Posted tagged ‘art’

MATRIX & TERMINATOR FILMS: TECHNOTRONIC TYRANNY PROPHESIED

December 14, 2013

MATRIX & TERMINATOR FILMS: TECHNOTRONIC TYRANNY PROPHESIED

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Magandang araw! Good day!

 

Let me share more thoughts about contemporary movies, about how they can be effective vehicles to reveal intuitive insights about future worlds. I’d focus this time on the film series Matrix and Terminator.

 

We can regard the texts of the said cinemas as allegorical, with some fundamental archetypes that can guide the viewer towards a deeper understanding of the script. We can also regard the texts as prophetic revelations about the future worlds, particularly the technotronic or technetronic society that is now shaping up.

 

As forecast by certain sociologists (e.g. Torraine) and futuristic writers (e.g. Asimov), the forthcoming historical epochs will be marked by the rise to prominence of cybernetic machines. The broader context of the society from which such high-technology innovations will be made possible was tagged by Daniel Bell as the ‘post-industrial society’, while the technology was dubbed as ‘third wave’ by Alvin Toffler.

 

Cybernetics, the informational-integrative science started by the eminent mathematician Norbert Wiener, will have to pass through its own stages of R&D revolutions before technotronics can be made possible. Eventually, this science must move to that point when the dividing line between human and machine can be effectively erased. With such erasure effected, humans notably the ‘low thinking ability’ class of folks—whom some elites pejoratively dubbed as ‘useless eaters’—can be controlled.

 

The objective of those experimenters and power elites is no less than absolute, total control of the folks. When the ‘eaters’ are put under control, with even their reproductive functions and private habits largely reprogrammed to suit broader societal goals, then signs are clear that the technotronic society has been born. In such a society, no one may be poor, but freedom from poverty would be at the expense of one’s own freewill.

 

The initial attempt to subordinate one’s individual life to broader social controls was already experimented recently as totalitarian state form. Communism, fascism and Islam were the prototypes of the reign of Tyranny that is a departure from previous tyrannies. In these prototypes, groupthought is reinforced by a mass that is politically mobile. Such a groupthought environment permits the total permeation of draconian values down to the household level.

But such prototypes were only able to succeed in terms of percolating the normative and value reinforcement templates of the futuristic Tyranny. They hardly sufficed to create immense dents in the very psyche of the folks so as to effect mutations in each of the mass members. The mutation, if ever, was superficial, as an erstwhile docile folk suddenly became participative and mobile in a society operating on the basis of the ‘group mind’.

What the designers of future worlds have in mind is to effect mutations in the psyche through intervention in both the biological and electromagnetic (aura) templates of the individual concerned. Among those inventions brewing up are advanced level microchips that can be implanted in sensitive parts of the body such as the brain and heart. When the prototypes of these cybernetic systems are produced, there will be no further need for ideological work the way they were done in the earlier totalitarian experiments. All it needs would be to program and reprogram each folk who bear with them the appropriate chip implants.

 

Matrix particularly depicted the future juncture when the programming will reach perfection. In this version of technotronics, each folk is directly attached to a mega-machine, controlled totally like a baby that is forever attached via an umbilical cord to its mother. When everyone else has been attached to his/her mega-machine ‘mother’, there can be no room for escape. The risk for challenging the system would be enormously high.

 

In that technotronics version, everyone else is in a sleeping state, or comatose by our medical standards of today. One’s personal experiences will be registered in the electromagnetic template like unto a dream state. With everyone provided for, who will ever think of the polarity principle and challenge the status quo? This is a society where every folk is indeed a perfected eater, yet productive enough as to contribute clearly to the sustenance of the deus ex machina.

As part of the security or sanction mechanisms, cybernetic machines will perform sentinel functions. Both the Terminator and Matrix series depicted this part well. The models could vary from cyborgs to tentacle octopus-like robots. Whatever will be the form of such cyber-sentinels in the future, they will come to fruition most likely. As of this writing, the proto-cyborgs are now coming out in the open in the form of humanoid robots.

