I Know Kung Fu

Let's get this on the record first off-- The Matrix sucks. Everyone says they ruined it after the first one, but the first one pretty much sucked too. It was one big holodeck episode of ST:TNG, and we all remember how much those sucked.

That said, I'm not above using it as an example, since it has permeated pop culture. To get back to my earlier thesis, when Neo gets that dumb bunny look on his face and says, "I know Kung Fu" everyone thinks that's really cool. But what has he learned about Kung Fu? Kung Fu was founded by the shaolin monks which date back to 540 A.D. They believe in a combination of Buddhist and Taoist religions, but some of them claim they're not religions, they're philosophies. So it's quite possible to become a "secular" Shaolin. So has Neo become a Buddhist? A Taoist? Does he believe in a particular pantheon, or philosophy?

No, we just think he knows how to kick ass.

But if you ask any real practitioner of eastern martial arts, they aren't about kicking ass at all, they're about finding the center of yourself and using it to project your will upon your environment. If that environment is hostile, then in order to acheive balance you must return the hostility until it ends.

Neo has learned none of this, because the screenwriters didn't want to significantly change his character with the flick of a button. If when he "knew" Kung Fu, he suddenly became a pacifist and tried to achieve his ends through non-violent means it wouldn't serve the story. So he knows the superficial things the writers need him to know, without the life-changing philosophy that an actual study of Kung Fu would bring.

So what if I gave you a pill and said if you took it you would know Spanish. Would you take it? How would knowing Spanish change you? Would you value it without the effort you would normally use to learn a language?

But if you could do that for anything then you'd pretty much have an a la carte personality. I could go to my medicine cabinet and decide what I want to know today, and that knowledge would change who I am on that day. Tomorrow I could be someone different.

It would change the world. What if diplomats could go to the table knowing everything the other guy knew? What if we could share cultures in an instant? Wouldn't it mean an end to war?

I'm not sure the human mind could take it. Perhaps we're just not wired for peace on earth.