THE MATRIX

VIRTUALITY, SIMULATION, FANTASY AND CONSUMPTION

SYSTEMS, SUBJECTS AND MEDIA

THE MATRIX
VIRTUALITY, SIMULATION, FANTASY AND CONSUMPTION
SYSTEMS, SUBJECTS AND MEDIA

SUMMARY:
This text states that there has been a change in the way of living the social systems in
contemporary Chile. It is the passage from the productivity mandate into the enjoyment.
This change occurs -paraphrasing Martin Heidegger- along with the prevailing technical
domain, in which the image of the modern era is staged as one where the being becomes
subject, coupled in a state of subjection to the world turned into system. In this new
mandate of contemporary social life, occurs the raving expression of hypertrophied serial
reproduction of surpluses. It is the machinism of an unbalanced equation that enables
contemporary life, which feeds on the re-production of current goods up to the microphysical residue. The configured social system happens in the mode of a virtual systemic
simulation -a 'Matrix'-, as an allegory of the social, where the subject is enrolled and
questioned as such.
Keywords: Matrix, Virtuality, Simulation, Fantasy, Consumption.

1. Introduction
This text states that there has been a change in the way of inhabiting social systems.
It is what has been termed as the pass from the productivity imperative into another, of
pleasure and enjoyment. This change occurs -paraphrasing Martin Heidegger- along with
the prevailing technical domain and with the world's technological subjection in which the
image of the modern era is staged as one where the being becomes a coupled subject, one in
a state of subjection, by means of a repressive semiotic code -a submission code- to the
reality, to the world turned into system. In this new imperative of contemporary social life
the machinism in its nuclear machinist version- is the contemporary manifestation of
multinational consumer capitalism. It is all about the raving expression of the hypertrophied
systemic serial reproduction of surpluses (exchanges of goods and value). It is the
machinism of an unbalanced equation which enables an insane contemporary life that feeds
on the current re-production of goods up to the micro- physical residue. The social system
set up for this purpose occurs in the guise of a systemic virtual simulation -a 'Matrix'- as a
metaphor or fantastic allegory of the systemic social life, in which the person is enrolled
and questioned as such in his/her subjection. Such machinic is deployed by prevailing
technique, the cultural industry and the widespread commodity exchange, they constitute its
fluent circulation modes, interstitially through social systems, to which the subject is
coupled.
2. The Allegory of the Matrix
'The Matrix' saga movies have shown a possible apocalyptic future for mankind,
caused by the reign of a particular technical control of the world. In it, spiritual machines
prevail and in that world, in that reality, a dispute is raised -through a war of exterminationbetween the remnants of humanity that survive in a city -the last human city, called Zion,
located in the centre of the earth- and a complex technical-virtual coupling of spiritual
machines commanded by a systemic network of computers. This network has a main core
-the 'architect ' of the Matrix, who harmonizes all that technical-virtual complex, which
sustains a war of extermination against the free-human inhabitants of Zion. The machinic
network also maintains a virtual device of domination over the remaining countless human
beings, who are no longer born free, but are cultivated like vegetables. The cultivation of
these living subjects -prisoners of the Matrix without knowing it- fulfills a vital goal of the
mechanical complex: human bodies are used merely as bio-batteries. They are the last
remaining power source for the machinic complex to function.
Each time the machinic-serial system -and each machinic singularity- require energy
for their operation, they obtain it from subjects that live permanently attached to countless
electric-bio-mechanical and computer connections going to the machinic complex, which is
ultimately as a system- a type of human-machine symbiont known as Reality at that
time. Out of Zion, there are no humans free of this link, of this alienating and disturbing
subjection of subject to the system -the Matrix. This situation was depicted by Heidegger in
his imaginary of the world. Now it is just that the technique and its machines are
spiritual.
