Another MxO Religion Chat!

[Valaro]

OK so,

Zion Vs. EPN.

I personally hate EPN and cant even think of them as being anywhere near close to Zion as they do not share what Zion stands for! There alot of Anti Machine extremists!



Val

[Metalogic]

I thought Zion was Anti-machine. In The Matrix Universe they are at war.

[Metalogic]

I think he meant religion.

[GamiSB]

Well thats good because EPN wasn't supposed to be anything like Zion. The closest EPN gets to that was just being against Machine control, NOT anti Machine.

Everything concerning EPN centered around Neo's warning to the Machines and making it happen

"I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible."

In short they wanted to show everyone the true nature of the Matrix and allow people to choose for themselves how they wanted to live. Opening up the possibility for all humans to have a chance at seeing the real world, apart of the 1% or not. Sadly however the presentation of this central theme got botched. People in LESIG misunderstood EPN's intent when they were first revealed so you had Machine missions and LESIG characters advocating a very extremist attitude setting off code bombs and such that was never intended. You also had players who already knew about the EPN org being planned thinking it was going to be a more "Morpheus" centered organization which only added more confusion.

While this did add a little more character to the org it's easy, once you set aside any "in-character" bias, to see that once this problem was noticed it was corrected and after that EPN never became that "terror" group people viewed them as. Every event centered around them always followed the same trend of anyone that wasn't apart of the main objective over exaggerating what happened and the potential threats of such.

[Metalogic]

One of the thing I never got about EPN was that they don't take into account Neo's later revelation about Machine and humans needing one another. Humans need machines to survive and machines need humans to survive, interdependent. It was Neo that brokered the truce between man and machine because he realized that they both deserve to live. Hell, even Morpheus says that people who are not part of the 1% are so ingrained, so dependent on The Matrix that they will fight to save it and protect it.

It seems like the EPN just stopped at the first move and didn't bother to view Reloaded or Revolution.

[GamiSB]

(23-01-2010, 03:06 AM)Metalogic Wrote: One of the thing I never got about EPN was that they don't take into account Neo's later revelation about Machine and humans needing one another. Humans need machines to survive and machines need humans to survive, interdependent. It was Neo that brokered the truce between man and machine because he realized that they both deserve to live. Hell, even Morpheus says that people who are not part of the 1% are so ingrained, so dependent on The Matrix that they will fight to save it and protect it.

It seems like the EPN just stopped at the first move and didn't bother to view Reloaded or Revolution.

From a story stand point your assumption makes since however thats not the full picture or the complete ideology of EPN.

From the story, remember that the last time the Kid sees Neo is when giving him the spoon from "Spoon boy" he never has a chance to sit and talk/listen to him or Morpheus during there brief stay in Zion so Michael really has no idea of what Neo uncovers in Reloaded and Revolutions. Now granted Morpheus does live through the films and could have told some of this to Michael however as we saw in MxO Morpheus attitude never really changes plus I don't think Neo shared much with Morpheus in there final 72 hours. In fact his most "enlightening" moments happen in Revolutions where he secludes himself from everyone for awhile and then runs off with Trinity soon after so Morpheus is just as much in the dark as the Kid would have been.

But even still the fact that Neo spares the Machines should have hinted at something for Michael or Morpheus to have figured out. Morpheus it seems gave up on that but the Kid did not. Note that I said that EPN was anti Machine control, not anti Machine. This difference is very important. EPN was never gung ho for a war or killing off every rust bucket, at least the major players weren't. EPN was more about creating a real peace and to do that they thought that they needed to remove the limitation on who could and couldn't be freed 1% or not. To them it didn't matter, those that didn't want out would say so and move on the point wasn't to try and free everyone they could it was just to give everyone that option.

This I now believe changed though and somewhere along the line the Kid figured out the Machines may or may not have been the real ones pulling the strings which was why they started making a push for discovering what was inside the no fly zone the Machines had up.

[Metalogic]

The only problem I see with educating the masses about The Matrix and giving the option to free themselves to more than just the 1% is that while some would just blow it off as Alex Jones/Coast to Coast AM paranoid bullshit, others would take it seriously enough that they would die in their pods. As a Cypherite and even as a Merovingian Operative my goal was to make sure that there wasn't any needless death or needless awakenings. There has been cases of both the red pill and blue pill being shoved down the throat of bluepills and thus choice is robbed from them.