 

As an update, do note that as of this moment, cybernetics had already advanced to the 3rd phase level, and is moving fast ahead. The objective of future phase cybernetics is to short-cut Thought or eliminate it altogether among the folks, by directing or manipulating the ‘eaters’ via computers. In which case there will be not much need for ideologizing which works by continuous brainwashing or sustained drumbeating of the state’s power via propaganda. While there will still be propaganda, it will be secondary contrasted to cyber-technology itself.

 

There is no doubt that all the Tyrannical experiments of the past will fold up sooner or later. Communism had already tragically collapsed, fascism is having a hard time to be revived, and Islam is pretty unstable. Eco-fascism is now being whipped up as a substitute for the failed communist experiments, but this too, which is propaganda-based in strategy, will flop out.

However, what can be culled from such experiments in futuristic Tyranny is the high-grade information about total behavior control. They are Skinner’s Walden Two enacted in the real world, of draconian experiments that sought to gain compliance by circumventing Thought and working straight on the Primal base of human behavior. The high-grade information has now been repacked and translated into both qualitative and mathematical languages, ready for their own re-utilization in the context of the erasure of distinction between human and machine.

 

At this time, the Old World with its semblance of thought-governed rules and templates is now coming to a close, approaching a ‘twilight zone’. It is coming at a time when the distinction between terrestrial and extraterrestrial is also on its twilight. Just one more element waits to unfold: the erasure of space-oriented with hyper-space travel, radically altering hence our time concepts.

 

The Terminator series was able to depict the successful short-cutting of the time process precisely through time-travel principles and mechanisms. Mystics and masters know too well these principles, even as they were able to demonstrate with ease how one can use his/her electromagnetic or EM body to travel to the past or future and come back to the present. The packaging of this information into cybernetic items is now within our hand, and sooner or later there will be such cyber-sentinels that can indeed travel across time to perform their duties.

If the Divine Hierarchs will not intervene enough on Earth and other star systems where planets are similarly situated (i.e. 3-dimensional, dense sphere), chances are that Earth and other Fallen planets will move closer to the dreaded technotronic future. It will be a future that will synthesize the basic foundations of 20th century totalitarianism and 21st century cybernetic innovations. Since mankind is quite somnambulistic in awareness today, a state that is almost similar to the Matrix awareness, very few human souls are even aware of where we’re heading for, much less aware of what to do.

 

For if majority of humans are aware, they would concur collective courses of action and invite the Divine Hierarchy to intervene as much as possible. This is the tragedy of the moment, a tragic condition that the divinities are trying hard to address from their end.
The danger with the evil experiments of the Terrans (Earth’s people) on behavior control, most especially totalitarian control, is that they might spill over to other habitable planets. How far aware are Terrans that cross-galactic observers, traversing hyperspace to come here, may have amassed enormous research data about Terran tyrannies for their own purposes, isn’t even on the table for evaluation.

 

And even more tragic would be the possibility that, over a century hence, these totalitarian systems may become obsolete on Earth, but the same junk systems would be executed in large scales across the vast expanse of galaxies. Because the Earth is now evolving, and chances are that such experiments, if they would last at all, won’t have a chance to last two hundred years from now. But there we are, diffusing tyrannical ideas—novel today but junk tomorrow—for some mad regimes and terror groups in other planets and star systems.

 

Our only hope now is for some enlightened forces in the galaxy to come forth and intervene. Precisely by using hyperspace principles to come to Earth now to help stop all the mad experiments going on here. Otherwise we will be repeating the ancient conflict of Star Wars, or the ‘fall of Lucifer’, all over again. The enlightened ‘jedi knights’ (signifying Light warrior forces) must come now, or too late in the day the terror machines will be all over us here, ensuring the death of liberty both here and across the galaxies.