This attachment that sustains the life of the Matrix occurs also- as a result of the
human being turning into subject of an eternal dream of simulation of reality. The goal is to
reduce her/him to a source of bio-energy for the virtual-machinic system, simulator of
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reality as it was known in 1999. Machines need the coupling with a living cultivated
subject, for this all they need is the subject perceiving the fantasy of living in an actually
existing world. Due to this, the machinic systemic complex has produced a reality for
subjects using countless informatic programs that simulate the world as it was in the late
20th century. Those programs are neurologically loaded making the brain live in adream
from the beginning until the end of existence the life of the subject- without ever awaking
to reality, without ever being able to narrate, write or symbolize it. The subject feels,
perceives the world or reality- as if it was the year 1999, but it is just a dellusion, because
he/she lives actually in year 2300, after the second rebirth: when spiritual machines
defeated all humankind in 21th century, after a war of planetary reach due to the economic
competition for the hegemony in the global goods exchange market.
Producing this reality -this Matrix- was not easy, because it had to be done through
the design and coordination of a multitude of virtual-computer programs that recreate life
from the most everyday things, up to the most exceptional and absent in the life of
contemporary individuals in late 20th century. These simulation programs are essential,
subjects who are grown -the absolute mayority of surviving humans- die if they do not get
those reality simulaton programs via their neuro-brain connection with the Matrix, which
in its turn- would have great difficulty in sustaining its own existence without these
subjects.
It must also be remembered that this situation occurs during a tough fight for world
domination, deployed on two fronts. In one - real men against real machines. On this front,
the fight is disproportionate, the men entrenched in Zion resist the probable attack of the
machinic-virtual system, but if their war machinery manages to get into the city, the
destruction of all free humans would be imminent. The military-technological power of
machines is absolutely devastating compared to the one of humans. If they cross the
protection hull of Zion, there will be no possible defense against it. In the city, on the other
hand, thrives a creed among common inhabitants of the city, who believe and prophesize
the return -or re-editing- of the chosen one. This person was the first human who awoke
-without outside help- from the capsule where he was cultivated as bio-energy for the
machinic complex, after doing it he escaped and freed a few men and women, to whom he
showed reality as it was, instead of its simulation, he showed them reality without
appearances. In this revelation/unconcealment, the chosen one showed them that everything
they had believed was real and true in their lives until then, was only a simulation of the
world displayed by a mechatronic machine-computer complex, whose goal was to subject
the human being to keep it under its control and domination, under its power. The chosen
one founded Zion, and predicted that in the future another man will arise, a new chosen one
-Neo in this case-, who will free all humankind from the virtual domination devices
deployed by the machinic systemic complex, freeing them from the Matrix.
Based on this assumption, the men in Zion have an army whose functions are both
the protection of the city against the invasion of the machines a useless work because with
or without an army the destruction is almost certain if the machines enter the city- as well
as for the search -by some who share the creed- the new chosen one, who must arise from
the unique beings that are being cultivated by spiritual machines created the Matrix, the
machinic system. If they find her/him, they will have the possibility to be free, because the
chosen one was the only one skillful enough to save Zion and release all human subjects
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from the Matrix. Neo could see what no other could and modify with his actions- the
unrestricted orders of events designed until then by the machinic domain. The chosen one
was able to see the Matrix's design in its source code, without masking, hence his power to
see the reality of this virtual simulation as it is and to not be seduced by the realm and
dominion of appearances, of fantasy.
The second line of confrontation takes place in the sphere of virtual reality, in the
appearances flow of the simulation and control device deployed by the Matrix, as a
systemic design with an existence of its own. As men of Zion also possess advanced
technology, they have devised a way to enter and exit the virtual unification program of the
Matrix -which recreated the world for cultured humans- using pirate telephone lines. In this
virtual world - indistinguishable for most who live in it as virtual media simulation- some
kind of virtual digital self of free individuals fights with individual agents -programs that
monitor the Matrix against virtual soldiers from Zion, who virulently infect the Matrix to
produce anomalies on the simulated reality experienced by individuals subject to the Matrix
in an attempt to awake them from the fantasy that constitutes and harasses them. Each
digital self -both men and agents, and everything that exists in this digital world of virtual
reality- summarizes in software that runs on the Matrix, flowing as encoded energy that sets
up that kind of reality that simulates what once was -but is no longer- human life.
