Pill Pod 73 - Matrix Brostalgia (Exclusive)
Added 2022-03-19 02:18:39 +0000 UTCWe are looking at the structure of fantasy through conservatism and the Matrix. Spoilers for the Matrix.
Find Matt's review of Lindsay's hot garbage here: https://jacobinmag.com/2022/03/james-lindsay-race-marxism-book-review-crt-liberalism
Comments
Is there any chance that you'll do an episode on Curtis Yarvin? He doesn't seem to get much critique from non-right wing sources compared to low hanging fruit like Peterson, and I think it would make for a much more interesting conversation considering that Yarvin actually reads books and understands them (as opposed to someone like Peterson who does neither). It also seems like an important criqitue considering the massive influence that his ideas have had.
Ichabod
2022-06-13 22:08:02 +0000 UTC@anacidcommie I have been wondering exactly this after someone recently suggested CBT to me. I don't at all think that I am too clever or so overwhelmed with mental health that I simply don't need it, but I genuinely cannot conceptualize an interaction with a therapist that doesn't become what you are describing.
Jeff S
2022-06-08 19:42:07 +0000 UTCCouldn’t the matrix be about escaping capitalist realism? The kind of gnostic project of the left?
Khemith
2022-03-28 23:10:26 +0000 UTCGreat episode! That alcoholism/therapy anecdote actually highlighted a salient point: that psychotherapy (especially CBT) is yet another ideological institution who's goal is to get you to accept the current socioeconomic reality, that the problem is you, not your social environment. Since this person abandoned their radical political stance and can now much more reliably produce surplus value means that the therapy achieved it's main goal.
anacidcommie
2022-03-24 12:27:32 +0000 UTCI liked Matrix 4. I don't know if I think it was good, but it was interesting. It seems that much of the objections offered here are based around its failure to be what the previous films (especially the first) were. But that is exactly the point. If you make the same film twice, the second time there is no choice but for it to be a sequel, no longer art but pastiche. I know y'all kind of covered that in talking about nostalgia, but I don't think we are ever done with it while unpacking this film. The Dugin line at the end was a low blow xD The concept of cyclical time is not unique to Traditionalism and has been around for ages :P Why not William Blake as read by Northrop Frye, the Orc cycle of imaginative revolution and subjugation? Also, in all the films but especially the latest, what is artificial, programmed, constructed, has so much agency on the supposed real that it throws the foundational quality of the "real" into question. I think it's more Baudrillardian than it gets credit for. Sorry for the incoherence, in a bit of a rush and just dropping a hodgepodge of reactions, but my favorite take on the series is in a lengthy video essay by Jessie Gender. One of the things she suggests is that the ending of 3 was about leftists acceding to the center in order to stop the far right (e.g., the election of Joe Biden).
genrepunk
2022-03-22 16:44:50 +0000 UTCsorry for the unabashed display of identity politics here
Gonzalo Pacheco Covili
2022-03-22 15:33:34 +0000 UTCthis must be the most I have agreed with Matt ever, including the Jacobin article.
Gonzalo Pacheco Covili
2022-03-22 15:33:21 +0000 UTC
