By Taru Taylor
The blue pill or the red pill? You'll recall that Neo's decision to take the red pill initiated the plot of ``The Matrix." Morpheus ― whose belief in Neo, as the messiah, commenced the plot ― compared Neo's swallowing of the red pill to Alice's fall down the rabbit-hole.
For, just as the red pill was Neo's escape from the ``matrix," the rabbit-hole was Alice's entrance into ``wonderland."
We don't often think of the crisis that Morpheus posed to Neo ― the blue pill or the red pill? ― as a question of psychology. But so it was. This becomes clear when we remember that psychology, literally, is the ``science of the soul."
Neo's psychological dilemma was as follows: If he takes the blue pill, then his soul remains disembodied in the computer-generated matrix, with his body serving as food for the controlling-machines; if he takes the red pill, then his soul escapes from the matrix to reunite with his body.
According to Aristotle's ``On The Soul," still the best primer for the discipline of psychology, ``all natural bodies are organs of the soul." By eating the red pill, Neo reclaimed his body as the organ of his soul.
We, in the real-life modern world and in real-life Korea, are confronted with the same psychological dilemma. We too must decide ― the blue pill or the red pill?
Our blue pill has to do with psychology as understood by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. So-called ``behaviorism" ignores the soul altogether. It applies to humans the same stimulus-response technique that Pavlov applied to dogs.
Pavlov's bells, as signals for meat, conditioned them to salivate. Propaganda and public relations are like Pavlov's bells in that they condition humans to worship and to buy.
Propaganda and PR are comprehensive signals that imbue objects with prestige and glamor. So imbued, these objects become positive charms, or ``fetishes;" or they become negative charms, or ``taboos."
When we take the blue pill, we allow the powers that be to condition us for their purposes, as means to their ends. When we take the blue pill, we allow the priests, the politicians and the PR men to render prestige and glamor to whatever objects they want us to worship, to vote for, and to buy. Pavlov's bells stimulated; his dogs responded by salivating. Propaganda and PR stimulate; we respond by consuming.
Our red pill has to do with psychology as distinct from anatomy; the soul as distinct from the body. Upon taking the red pill, we live in two worlds: the material world of the body and of sensation, and the spiritual world of the soul and of reason. The red pill enables us to use our bodies as organs of our souls.
The blue pill or the red pill? In other words, Pavlov or Aristotle?
In order to define the soul, Aristotle denoted three types of substance: matter, essence, or a complex of both. The human being, he said, is a complex whose body is material and whose soul is essential.
To illustrate his point, he compared the human being to an eye. His analogy: just as the physical eye is the organ of sight, the physical body is the organ of the soul. The eye's essence, its purpose, is to see. The human being's essence, his purpose, is to think.
The blue pill or the red pill? In still other words, ``human" or ``human being"?
The ``human" is a creature of sensation, conditioned by propaganda and PR to consume, just as Pavlov's dogs were conditioned to salivate. He responds to multimedia sensationalism.
He is passive and reactive. But the ``human being" is an end unto himself. Aristotle defined matter as ``becoming," whereas essence, or form, he defined as ``being." In other words, matter is ``potentiality" but essence is ``actuality."
So humans who only live in the material world are potentialities, that is, potential worshipers and potential customers of whatever the totalitarian powers want them to consume.
But the human being _ ``being" here denotes the soul as actuality _ navigates both the material world as a body and the spiritual world as a soul. Unlike the human, who thinks what the propagandists and PR men want him to think, the human being thinks for himself. He resists multimedia sensationalism. He is rational. He is proactive.
``The Matrix" is a classic about a human who becomes a human being. Had Neo taken the blue pill, there would have been no movie. But he took the red pill, confronted the matrix and its agents, and so drove the narrative. As individuals, we must likewise confront the stimulus-response matrix that would destroy our dignity. We must drive our own narratives.
Here in the Orient we must look to Confucius and to Lao Tzu as mentors, just as Neo looked to Morpheus. Here the South Korean flag denotes the red pill. For it denotes Yin and Yang.
It denotes ``I Ching." It denotes a spiritual world of destiny transcendent of the material world of causality. It denotes the Tao, that matrix of 64 oracles transcendent of space and time.
The blue pill or the red pill? Pavlov or Aristotle? Human or human being?
In Korean words, Ppalli! Ppalli! or the Taegeuk?
The writer teaches English at Semyung University in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province. He can be reached at tarutaylor@gmail.com.