The Matrix and the Heresy of Progress

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Good evening. This
is Radio Free

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Beszel. I'm Alphonse.
Tonight: gnosis,

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or knowledge and changing
the world. Following an

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election that went the way
I really didn't want

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it to, I remember standing
on a platform for a

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train in the city. And all
around me was concrete

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and steel and glass, but
I felt suddenly as if

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that's not what I was seeing:
as if behind that

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there were these invisible
forces flows of money,

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flows of political power.
That the city was not

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made of things, but the city
was made of the power

0:40
that had caused the election
to go the way it had.

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The real movie that describes
the present

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moment is The Matrix. It's
referred to all the

0:49
time when people talk about
red pills and when

0:51
people talk about waking
up. For in the movie,

0:54
the main character, Neo,
believes that he lives

0:57
as a normal person in the
real world. But then

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he's offered choice. The
choice is to take

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a blue pill and continue
with the illusion,

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or a red pill and wake
up and discover true

1:10
reality. And he takes the
red pill, and he wakes

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up and he discovers that he's
in a nightmare world

1:18
ruled by machines. But he
also discovers that he

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has the power deep within
himself to change

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that illusory world, and
even the real world.

1:29
This idea that the
world is bad, that

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the world is a prison
and an illusion,

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and behind it is a truth that
is higher and better

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where we are almost gods
who have control over

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ourselves and control over
our lives and control

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over our bodies and who we
are is not a new one.

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It goes back almost to the
birth of Christianity.

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There were a number of sects
back in the early

1:53
centuries A.D. that believed
in something

1:56
called Gnosticism and in
the idea of gnosis.

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Gnosis is knowledge - but
it's a special kind

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of knowledge. It's a knowledge
that comes from

2:08
looking deep within to learn
who we really are,

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and from that to learn what
the world really is.

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And the particular knowledge
that it reveals

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is that we are gods, or
we have parts of god,

2:21
shards of gods in our hearts.
And that the world

2:24
that we see around us is
an illusion - but beyond

2:28
that is a world where we
are eternal. That's what

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the Gnostics believed. That's
what Christianity

2:36
declared a heresy and wiped
out and destroyed

2:40
most of their books. The
contrast is evident.

2:45
Here's Genesis: "And God
said, Let the waters

2:48
under the heaven be gathered
together unto one

2:52
place, and let the dry
land appear: and it

2:55
was so. And God called
the dry land Earth;

2:59
and the gathering together
of the waters

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called he Seas: and God
saw that it was good."

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In the Bible, God is good.
God creates the world,

3:11
and the world is good. According
to the Gnostics,

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God is good for God is the
entire universe and

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we are part of God - but
the Creator is bad.

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The Creator took our fragments
of divinity and

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imprisoned them in our
fleshy bodies and in

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the material world, and
then he hid from us the

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knowledge that we are part
of something greater.

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And so it's gnosis that allows
us to escape from that prison.

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The Catholic philosopher Augusto
Del Noce, drawing

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on another Christian
philosopher, Eric Voegelin,

3:50
suggests that this idea
of gnosis has persisted

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into the modern era -
in fact that atheist

3:57
and secular philosophy
inevitably tends

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towards a kind of gnosis.
Whether we're

4:03
talking about Marxists,
socialists, progressives

4:06
or even Nazis, they share
something with these

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ancient Gnostics. Now of
course secular people

4:13
don't believe in a metaphysical
spiritual world,

4:18
so this idea of gnosis
and this idea of

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transcending the flawed
reality that we live in

4:24
has to be transferred from
the spiritual realm to

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the material realm. Instead
of living in an evil

4:31
material world, they believe
we live in an evil

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period in history. And to
transcend that we have

4:40
to transition into a future
period when there's

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a Utopian society, a better
world - as the left

4:46
often says, A better world
is possible. And to do

4:50
that means we essentially
become self-creating.

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Another expression I've
heard among the left

4:57
is the idea that the purpose
of socialism is

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to take human control of
history. And you can

5:03
see this in Marx. What
Del Noce says is the

5:07
reason that Marx rejects
god is not because of

5:09
evidence or lack of evidence
of God's existence,

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but because Marx believes
that god must

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not exist in order for
humanity to be free.

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Here's Marx: "A being
regards itself as

5:22
independent only when it
stands on its own feet;

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and it stands on its
feet only when

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it owes its existence
to itself alone.

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A man who lives by the
grace of another

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considers himself a
dependent being.

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But I live by the grace
of another completely

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if I owe him not only the
maintenance of my life

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but also its creation: if
he is the source of my life;

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and my life necessarily
has such a cause

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outside itself if it is
not my own creation."

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Marx wants us to be free; to be
free we must be self-creating.

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If we are self-creating,
there cannot be a God

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who has created us. And
so there can't be God.

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So just as with the ancient
Gnostics, Marx

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has rejected the creator
and he has rejected

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the current reality in
favor of a superior

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reality that humanity can
create for ourselves.

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For Del Noce, a Christian,
the biggest problem

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with this is that it rejects
the "order of being."

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This is a term he
uses to refer to

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an eternal hierarchy
of existence

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with God at the top,
nature at the

6:34
bottom, and humanity
in the middle.