Subjects who inhabit Zion are 'disconnected' from the Matrix, they are not
cultivated as a bio-battery, they are free subjects, but somehow they are not free enough,
because they are not able to see what the Matrix is beyond appearances, they cannot decode
its design, see how it is written, and thus they cannot dismantle its virtual domination
device. The chosen one can -unlike the rest- see the Matrix when he enters the virtual
reality designed by it, and he can change some things at will. He can uncloak the code in
which it is written and deploy its virtual domination device, which it registers as a
submission code inviting the subject/battery to live in the simulated world.
At a moment, at the end of the second part, Neo makes it to the digital projection of
the Matrix constitutive core -the Architect- and establishes a decisive dialogue for the saga.
The architect explains to the chosen one what the Matrix framework is about, he tells him
he is the sixth chosen one he speaks with, because everything he has lived up to the date
when the conversation takes place corresponds only to another subjection program. The
architect explains to the chosen one that this device -the story of the chosen one / saviorwas necessary to program despite the perfection and logical-mathematical accuracy of the
virtual submission program coding initially compiled as an ideal world, of perfect
harmony translated into joy and happiness, because whole human crops rejected the virtual
domination program and were thereby lost. According to the architect, human subjects are
defined by suffering and pain but they did not know it until one intuitive program designed
to study, analyze and understand the human psyche, found the problem in the first general
designs. Subjects are defined by pain and suffering, but disguised as happiness and
enjoyment.
From this discovery on, the solution was to create and add to the virtual domination
design the story of the chosen one. This gives all or most of the subjects, free or cultivated,
the illusion/hope/fantasy, in dreams or in their everyday fictionalized reality, that someday
they can get free from the systemic domination. But this liberation fantasy is just that, one
more virtual program deployed by the Matrix, a systemic simulation, to which the
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individual is also subject, but that at the same time -and this complicates it further - is
his/her only hope to survive. As the systemic functioning seems not to work with happy
and joyful subjects, because they are defined by pain and suffering, they need the design of
a chosen one, because without the hope of a savior who will free them existentially, without
the hope that the pain and suffering will end, the systemic functioning of the Matrix cannot
be ensured. And when the program of the chosen one was activated, when the chosen one
came to earth to free the subjects, in the equations of the designed virtual reality code
always occurs a minimum derivation of existential energy disorder that tends to accumulate
on the device. If this entropy is not somehow removed, entire crops of humans are lost,
endangering the very existence of the machinic dominion complex, along with all the
human beings subject to the Matrix. Therefore, the program must end with the
extermination of Zion and the sacrifice of the chosen one, who releases a group of human
subjects from the Matrix and presents himself as the first man who wakes up without
outside help and shows these awakened men and women how true reality is, finds Zion and
predicts his own death, and thus the eternal return of the virtual domination design, of the
power of simulation in the life of those subject to the Matrix.
3. Virtuality, simulation and fantasy, the subjection of the contemporary subject.
It has been said (Zizek, 2000; Bostrom, 2003; Martnez, 2004) that the Matrix as a
metaphor or allegory of the worlds image, corresponds to the Other with capital letters,
the simulated symbolic virtual order, a network which structures and gives sense to the
reality of the human social space-time, and which allows concealment and endurance of the
'desert of the real', where the fragmented and reified subject is disseminated by the
merchant exchange, absorbed and replaced by multiple and even diverse shows of virtual
simulation which nevertheless constitute his reality, his being in the world. The Matrix is
the constitutive inscription of the subject within the symbolic order, it is the allegorical
name for the scene of our everyday life, the fundamental fantasy that sustains our own
social life. As a result, virtual reality is at the same time, the most radical reaffirmation of
the seductive power of images (Zizek, 2010), the power of simulation, its power of
substitution, inscription and interpolation of the different possible and available positions of
the subject. These positions are designed by fantasy, by the imaginary wink later
symbolized, to radically constitute our desire, our search of the lost object (pleasure,
happiness) for its fixation. Fantasy is, thus, a phenomenon akin to the virtual, that finds in
the simulation a raving function that pushes for enjoyment. Fantasy, virtuality, simulation
and enjoyment are thus four ingredients of the reproductive logic of the consumerist
capitalist system, in which the subject is enrolled and questioned into social existence.
