Finally comes the ultimate book for all those seeking to know more about the philosophy behind The Matrix and its sequels. Suppose that this world is not what it seems, and that humanity is actually just a food source supplementing a reign of machines. Welcome to the premise behind the world of The Matrix: the movie phenomenon and massive box-office series that has also produced some of film's most intelligent and thoughtful moments in the last ten years.
In the Matrix movies, "reality" is just a dreamscape, a representation that six billion points of view agree to agree is "real." So if the only reality we know is a cunning and elaborate façade, what then does that signify for us? Matrix Warrior gives us the means to understand this premise and its implications on our knowledge of self and place. Combining an in-depth examination of the film with philosophical inquiry and the teachings of Castandeda, Jake Horsley has produced in Matrix Warrior a profound yet witty analysis-and all readers need to get "unplugged."
Jason (Jake) Horsley is a writer, scholar and misadventurer of recognized accomplishment and promise. His are hard-won achievements as he is continually pushing himself, both intellectually and psychologically into new and self-surpassing paradigms. He is an iconoclast as well as an influential writer and film analyst. In the gracious words of the late Pauline Kael, "Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is--an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. He lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. He's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too."
If Horsley had a mission statement to describe the trajectory of his life, it would have to include the words "relentless" and "intense." At the moment he is preparing for the publication of his fifth book, The Secret Life of Movies: Schizophrenic and Shamanic Journeys in American Movies (McFarlane, 2009), pursuing a collaborative project with Winnipeg filmmaker Jim Sanders (Nosis), and serialising for podcast his epic novel about Sam Peckinpah, Shooting the Ghost, from his new home in British Columbia.
Would you willingly give up everything--your home, fortune, friends and family--just to test your mettle? Horsley did just that. When he was 24, cosseted, ambitious, heartbroken, and in poor health, he disposed of the fortune he had inherited at 17 and took to the streets of Tangiers, Morocco. His identity, authenticity, and capacity for resourcefulness and self reliance were all placed under fire. In the months of hardship that followed, Horsley learned to survive in a hostile environment, befriended celebrated author Paul Bowles, discovered practical magick, wrote his first novel, and ultimately rediscovered his will to live. In the intervening years, Horsley has lived abroad, mainly in Spain, Amsterdam, Portugal, Guatemala, and Mexico, exploring the Latin cultures and his own psychological underpinnings with an almost maniacal vigour. Not satisfied with a shallow participation in life, Horsley applies a unique fusion-philosophy to himself that combines Jungian psychology with the sorcery teachings of Castaneda and the practical animism he learned as a shaman's apprentice in Guatemala.
Horsley has written several books, screenplays, and articles including a few that have been published: his two-part treatise on film violence, The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery, 1958-1999 (Scarecrow Press, 1999), Matrix Warrior: Being the One, (Orion, 2003), and Dogville Vs. Hollywood (Marion Boyars, 2005). He has been a contributing author for Cineaste Magazine, The Guardian (UK), and Film Festival Magazine. In his spare time Horsley has experimented with other media, creating and hosting an esoteric radio show in Pamplona, and working as a contributing editor and film critic at the Oaxaca Times. Sojourning back to London days before 9-11, he produced a six-part digital documentary, The God Game, a digital feature, Beauty Fool, and a semi-autobiographical documentary, Being the One: Document of a Delusion.
Horsley continues to challenge expectations, especially his own. He dissolves the distinction between subject and object, immersing himself in thinking and creating with the same gusto a master chef applies to preparing and consuming a meal--as if every moment counts. He uses his natural eloquence and subtlety to uncover and present hidden stories, cinematic intelligence, and underlying social agreements that are invisible to a less discerning eye. He is a narrative genius who embraces fiction, history, mythology, pop culture, psychology and science in ways that make his theses not just urgent, but apocalyptic.
