When Neo has already been freed of the Matrix, his subsequent reentries into the matrix often involve mass killings of the people who have not yet been liberated. We ask you here today if Neo has an obligation to show these un-freed people moral consideration, with moral consideration in this case meaning the same type of consideration you would give to a freed person like Morpheus.
DON’T KILL THEM – MORAL CONSIDERATION ALL AROUND!
As Neo, while you intuitively understand that these people are different from you in that they are being controlled by the machines; they nonetheless look just like you do. Even in nature, Rousseau argues that there is a feeling of pity that can be identified with things like you, such that horses don’t step on animals of their own species because they recognize the similarity. As Neo, your aesthetic considerations of these non-liberated people must be great, for even if you rationally know that they are killed by the machine, the death and bloodshed that results is still on your hands and to see something that appears the same as you die is an unpleasant and morally degrading proposition.
Moreover, it is harmful to you as an individual to engage in killing these non-liberated people, for morality is habituated. If you can rationally see two options, one being to kill them and one being to offer them moral consideration and you pick the option to kill them, this decision will impact future decisions and the ease of killing will increase. Thus, not only are you actively seeing a face that looks like yours and deciding to kill it anyway, you are also degrading your own morality by making this choice and increasing the likelihood of future killing.
Finally, these un-liberated people are potential life forms. As Neo, your goal is to defeat the machines and liberate the humans, yet if you are killing their potential-forms, you are denying potential life and harming your own ultimate goals. As someone ultimately concerned with righting this system of oppression, to not give moral consideration to these minds that are enslaved is to lose sight of your ultimate ambitions.
BLOOD AND GUTS IS ALWAYS THE RIGHT CHOICE
The first question one must ask is first, why do we feel that humans are owed moral consideration? We feel that humans, rather than animals, are deserving of a special level of moral consideration because of their ability to think, and to make rational choices. When one can make a rational choice, one becomes a moral actor. It is our individual will that makes us moral, and through which we deserve the moral respect of others. Without said will, we are not agents. Without agency, one is nothing but a means.
The opposition might argue that matrix-humans are moral actors – that they can make decisions, but are simply not aware of the circumstances surrounding these choices. I would respond through the analogy of the dream. One can “make decisions” while dreaming, yet we do not consider these actions to have moral consequence. At best, matrix-humans are coerced agents, brainwashed to the point where whatever will they might have originally possessed is fundamentally corrupted. Examine the following argument through analogy. Imagine an ant colony, in which each ant acts through the designed actions of the mother ant. Matrix-humans are this ant; they are coerced by the mother ant such that their situations and reactions and essentially mapped out. Their true selves reside in the Matrix, in coma-like cocoons. We feel bad when we needlessly squash ants, forgetting that a singular ant is but the smallest fraction of the colony. It is not an individual just because it scurries about alone – rather, in thinking so, one is tricked by nothing more than an optical illusion of singularity, when the reality is that one merely sees a part of the whole.
Of course, this is not the most salient argument. If one considers the situation as a whole, it is clear to see that as Neo, your own life comes first. All others in the matrix are potential threats to your life, and it is only through your life that humanity can be saved. It is therefore well worth considering that killing matrix-humans is always the right choice, given the ultimate risk that resides in their capacity to become Smiths.
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