movies

So today we rented some R-rated movies, and they didn't even card us. It was extremely anticlimatic and I was very disappointed. It seemed like another rite of passage, like driving home from Wyoming.
However, the reason I have not rented R-rated movies is not that I have not been old enough, it's that I have seen very few and plan on seeing very few as I really don't like too much sex, violence, language, or anything.

Anyway, I had a very productive morning looking up restriction enzyme sites in my gene I'm working with to try to pick one, and there are some awesome websites that make it very easy, like New England Biolabs. So that was nice. Then I tried to ride my bike home (all uphill). I have been running two miles daily, but apparently bike-riding requires very different muscles. I had to walk for many steep parts. My father told me before I left that the bike I was riding was intended to be my second of three (my first was this pink and white thing when I was seven on), as I got it in fourth grade (it was big for me then). Unfortunately, however, my plan was thwarted as my bike still pretty much fits me. Sad. From 50 percentile to 25th to 15th... Hopefully my down-trent has ended.

So the movies we got were V for Vendetta and Matrix Revolutions, both of which I had researched on the internet and talked to people about and decided were okay. The first had too many f-words for my taste, but other than that it was awesome. They both made me think a lot.

V for Vendetta bothered me at first because the protagonist dealt with things very violently, and I am very opposed to any sort of violence or killing. In my ideal world, there would be no killing, and even if people did kill others maliciously we should never retaliate in the same way. I follow this line of thinking when it comes to war as well. So when I saw the vigilante on screen being that violent, it made me think. The movie is set in a very oppressive government, and the government officials don't really bother to not kill people. The vigilante was definitely killing in the name of justice and freedom and other ideals I believe strongly in. But if we allow vigilantes or anyone to use violence the way he did, then we place violence in subjective hands. Sometimes justice and truth and freedom are hard things to agree upon. I just don't think one individual should have the power to kill other individuals. I really don't think even sovereign states should either, but I'm more emphatic about my disbelief in individual violence.
The movie, however, raised those questions over whether violence could be justified if it was for an ideal end. Kind of a teleology versus deontology thing. And although I really don't like Kant, I'm more inclined to go with his categorical imperative here than some Lockean justification of mass political murder. So I watched the movie, and I thought it was awesome. But the movements that I agreed with in it had nothing to do with violence (unless it was enacted on the perpetrators of the methods I agree with). I think that political revolutions under those kinds of governments should be enacted through media, or personal defiance. I am very much a supporter of non-violent defiance a la Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mendelle (yes I know I spelled that wrong). Passive resistance. So I agreed with the movie. I think the movie is precisely the sort of thing that should be done to combat possible governmental oppression. Actual violent action just isn't something I can agree with.
I will admit, though, that when they blew up parliament at the end, it was awesome. I have been to those buildings and love them, but chain explosions, even if only special effects... cool.

I watched the first Matrix movie three and a half years ago, so I didn't remember it that well tonight. Brittany and I looked up plot synapses for the first two on the internet. I can't see the second one due to sexuality and language, so I didn't have a huge clue of what was going on when we started the third one (or finished it really). Anyway, I liked the movie a lot, especially the ending (more things blowing up), except for certain characters whose deaths saddened me... at the end the Oracle said "I didn't know, but I believed," or something like that, and it hit home. Actually, the whole idea of the Matrix hit home. I seem to be currently faced with a similar problem. I'm worried that the earth may be a fabrication, that the universe may be, and that it may belong to some kind of matrix. I think that there may be something out there, ruling this matrix, however I'm not sure if they (like the sentinels) are real either. Past all of that, there just might be some real place, some real Zion that rules everything, both the fabrication and the fabrication of the fabrication (this universe, or multiverse).
I've reached the pills. There's the red one, the blue one. I can't remember which is which in the movie, but they stand for two different things. I can go back to my world, my existence which I now know may be fabricated, or I can keep pursuing some Zion that may not even exist, and if it does exist it's very far away and hard to get to and may not even be worth living for, and I may never be happy in my pursuit of it.
You're telling me that I can't take the pill that corresponds with going back to fabrication. You're telling me I can't go back to just blindly believing the things I have believed my whole life, not now, not now that I've doubted. But what if I can? What if it's the only way to really be happy? Can I be happy now, in ignorance, if I always remember that I am in ignorance? I suppose ignorance is only bliss as long as it believes itself to be ignorant.
I want a purple pill. I want a compromise. That's always what I look for when I reach these problems.

Oh well. Right now I'm like Neo, and I'm sitting in that chair, and instead of looking at the pills I'm looking in Morpheus's eyes for some other way out.