the "Matrix" of the Kingdom of God

For the last month of my life, there has been a recurring theme repeatedly going on in my mind as to how life in the Kingdom of God relates to the nature of the Matrix movie.

One line always repeats itself in my mind. "Living from another world that has extraordinary effects on this one". This is a slightly modified phrase that I stole from one of Dallas Willard articles. It keeps going through my mind periodically as I go throughout my day. Whether this is from the Holy Spirit, my own mind, or a mixture of the both I do not know. I think that line clearly makes sense in a plain/simple no-nonsense reading of the New Testament. The early Apostles/Acts Church were really normal human beings that were living from another world that has extraordinary effects on this one. That is the only rational explanation for what the heck actually took place in the book of Acts.

Once again, I do feel like I need to give a reminder to those reading this that I am aware that the comparison between the Matrix and the Kingdom of God is not a completely flawless one (as with all analogies). There are flaws/shortcomings/incongruities with the Matrix and the Kingdom of God definitely, and some sketchy/New Age-ish implications that come from the Matrix too. Nevertheless, I believe that although the movie is over a decade old, it captures more of the essence/nature of the invisible Kingdom of God that we read about from the New Testament than mere technical propositions can. Technical propositions can only go so far to communicate the essence of something (e.g. a textbook definition of sacrificial love). It takes a narrative-like framework to more fully express the essence of a concept sometimes (e.g. a movie about sacrificial love).

(with certain qualifications) The Kingdom of God as outlined in the New Testament is so like the Matrix.



There are so many references to the Kingdom of God in the Gospels and Acts that I don't have room to refer to every single one here, but just a few. The topic that Jesus talked about most was about the Kingdom of God. Now what exactly is this Kingdom? I like Dallas Willard's interpretation, because it just makes so much sense when it is applied to the contexts in Scripture where the term is used. Dallas Willard says that it is the "range of God's effective will, where what God wants done is done". Because on earth right now, in a ton of places God's will is not done, and we ask for God's will to come into effect in more and more places, especially in our own hearts.


Now to the references:

Jesus said in John 18:36 that “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” From here, we know that his Kingdom right now is not in the physical realm where it is advanced through physical means (i.e. political/military force). The same goes with the Matrix and the "kingdom" that Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity are fighting to advance, they do not expand the "kingdom" of the Matrix ("unplug" people from the Matrix) through physical/political/military ends (although sometimes they do have specific missions for other purposes that encompass this stuff like the famous lobby scene), but by living from "another world" that has extraordinary effects on this one.

In Romans 14:17, Paul says that "the Kingdom is not of physical eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit". Those 3 things in the Holy Spirit are non-physical/invisible, yet real things. You can't describe the colour, weight, location, height, width or any physical characteristics of righteousness, peace, and joy, although they can have physiological effects on the physical body. The same with the Matrix. One cannot say to Neo "Hey Neo, where is the Matrix?". Neo cannot "show" the Matrix to the person to experience only with his/her five senses while he/she remains in the physical world. In Luke 17:20-21, Jesus says "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." The same goes with Neo.

I believe that at certain times in the New Testament when the term "the Kingdom of God" is used, sometimes it is referring to something in the future. But sometimes it is referring to the present moment. Like right now. One piece of biblical evidence (on top of the entire book of Acts) is Acts 14:22 when Paul and Barnabas said to the churches in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch that “We must go through many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God." Clearly Paul and Barnabas are not saying we have to suffer in order to attain salvation in the next life. That would clearly go against the "justified by grace alone" theme that Paul writes about all over the place in his Epistles. But I believe that what Paul and Barnabas said here only makes sense if the Kingdom of God here is understood as "actively being involved in fulfilling God's story on earth right now and being a part of what he's presently doing now on earth while being in interactive relationship with him." If that definition is inserted into the phrase "enter the Kingdom of God" in Acts 14:22, then it makes sense, because it is something that we enter into and are a actively a part of now. The same thing goes with Neo. After Neo "converts", he is actively involved in the expansion of "Zion" through the Matrix.