For this situation to occur in the order given as a capitalist social system, there
exists the culture industry. It is a global industry that circulates fluently through systemic
interaction networks, inscribing and questioning singularities in its socializing effect,
producing consumer subjects in the enjoyment imperative. This production works in a
global smooth uninterrupted serial network, offering the virtual promise of entertainment,
as the guise of the longed-for modern times happiness. It must be a promise, since the
virtual condition itself defines that its virtue, its ability to work or take effect, does not
occur in present time. And as a promise, it can always be postponed, and not happen in any
material present of the individual more than as a promise to be fulfilled, as a virtual space
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generator of meaning to come. The virtual is not something opposed to the real, neither the
opposite of reality (Levy, 1999: 8), the virtual is not false, illusory or imaginary - virtual
reality is not the opposite of real, authentic or genuine reality. The difference has to do
with the current, the virtual is not the current, not the current or acted present, it is a
produced simulation -in this case- by the cultural industry of that present that circulating
through the systemic networks of mediatization- manages to incarnate itself in the
individual, in her inscription and questioning as a subject, in his socialization in the
semiotic- material normative order of the multinational capitalist social system of
consumption. All "successful socialization lies precisely in making individuals wish to do
what is necessary for the system to de able to self-replicate" (Bauman, 2007: 97 ).
Virtual reality is a "latent phantasmagoric Real" (Levy, 1999: 8), but when it finds a
emplacement site, it couples and embodies itself, it makes itself present by updating itself,
the promise is fulfilled but in a different way. The simulation, the mediated virtual design
achieves thus to maintain an artifactual status of reality, as it is a virtual reality that has the
potential to be shared between subjects. Despite not being produced in the same social
space-time, it's still perceived as a collective act and -most important for the affirmation of
this reality from the standpoint of multinational consumer capitalism- whenever a virtual
transaction is carried out in the realm of simulation to acquire a commodity online or to get
money from an ATM, that virtual transaction becomes an incarnate event for the subject,
just a bit later.
Virtualization -its fluid circulation and mass production by the culture industry- is
one of the "main vectors of reality creation" (Levy, 1999: 13). Virtualization reaches
diverse spheres of the experienced SST (Social Space-Time) including -for instance- the
ways of being together, the formation of 'us': virtual communities, virtual companies,
virtual democracy, etc." (Levy, 1999: 7), affecting not just information and communication,
"but also the bodies, the economic performance, the collective frames of sensitivity or the
exercise of intelligence" (Levy, 1999: 7). It rises no surprise when it is confirmed that the
most virtualized and virtualizing in the systemic networks on contemporary social systems,
the "most de-territorialized operators, the most detached from precise spatio-temporal roots
(...) are the techno-science, finance and mass communication media. They are also the ones
that structure social reality more strongly, even with more violence" (Levy, 1999: 15), with
increased virulence. The power of the virtual lies in the design, in the reality simulation
programs that it carries, which at emplacing themselves in the written socialization
processes made circulate fluently by the culture industry, manages to replicate its operating
logic that, hiding itself in the impersonation of original design ghostifies itself, enacting the
spell of the simulation culture, the culture of systemic virtualization in the multinational
consumer capitalism.
In this consumption social system, of splitting up of the cultural industry of
diversified and virtual entertainment, with its happiness masks for the subject, appears the
"chronic craving for material goods, the purchasing virus, the passion for the new (...)"
(Lipovetsky, 2011: 32). In it is produced, in a fundamental way, the delegitimization of the
"Victorian standards, the ideals of sacrifice and the rigor imperatives for the benefit of
private pleasures" (Ibid.), the consumer society becomes essentially cultural, as the social
life becomes deregulated and the social relations become more varied and less structured by
stable rules (Featherstone, 1991: 41). Especially in the cultural industry with its
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overproduction of signs and playback of images and simulations, there is a loss of stable
meaning and an aestheticism of reality where mass singularities even when disconnected
from each other- are fascinated by the endless flow of extravagant juxtapositions that take
the viewer beyond all stable sense. The total flow that occurs through systemic virtual
media coverage, mainly given by the massive use of TV and the systemic network of
Internet, plus the availability of a wide range of merchandise, goods and experiences that
individuals should consume, possess and long for, becomes the fundamental condition of
life in social systems and with this goal- the singular individual is socialized, he is turned
into a subject to the social system by multiple couplings. The virtual simulation, the
spectacularized staging of everyday life, produces his subjectivation, inscribes and
questions him, designs a desiring subject, a consumption machine.