This review is from: Matrix Warrior: Being the One (Paperback)
This book is more than simple sugar candies for die hard fans of the movie though obviously MATRIX WARRIOR provides a reference tool for the film's cult lovers. However, there is a more powerful philosophical bent to this book that takes readers to the deeper meaning of what is reality. Jake Horsley makes a case that the movie could be real (are we someone else's dream/nightmare?) yet even more brilliantly interprets a metaphysical meaning of realistic pragmatism. Like The Matrix, he pleads with his audience to unplug themselves in search of the real inner person by discarding the masks of society and to stop being the source of energy for someone else.
MATRIX WARRIOR is a one sitting easy to read work that is also a thought-provoking analysis of the movie yet is more at least in the reality of this reviewer. Mr. Horsley provides an interesting strongly supported theory that the underlying theme to The Matrix is to unplug oneself from the machines of society. There is no doubt that Mr. Horsley has done just that with this intriguing look at society through the spectrum of The Matrix movies. Editorial asides: (1) reality to this sixties lost soul of going unplugged is if this is all I received by being plugged I was cheated; (2) the middle picture was filler that needed more confrontation/debate between the Architect and the hero; and (3) Mr. Horsley owes a follow-up guide book once the third movie is unplugged. Readers who appreciate a theoretical look at reality (interesting phrasing) through a microcosmic analysis of The Matrix will enjoy this well written cerebral work.
Harriet Klausner
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This review is from: Matrix Warrior: Being the One (Paperback)
What is the Matrix?
You've asked yourself this, time and time again. You know there's something wrong with the world that you're living in- something doesn't work. You feel like an alien. You know there has to be something more than this.
In this daring little book, Jake Horsley suggests that your intuitions might just be correct. "Matrix Warrior" is a manual for living the life of a seeker- someone not looking for little spiritual thrills, but radical liberation. Disguised as a pop culture tome, Horsley uses analogies from The Matrix and the literary works of Phillip K. Dick (a significant influence on the mythology of The Matrix) and the metaphysical storytelling of Carlos Castaneda to spin a battle plan for those who would wage war against the apparent world. The author suggests that people can be divided into four categories- "humatons", or those who are asleep, "matrix warriors", those who know that there is more to life than they've been offered, "matrix sorcerers", those who are no longer under the control of the matrix and able to manipulate it to some extent, and "lucids"- people, like Neo, who are totally liberated from the matrix. This book is about the first step- becoming a "matrix warrior", and preparing to take advantage of opportunities to "unplug"- those rare events in life when we are offered a way to radically change our circumstances and embrace a more authentic mode of being. Along the way, there are digressions on ethics, metaphysics, futurism, and many other topics. While the Castanedan influence is apparent, one uncredited (though obvious) influence is the work of Aleister Crowley, especially regarding the way of the will.
There are some slight deficiencies- the author didn't seem to entirely "get" the later Matrix films- in fact, he doesn't seem to understand them at all (for a better grasp, listen to the commentary tracks on the DVDs themselves, where Cornel West and Ken Wilber spin an interesting glimpse at the deeper implications of the movies). But other than that quibble, "Matrix Warrior" is an excellent little book, and well worth your time... if you want to take the red pill, and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes...
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This review is from: Matrix Warrior: Being the One (Paperback)
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Finished this book about two months ago, but just now catching up on reviews. Since I loved the basic thesis behind The Matrix that what we know as reality is just a computer program, I wanted to understand about the history behind this thesis. The Matrix Warrior does a good job at that. Horsley draws connections between the world of the movie and our own world and shows how the characters in the movie transcend the false reality the matrix imposes on humanity. Combining an in-depth examination of the film with philosophical inquiry and the teachings of Castandeda, Jake Horsley has produced in Matrix Warrior a profound yet witty analysis-and all readers need to get "unplugged." It is a VERY entertaining read if you are at all interested in the idea that there may be alternate realities.
Horsley shows how "the One" is a concept in many faiths around the world. Anyone can be "the One" with enough enlightenment. The more important thing though, is to take the path of the matrix warrior. To search for reality. To be conscious of what you are "plugged" into and consciously "unplug" from the things you don't like. Too many of coast through life taking what comes. Being "the One" in large part involves asking the right questions, seeking answers, and deciding for yourself what your reality should be. Good advice for all of us, not just fanatics of the movie series.
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