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In other words, there is
a structure to reality

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that is unchanging. In
fact Del Noce says

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it is so stable that God
himself cannot change

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the order of being. Del Noce
has a second concern,

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which is in order to
achieve that future

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Utopia we have to destroy
the world as it is.

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Because that Utopia is
so different from what

7:02
exists today, and if that
Utopia is so good,

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if countless future generations
will benefit from

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it, from transitioning from
here to there through

7:13
some kind of revolution,
then anything that helps

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that revolution happen must
be good. Which means

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there can be no universal
values. We

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might think that lying,
murder, cruelty,

7:28
prejudice are wrong - but
if those things can be

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used to achieve the revolution,
they become good.

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And Del Noce quotes Lenin
and others to that

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effect. But then if we
achieve the revolution

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and we come out the other
side, and we have

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destroyed all the universal
values as part of the

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the flawed society that
used to exist, how can

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we then have universal values
again? We've denied

7:56
them. The only thing that
is left, Del Noce says,

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at that point is power and
inevitably oppression.

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There's another conflict
between this and the Bible.

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When Adam and Eve eat
the fruit of the tree

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of knowledge they are expelled
from the garden

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of Eden. In other words,
the Bible suggests that

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knowledge, particularly
knowledge of evil, is bad.

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And it says it again in
Ecclesiastes. Here we are:

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"The thing that hath been,
it is that which shall

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be; and that which is done
is that which shall

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be done: and there's no new
thing under the sun.

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For in much wisdom is
much grief: and he

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that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow."

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In other words, knowledge
can actually make

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us miserable. And the fact
is we can't change

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anything because there is
no new thing under the

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sun. Human existence is
cyclical, not progressive.

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Things happen again and
again in the future as

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they have happened in the
past, and attempting to

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change that is futile. This
isn't just a Christian

9:09
idea. Here's the Chinese Tao,
the Le Guin version:

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"The more experts a country
has, the more of a

9:18
mess it's in. The more ingenious
the skillful are,

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the more monstrous their
inventions. People get

9:24
hard to manage when they
know too much. Whoever

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rules by intellect is a
curse upon the land.

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Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it."

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The Tao - "the way" - is like
a flow in the world,

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something that we can't
change - or if we can

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change it's only by struggling
really really hard.

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But if we actually want
to be effective, we're

9:46
better off flowing with
it instead of fighting

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existence, instead of fighting
reality, we need

9:52
to find a way to accept and
go along. And this is

9:55
the wisdom message in both
the Bible and the Tao.

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So we're left with a dilemma.
On the one hand,

10:04
we can see the injustice
in the world. We can

10:07
see that many of the things
on the surface are but

10:10
myths or narratives that
conceal those injustices

10:12
from us. But this knowledge
does not make us

10:15
happy, and it may not give
us the power to change

10:18
things. And if we do change
things we may find

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that oppression reappears
just as it was before.

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I will end with an excerpt
from a short

10:30
story titled "Foundation"
by China Miéville.

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It's about a man called
a house whisperer

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who's able to go to any
house, any building,

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and discover whether
it's safe or whether

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it might fall down and
needs to be fixed.

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But the way he can
do this is because

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he hears the voices
from the bodies

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and the skeletons underneath
the floor. Here's a

10:54
passage from the story: "He
sees the foundation.

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He sees through the concrete
floor and the earth

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to where girders are embedded
and past them to the

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foundation. A stock of dead
men. An underpinning,

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a structure of entangled
bodies and their parts,

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pushed tight, packed
together and become

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architecture, their bones
broken to make them fit,

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wedged in contorted repose,
burnt skins and the

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tatters of their clothes
pressed as if against

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glass at the limits of their
cut, running below

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the building's walls, six
feet deep below the

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ground, a perfect runnel
full of humans poured

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like concrete and bracing
the stays and the walls.

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The foundation looks at him
with all its eyes and

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the men speak in time."
So the house whisperer

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can see the crime, he can
see that the world

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that he lives in - the
entire city - is built

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on the bodies of other people.
I think this is

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clearly a metaphor for the
world that we live in.

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Every regime, every wealth,
every law has

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behind it a history of
injustice, a pain

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of suffering, of violence.
It's a universal

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truth, and so whatever
privileges,

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whatever happiness we
have today in some

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part at least is dependent
on that past

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injustice. But the house
whisperer in the story is

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unable to change this. It
all happened long ago,

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and what he suffers from
is the voices of the

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dead man which he cannot
keep out of his head.

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And when he tries, by
making a sacrifice,

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it does nothing, only
add to the dead.

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Is that a gift that
anybody would

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want? To hear the voices
of the dead?

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I think not. And yet, if
we were to improve the

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world and solve the problems
and the injustices,

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don't we have to know about
them? I don't know

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the solution to this dilemma.
I don't know the

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extent to which gnosis
is worth it. So our

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world of the Matrix is
a world where we can,

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as in that story, learn
the truth and we can

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to an extent as in that
story be self-creating.

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And it's actually intriguing
that the the

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creators of those movies,
the Wachowskis,

13:18
are both trans, which in a sense
is a kind of self-creation.

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The knowledge, the gnosis,
may reveal the crimes,

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but does it give us the
power to overcome them?

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The third matrix movie
does not overcome the

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injustice. What it does
do is achieve peace.

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This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. www.beszel.ca.

13:47
Good night.