The so-called contemporary consumer culture, through advertising, media and
goods display techniques, can destabilize the original notion of the use or meaning of goods
and adhere to them new images and signs that can gather a whole range of associated
desires and feelings, whose purpose is the systemic reproduction of consumer capitalism
itself. The essential are the media of mass communication -of virtual mediatization, of
simulation- and the markets. The media "put themselves in the foreground (...) one might
think that it is this" totalization" that allows the building of a bridge to the fantasy pictures
of the market overall or the market as a unified process" (Jameson, 2001: 269). It is a
capitalist system "committed to the perpetual stimulation of demand, marketing and the
infinite multiplication of needs" (Lipovetsky, 2011: 7), through a brand policy of value
creation for the singularity turned into customer -for the subject produced as commodity.
There are loyalty systems, systems of pressure for segmentation and communication.
There is an ongoing Copernican revolution that replaces the "product-oriented"
company with the market- and consumer-oriented company" (Lipovetsky, 2011: 8). This
revolution happens in a social system whose main drive is the desire of the individual
turned into consumption subject, since today's hyper-consumerism society coincides with
an economy defined by the central role of the consumer (Lipovetsky, 2011: 9). For the
goods flow not to be disrupted thus affecting the reproductive logic of the capitalist
system and the very style of contemporary social life- consumption becomes a prerequisite
for its maintenance. In this logic of capitalist reproduction, all the goods for sale have as
goal to be consumed, the subject must consume them, he wants to consume them, and they
will be consumed "if and only if that consumption promises the gratification of his desires"
(Bauman, 2007: 23). The potential customer seeking the offered gratification - the promise
of enjoyment- will be willing to pay for the goods, depending on the credibility of that
promise and the strength of those desires.
The most decisive and essential feature in a consumer capitalist society even when
it has been carefully simulated, i.e. replaced and its replacement in turn hidden- is its
"ability to transform consumers into consumable products, or rather to dissolve them in a
sea of products" (Bauman, 2007: 23). That is why it is stated that "there is no man or
nature, only a process that produces one within the other and couples the machines.
Everywhere, producing or desiring machines" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1985: 12). It is the
desire that intrinsically produces an imaginary that"doubles reality, as if there was <<a
dreamed object behind every real object>> or a mental production behind actual
production" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1985: 33). Desire appears as what produces the ghost and
8

produces itself detaching from the object, but also "doubling the deficiency, taking it to its
absolute, turning it into an "incurable deficiency of being", a "lack-of-being that is life".
But desire seems not to lack anything, it is the subject that lacks desire, or desire that lacks
a fixed subject; there is no more fixed subject than by repression" (Deleuze & Guattari,
1985: 33). It is not desire that rests on needs, but on the contrary, the needs stem from
desire, thus the gap is "prepared, organized, in social production" (Deleuze & Guattari,
1985: 35). The non-stopping flow is the need that inscripts itself in the subject and
challenges him. The cultural industry of (neo) liberal virtual media simulation-the
contemporary Matrix- produces designs of reality replacements of it- to channel the
subject's encounter with consumption, for the subjects submission to the system, in the
desiring social production.
4. Chile Today: Welcome to the Matrix.
Todays Chile is a telling example of what it means to live in a Matrix produced by
multinational consumer capitalism (the system) and the singularities (subjects) that inhabit
such social systems, coupled by submission codes -by a design of integration through
consumption, where the subject himself becomes current commodity able to be consumed
and to consume himself in multinational virtual systemic networks as in his everyday
turning into consumer- in the microphysical of the singular subjectivitys inscription and
questioning. The country "opens" the neoliberal version of the capitalist social system and
with that achieves a widespread improvement of living conditions for its inhabitants, while
at the same time the country rapidly "develops", reaching near-developed-country standards
-as those of Portugal where per capita income is around U.S. $ 23,000 while in Chile it is
U.S. $ 20,000. However, that country -the country image that is sold out- actually reaches
only a fragment of people who live very well, but its halo effect makes it seem
representative of all Chilean people along all its territory, giving the impression that
progress and development are available to all national subjects.
