’t matter whether you think you’re free or not, you’re not really.

I like that because it’s not an absurd idea. In fact, if you’re a Calvinist, it’s what you believe, roughly. At the very least in regards to certain decisions (accepting Christ), possibly for others. If you think about it, it’s kind of absurd to reject free will. Because we’re clearly free, we make decisions every single moment. And we choose to accept or reject Christ. We don’t wait for something to happen, we make that decision.

What Calvinism posits is that even though we clearly feel free, we really aren’t. That’s a bold idea when you think about it. That your experience says nothing about what is actually true. And Reloaded plays with that idea a lot which I really liked. There’s a lot of discussion about whether people are free or not in the movie and I think it’s the same reason as with Calvinism. It boldly says we aren’t even though we feel we are.

Anyway, yeah, I find the Architect scene fascinating. What do all those screens mean? I thought at the time they represented all of Neo’s possible responses. Which is interesting. Maybe that means that the future isn’t fixed, but there are possibilities with probabilities. Some things might be certain, other things just probabilistic. That’s a very interesting idea to me. The Architect uses language as such, in regards to I think Zion, saying if left unchecked it leads to an increasing probability of disaster. Probability of events, not certainty. Interesting.

I read somewhere people were positing the screens represent realities in a way, like a quantum machine. Similar ideas to the stuff in Timeline kinda, if you read that. I dunno, that’s another interesting idea.