 

[Writ 01 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

MANILA: ASIA’S FASHION & SHOPPING CAPITAL, GRADUATES TO DESIGN CAPITAL

November 13, 2013

MANILA: ASIA’S FASHION & SHOPPING CAPITAL, GRADUATES TO DESIGN CAPITAL

 

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 

Good Day to you fellow global citizens!

In 2011, I published an article titled “FILIPINO FASHION DESIGNERS IN HOLLYWOOD: SHOWCASING MANILA AS ASIA’S FASHION CAPITAL” (See: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com/2011/02/filipino-fashion-designers-in-hollywood.html). In that article, I highlighted the maturity of Filipino fashion design, so much that it had reached a level of continental and global acclaim.

Manila has been the fashion and shopping capital of Asia for over a decade already. It once enjoyed that status alongside another ASEAN city, Bangkok. Unfortunately, or tragically, a huge flood beset Bangkok fairly recently, which caused the pull out by many global industrial investors based in it. Bangkok’s own fashion designers left on a diaspora, which took Bangkok off the list of very important cities in the global fashion circuits.

Manila henceforth enjoys a celebrity status for being the sole Fashion Capital. In the latter part of the 20th century, that envious status belonged to both Tokyo and Hongkong. But as the Bob Dylan poetic line “the times they are a-changing” hauntingly reminds the big players in all fields, so did Manila move up to overtake both Hongkong and Tokyo in the fashion field.

As the title suggests, Manila is also the Shopping Capital of all Asia. That means from East to West, North to South of the continent, Manila is THE SHOPPING CAPITAL. Shopping malls in Manila have the best mall architectures in the whole continent and count among the world’s best, e.g. Gateway Mall’s winning the World’s 11 Best Mall Architectures couples of years ago, which enhanced the power of Filipino fashion and Manila’s shopping magnetism.

That title of Shopping Capital used to belong to both Hongkong and Tokyo as well. So you could just imagine the slide of both cities to 2nd fiddle as Manila and Bangkok zoomed up meteorically to take that crown, though sadly Bangkok did slide down (God forbids that it will lost the crown that it enjoyed for a short 10 years).

 

Today, there’s another milestone event that is shaping up: Manila’s graduation to a Design Center for the whole of the ASEAN at least. That’s just a minimalist statement coming from the industrialists of ASEAN. Come to think of it, a country or city that had reached Fashion & Shopping Capital continent-wide will likewise get the crown of Design Capital for the whole of Asia.

Filipino consumers might be wondering where are all those Filipino fashion designs being bandied by the tri-media and cyberspace. Well, fellow Filipinos, you only see fashion via the RTWs viewed by your focals every week in the shopping malls, and RTW fashion constitutes only 16% or 1/7th of the totality of work by fashion designers in the Philippines.

84% of all Filipino fashion designs are generated for the couture business. Many fashion designers in fact do sub-contracting for some bigger fashion design firms whose very own end-users are individual couture fashionistas and corporate retail outlets. With all the great fashion designs going around in Manila and Cebu, all that a Filipino needs to do is get ideas from them, design their own clothes, and look for good cutter and ‘sastre’ (tailor or dress maker) in the wet market to finish the product.

By being a Design Capital means that Filipino fashion designers will  train fashion designers from across Asia and the oceans and also welcome those emerging designers from other countries to do sub-contracting for the big players in Manila. Hopefully fashion institutes will catch up for installation and training of the young designers across the world.

In my own honest opinion, the top universities in Manila—University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, De La Salle University—should launch fashion departments within their own backyards. It is now time to do so. Pitoy Moreno, top fashion designer, already won his National Artist award, so that recognition should translate into the university’s adopting of the fashion as a line of the arts.

Let’s all expect exciting developments to come regarding the fashion world and it’s partner institution the mall retail business. If generating great fashion sustains the enticement of retailers to ever build majestic mall architectures, then shall there’s joy and fun indeed in visiting Manila and the Philippines by enthused tourists both domestically and internationally.

[Manila, 08 November 2013]