If we take a closer look into some economic indicators, we see that the distribution
of income per capita by quintile (Casen: 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006) show
almost no difference -despite the four Concertacion coalition governments: a coalition
that considers itself a center-leftist one. Through the survey years, the poorest quintile has a
nearly identical per capita income, as does the highest income quintile. The difference in
income distribution goes almost unchanged for the twenty-three years of democracy after
the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
This way of structuring income no matter how fluent the neoliberal capitalism ishas resulted in 80% of the country's population receiving much less than the theoretical
USD 20,000 per capita. Data from different sources also indicates that the richest 1% of
Chilean population -about 170,000 of the 17 million inhabitants of the country, according
to the 2012 Census- obtained for themselves 30 % of GDP per capita, which translates into
a per capita income of nearly half a million dollars (Infante & Sunkel: 2009). How can a
country image be sustained if not with a simulation that runs through the multinational
capitalism cultural industry systemic virtual networks -which we call the Matrix to name
the metaphor, the allegory that makes possible the systemic reproduction of this simulation
and the social consequences associated with it and discussed in this essay? A Matrix that
has in the current Chilean consumption another backup -another guarantee of the described
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situation- and that has been more than once a matter of consideration, but without
observing the phenomenon as the dynamic subject- system coupling called the Matrix
which is discussed here. The Chilean fantasy of being a "developed", "modern" country,
and others that accompany this flowery desert of the real, is a desire that lives only in the
Matrix, as the designed attempt -in the coupling of the system and the subject- to rebuild
that lost other, that invisible, virtual network, with virtually codified meanings and senses,
in systemic circulation, that invigorates the everyday existence categorizing our reality in a
virulent way. It is that alienation -although alienation is not the right word anymore- but
rather that questioning inscription that constitutes being a subject within the orders that
constitute the real -reality being the outer other, a further order. It is the reduction of the
real -in all its known or unknown dimensions, as experiences of a singular subject coupled
to them in social systems- to the virtual world, to the simulation of a developed, modern
Chile, where a 20% is set as the full screen, reached or to be reached. That simulation order
requires the enjoyment, the constant flow of human enjoyment, for its reproduction in
todays Chile.
That order of the virtual simulation that encodes the cultural design program does
support the desert of the real, for that other 80 % of Chileans living in a social system,
virtually being itself, is alien, and enables support not had that you want to achieve, through
the fleeting enjoyment, that simulates a living dwelling with sovereignty of choice in that
country fantasized that few Chileans are available everyday, even ephemeral. It shows that
it may be possible that the Matrix is the allegory of multinational capital that colonized the
Chilean culture and subjectivity, through the power of seduction of the mock function as
device assimilation, social integration necessary systemic order, to a certain culture, Chile
in this case, as a coder design existential and social order of the subject, in which their
reality, virtual systemic in that order, is determined not by the facts as such , but by
systemic symbolic fictions, known as the Matrix .
Why is consumption so important for this virtual coding design to substitute reality
and hide this impersonation? Because the subject exists as desire of that other that restores
its mandate, demanding a choice where there is none, designing the simulation that
questions him in his constitutive inscriptions while being a subject coupled to the Matrix. In
return, he receives the enjoyment -ephemeral, but again and again- and for that he hands
over his energy, his life, his desires. It is the enjoyment imperative of the multinational
capitalist machinic evolution, given as alleged choice of the subject in his giving himself
-as if this design were constitutive of the singularity- that joy, that phantasmagoric desire,
and not his singular encounter with existence. It was not always this way. Until the
seventies, In Chile predominates an earlier version, characterized by being a multinational
capitalism, of systemic networks affinities embedded in multiple, rhizomatic -in the words
of Deleuze and Guattari. That capitalism produces our subject turned into hedonist
consumer. Before that, Chilean capitalism produced a consumer subject inspired by the
Christian morality principles of austerity, self-control rules and solidarity. This self-control
or control of himself by Christian inspiration is seen from the ascetic Christian ethic as "an
essential way of perfection, realized through penance, asceticism. This idea is part of the
cultural matrix of detachment and critical of the mundane. For this perspective, to live in
the spirit of faith means the denial of earthly enjoyment, its postponement for the sake of
the true enjoyment" (Moulian, 1998: 13), a celestial, out-of-this-world enjoyment.
