hi, i've just stumbled upon your analyses of the matrix films tonight, and i am just beginning to sort through them, so forgive me if youve dealt with this question at length elsewhere, and simply give me a link.
the question is simply, why does the merovingian believe that choice is a system of control?
The Merovingian views choice as merely another form of control because he is a determinist. He does not believe that there is any such thing as “free choice” because choices are already conditioned and in a sense predetermined prior to their being made. The language used by the Architect when analyzing Neo’s reaction to his choice is a good way of entering this perspective: “Already I can see the chain reaction the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason.” The Architect talks about precursors and chain reactions etcetera -- all the biological aspects that eventually drive Neo’s choice. Manipulation of these "choices" doesn't imply remote control, just placing people into situations that will lead them to make the "choice" you want them to make -- as in the case of whether or not to save/repopulate Zion.
For programs like the Merovingian, humans are merely complex Rube Goldberg machines to be manipulated through their neural-sensory input. From the Merovingian’s perspective, neither the bourgeois gal nor Neo actually exercises choice, their essence already dictates the choices that they will make. He doesn’t believe in choice because according to his world view, choice cannot exist, it is always derived or driven by chemical or electric precursors. So what is choice from this perspective? Choice is merely an illusion, held by those who cannot comprehend all the variables that go into making the “choice” what it will be – and hence what it must be. Take the gal at the table eating cake. From her perspective she exercises choice when she later chooses to “hook up” with the Merovingian… but from his perspective, that choice was choreographed. Likewise, so are the choices of the One, which are “choreographed by the Architect and the "Fortune Teller.”
it seems to me that choice is precisely only thing that challenges the complete domination of humanity by the machines, after all, it renders necessary countless other systems of control.
Except that the Merovingian wouldn’t exempt machines from the imperatives of determinism: they too are slaves to necessity, it’s just that they understand this, whereas as humans do not. So, from this perspective, one is not really in control per se, all are subject to necessity, it is just that those with a better perspective on necessity are better able to manipulate the factors at their disposal – again, however, this is boils down not to choice but to essence. It is the essence of powerful men, like the Merovingian, to seek more power. (It also makes a wonderful excuse for folks to indulge in themselves.) So the Merovingian doesn’t even see himself as ultimately able to make a choice – his decisions too are already predetermined by who (or what) he is. Not that strange a philosophy, when you consider that it is the philosophical musings of a very powerful program that has, after all, been programmed.
the merovingian states that it is an illustion created between those who have power and those who do not, but once again it would seem that a thorough analysis would reveal that choice is that which necesitates control--the only thing that renders it necessary (the will to survive would be a function of choice...an implcation which the wachowski brothers seem to have missed, unless i am missing something).
It is not choice that necessitates control, from the machine perspective, but the essence of humanity that requires that it be “controlled.” There is something in humans, some element of randomness, that the machines cannot reduplicate. The Merovingian denies it exists; the Architect acknowledges it, but sees it only as yet another variable, one that ultimately cannot be fully determined (like Pi); only the Oracle seems to understand this randomness as the free will to make a choice. So control does not necessarily imply choice – think of the measures we take to limit termite infestations: does that imply that termites exercise choice? Or are they just blind creatures of instinct? That is the perspective from which the machines are coming.
one last thing: does the necessity of free will imply the existence of the soul and god… the three have always seem linked to me, and perhaps to kant.
Certainly the three are linked for Kant, but then you have to understand, for the machines there is only a phenomenal world (the sense impulses through which we connect with the world) without any need for a noumenal backup (the thing-in-itself that generates or lies behind the sense impulses). They can understand the world perfectly well without any fantasies of things-in-themselves, without the need for hypothesizing a ghost in the machine. For them, everything is a machine.
One might also point out that the noumenal logic upon which Kant based his proof of the soul and God is not necessarily that terribly convincing (even to his fellow humans), based as it is upon a transcendental argument for what must exist for our categories of perception to have meaning. One could also argue that what seeming must exist is yet another illusion of the reasoning mind, like choice itself. Or one could dispense with the duty to believe and embrace the radical openness of choice, thereby putting existence prior to essence (which is the move I see the Wachowskis making), which would lead one to an existential affirmation of human choice regardless of the existence of noumenal underpinnings like the soul or God.
Hope this is not too hoity-toity,
cheers -- MM
8:10:08 PM 
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