But the 99% don't have a choice I hear you say. Well actually they do. If you watch Reloaded you'll see that The Architect said that The Oracle stumble upon a solution where 99% of the test subject accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they made that choice on a near unconscious level. We make choices like that all the time throughout our day, that doesn't make them any less valid than the choices we are aware that we made.

[Rxu]

I wore the EPN tag proudly and considered myself the Robin Hood of "choice" meaning that I took it from those who had mismanaged theirs by means of forced termination...and giving it to those who were blinded by the system of control.

And if my above statement warrants me a label of "terrorist" then I will and have worn it with honor.

If everything starts with choice, then my decision was not to give in, I fought for the rights of man, to live were we want and how we want and my personal goal was always to see all machines eliminated as we gave them life and so had the right to take it away from them.

Here comes the religion...

God created mankind and for a while he was content, and although we made some mistakes he let us live. Until one day he realized that we had turned into savages, took the only family worth saving put them in a boat and literally flushed away all the problems..

To me EPN was the beleif and understanding of our inherent right to "flush" away our creations (machines), as they had become savages.

[GamiSB]

(23-01-2010, 04:31 AM)Metalogic Wrote: The only problem I see with educating the masses about The Matrix and giving the option to free themselves to more than just the 1% is that while some would just blow it off as Alex Jones/Coast to Coast AM paranoid bullshit, others would take it seriously enough that they would die in their pods. As a Cypherite and even as a Merovingian Operative my goal was to make sure that there wasn't any needless death or needless awakenings. There has been cases of both the red pill and blue pill being shoved down the throat of bluepills and thus choice is robbed from them.

But the 99% don't have a choice I hear you say. Well actually they do. If you watch Reloaded you'll see that The Architect said that The Oracle stumble upon a solution where 99% of the test subject accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they made that choice on a near unconscious level. We make choices like that all the time throughout our day, that doesn't make them any less valid than the choices we are aware that we made.

Honestly that was never that big of an issue if people thought it through. The setting of MxO is completely different than in the movies. In MxO the redpill society has become larger and better known. The sentinel was an indicator of that when a running joke was how redpills seem to always act in a ”I know something you don’t” manner and everyone brother seemed to have a story about how they had run ins with them in bars, back alleys, or on the street. Any curious folk already knew what to look for if they wanted in or what to avoid if not interested. Preaching on a street corner doesn’t change this nor does mass email or whatever other methods of reaching out EPN/Zion/whoever used because the people who want to hear it will listen and the people who want no part will tune it out. The point EPN was trying to get across was that it should be the people choosing not Zion or the Machines. Did this eliminate the risk? No probably not but no one canon wise ever died by simply being awakened it was only when proper procedure of tracking and being there for pick up didn’t happen that people died so your concerns were all speculative and nothing short of a worry.

Any rhetoric about the 99% not having a choice was purely focused on the conscious level, subconsciously it didn’t matter and we didn’t care because all you have to do in reply was ask “So when did you subconsciously decided you wanted out” to counter the argument and go on your way. Without an answer to that question (which no one can provide because the line is so ambiguous) you can not in any way shape or form argue that a person had a choice in choosing “Matrix or Real”. You also have the problem of how informed the person is in choosing. Are they presented all the facts or is this choice made before they can even count to three?

Even still though this doesn’t matter, the most that a subconscious choice proves is that EPN is wasting its time because if the subconscious choice did decided then nothing EPN did without force should change that choice. Meaning 99% always says “no thanks ill stay” while the 1% goes down the rabbit hole. This is contradictory then that someone can make the wrong choice for themselves meaning there is no need for Cypherites to worry about someone unknowingly taking the wrong pill because its already been predetermined which one they are gonna want to take. So in essence what others are arguing here is that they knew better than the bluepill and should be the one to decide for them which brings us back to EPN wanting to fight anti Machine control, or I guess just anti control.

So in short, if people already decided which pill they would take, then nothing EPN did should have even changed that.
If they have not already chosen or a conscious choice can overrule the subconscious one, then they already know who or what to go to if they want answers EPN just made it more available.