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In his analysis regarding consumption in Chile, Moulian shows how this

modification of the mandate of the other from a commandment centered on ascetism to
another centered on hedonism, where consumption becomes enjoyment- "although it fulfills
a need of the system, it also realizes a need of the individual: to live a comfortable everyday
life is not the main issue, even if it is important. The main issue is that in this type of
civilization objects contribute to realize the possibilities of the self" (Moulian, 1998: 14).
Precisely, the needs of the self are those of the subject coupled to the Matrix -that is, to the
desire of the other, to its mandate, to the necessary circulation of goods in a hypertrophied
global market. That is precisely- what the subject coupling system as stated by Heidegger
(2007) as the image of the modern world, is about. Thus, this subject designed for
consumption and enjoyment differs from the former -he corresponds to another encoding,
another questioning inscription, one that demands, here and now, one that finds its meaning
in the consummation of desire in the enjoyment. Therefore he calms down "exclusively in
the dizzying realization, in the lust... Desire unsettles him. He needs to extinguish it, as a
hunger feeling that gnaws the bowels" (Moulian, 1998: 17). A brief pleasure that does not
drive the subject turned into consumer away from the feeling of power of having some
decision power about his life, as if the subject had those options in this Matrix. He can state
seemingly in a sovereign way- that he is free in his enjoyment. He only needs to respond
to the call of these capitalist societies that need avid consumers and seek to install
consumption as an inner necessity of the subjects in their capacity of existing in apparent
freedom. It is the capitalist system itself "that needs to install consumption as desire on the
subjectivities" (Moulian, 1998: 22). That is the inscription that the encoding device
achieves, the integration design termed here as The Matrix. Although it not just inscribes
but also challenges, builds the desire -even the fantasy- offers and summons up their
satisfaction, in the middle of the enjoyment apparent freedom.
Besides, in Chile the consumption turned into integration worship installed -in the
order of simulations- his own place of realization of the neoliberal utopia of free circulation
of goods available to the subject turned into consumer, a place of social and existential
coupling: Chile lives in the malls. There "objects are shown, exhibited, realizing the
simulation of its availability for anyone who wants to take them... (malls) produce the idea
of a generalized consumption paradise (Moulian, 1998: 56-57). As the key that facilitates
the enjoyment is money -and according to the countrys wealth structure- only a small
percentage about 20% of the total population- have it in advance. Therefore, in Chile, "the
element that allows the massification of the system is the department stores credit... This
form of access to credit allows consumption immediacy, which means for the customer the
rapid fulfillment of desire (Moulian, 1998: 36). Moulian also points out that this
consumption-smoothing device operates as a powerful social integration mechanism,
"which catches in its networks an important part of the working population. This credit
chain reduces the rigidity of income distribution and softens the absence of state policies
aimed at compensating the blindness of labor markets" (Moulian, 1998: 37). This
consumption is the one promoted by the mass media of the culture industry, for the
consumer to have in his home, in his interstitial microphysics of his everyday routine, a set
of "pleasurable images and success stories" (Moulian, 1998: 24). The important thing is
that it serves to exorcise "the hardness of their work and the burden of the metropolis"
(Moulian, 1998: 24), while it generates -via the simulation- the virtual ability to inhabit that
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space of realization of the subject, to inhabit the wellbeing that his social system -in this
case the Chilean one- says it offers as an option. Of course, it is not just about mitigating
the everyday routines -sometimes strenuous, dizzying and exhausting work- but it also
functions as the fantasy inscribed and questioned by the media, that ultimately becomes the
meaning of life for the contemporary subject grabbed the Matrix, who conceives himself as
part of a country inhabited "by handsome, elegant and wealthy beings. Propaganda repeats
-in other code- the same discourse of modernity" (Moulian, 1998: 25). The cultural
industry, the industry of simulation and of the virtual, is the industry of the coding
propaganda of the social existence of the subject turned into consumer.
This story misses though- a critical moment. In the design created for operation in
Chile, the Matrix has an anomaly in its programming, because -as has been discussed- the
income of the vast majority of Chileans does not allow them to have enough money for
fulfilling this productive imperative of enjoyment. For them there is credit the apparent
confidence that the capitalist social system deposits to try to circumvent the anomaly.
"However, all those who buy on credit, after the instant pleasure achieved with their
reliable customer credential, must confront the sacrifice and many times the purgatory of
monthly payments" (Moulian, 1998: 57) and it is then that the anomaly reveals itself and
the future -in its brilliant virtuality and simulation- collapses or shows too many
inconsistencies to continue accepting the coupling that keeps the subject coupled the
Matrix, supposedly for the happiness of the individual, but in fact rather to satisfy the
design of multinational capitalism systemic self-reproduction, regardless of the subject as
promise of inalienable being, but just the machinic evolution that requires subjects turned
into raving goods consumers -including the subject himself as circulating good- to be able
to continue allowing the total flow of the global commercial commodity productionconsumption. Such anomalies have been expressed in the call for mobilization and street
protest of citizens annoyed by the current state of affairs, not satisfied by the social
integration device, not in peace with the overcoding, with the challenging inscription the
Matrix makes for the contemporary realization of the subject, in his existential search for
happiness.
5. Concluding Discussion.
The being turns into coupled subject, by submission codes, to the world, to the
reality turned into system. The scientific domain, together with the rule of technology -the
prevailing technoscience of contemporary society- has tended the networks where the
cultural industry -in neoliberal multinational consumer capitalism- circulates the
simulations that inscribe and challenge the subject to be, virtualizing, mediatizing social
relationships in a systemic culturally designed to sustain consumption, to become
consumption subjects, as the fluent coupling needed for the multinational capitalist
systemic reproduction. Subjects, systems and submissions, submission codes designed to
keep the subject tied to consumption, to the contemporary enjoyment. The Matrix -as a
metaphor- is the allegory of the submission, the modeling of the acceptance of this
condition as a requirement of being occurs precisely- in the subject. Therefore what
inscribes itself, and then challenges, is that subject turned into desire and enjoyment in
consumption. The subject is thirsty, then he dreams of drinking a coca cola. The fantasy of

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the other haunts him, virulently appropriates his being, turns into subject in the inscription
of the fantasy questioned as enjoyment thanks to consumption.
We have seen that Chile is a paradigmatic case of the conjunction between
consumer multinational capitalism with the culture industry, as assemblers of the program
of systemic social integration through consumption, allegorically termed here "The
Matrix". Therefore, the question that might serve as a closing for these conclusions arises
immediately: How can this situation be sustained? What enables the maintenance and
systemic reproduction of these living conditions for most Chileans? And the answer seems
to be the one that has been outlined throughout this article: the Matrix -that Other with
capital letter- the capitalist social system of neo-liberal type, in its multinational, consumer
version, along with the cultural industry -the conscience-manufacturing industry, the
industry of simulation, virtuality and fantasy- is what allows it through the production of a
systemic simulation about the systemic social lifestyle, seemingly existent or at-hand in the
(virtual) future for "all" Chilean people. An industry of fantasy inscription about what
supposedly is the way of life for the subjects in Chile. Fantasies that mobilize the desire and
enjoyment in (the) subjects consumption -a subject gripped by himself- that is, himself, an
object of consumption. A cultural industry that -through virtual simulation- enables the
submission to the social system, to the Other, to the fantasy promoter that virulently affects
subjects, that inscribes them and then summons them to answer for that other that lives in
her dreams, produced by the machinic flows of contemporary capitalism.

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Pablo Martnez Fernndez

Dr Teory Sociologist
University Andrs Bello
Faculty of Science Social
Department of Psychology
Autopista Concepcin-Talcahuano 7100
Concepcin-Chili
Alvaro Elgueta Ruiz
PhD. on Public Communication
alvaro.ruiz@docente.unicv.edu.cv
Science & Technology Department
University of Cape Verde

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