In 1 Corinthians 4:20, Paul says "For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power". Power can be defined as the ability to produce the effects what you want to effect, effectively. The Kingdom of God is not escapism where one escapes into another reality that is remotely unattached and unrelated to "normal" everyday life. It is a matter of living from another world that POWERFULLY produces extraordinary effects in the "normal" everyday world as evidenced in the Gospels and the book of Acts. Similarly, Neo did not just enter a form of escapism where he stops living in the "normal" everyday life. On the contrary, he entered a reality that had powerful effects on the "everyday" one.


1 Corinthians 2:6-14 says:

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—

these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit


If Morpheus tried to explain this to another person who has never experienced the Matrix before, it would sound like utter folly. It would sound ridiculous. It would sound retarded. Until the person experienced it him/herself. After Neo got thoroughly/holistically/irreversibly converted he was able to understand not the "wisdom of the world" or of physical reality, but he was able to understand the "secret"/"hidden" wisdom of the Kingdom of God, that tells us that we were previously of "the world" aka "The Kingdom of darkness", but then we were delivered from it (Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 1:13). The same goes when the student of Jesus tries to communicate spiritual truths to someone who has never stepped into the Kingdom. It sounds absolutely ridiculous. But for that student of Jesus to try to communicate spiritual truths for someone who has just thoroughly/holistically/irreversibly experienced the "new birth" (truly being born-again) it is true/priceless/treasured wisdom.


I think these parallels are extremely important for us modern day Protestants to understand. I cannot stress this enough. How far we have strayed from norm of New Testament Christian experience is very saddening to one who has started to actually experience the Matrix of the Kingdom of God. I see it like this. Imagine Neo, after experiencing the Matrix himself, writes letters to his children, so that his children can one day pass them down to their children and so on. So he writes letters describing the Matrix, it's nature, how to navigate through it, what to expect from it, how to train oneself to cosntantly remain in it, "agents" to watch out for and how to deal with them, how to live from it in order to have extraordinary effects in the physical world etc. Then, imagine several generations later, Neo's grandchildren's grandchildren read these letters and try to imitate Neo and experience the kind of life Neo experienced, but just imitate the surface by-products/physical effects of Neo's typical life in the Matrix with a monkey-see-monkey-do sort of legalistic carbon copy of his descriptions accompanied by merely "parotting" his sayings all the while never learning to really live from this invisible, yet parallel reality. But they are very technical in their understanding of the Matrix, debate amongst one another about the small technicalities in his letters, and feel guilty about not being able to live the life that Neo was able to live. They remain living in and from the physical world and try to produce the extraordinary effects they see without living from the parallel world, the Matrix. But they keep studying these left-behind letters of Neo and build seminaries to understand its meaning better. Ladies and Gentlemen, that's kind of the picture we have today in the North American Church.

In order for someone to imitate Neo, he has to operate from the same alternate reality that Neo operated from. One cannot imitate Neo by putting the emphasis on trying to conform his external behaviour to Neo's external behaviour. One imitates Neo by living from the same alternate world that he lived in that has extraordinary effects on this one.

One does not dodge bullets from the enemy by trying to dodge bullets.



Although this guy's imitation of Neo is impressive to the public (it really is), if he tried that while terrorist was shooting bullets at him, he'd die in a moment.



One dodges bullets from the enemy by living from another world that has extraordinary effects on this one.


The same goes with the student of Jesus wanting to learn how to bless those who curse him, not fear man but fear God, or learn to not worry in all types of situations that are stressful for the nondisciple. These things can be learned by following Jesus. They are not just unrealistic expectations that Jesus tells us to do but where we constantly have to fail and ask for forgiveness after inevitably failing without improvement. By the grace of God they can be learned and Jesus expects us to learn them, master them, and teach others (in the Great Commission). Teaching people to do something is not just merely telling them WHAT they should do (e.g. a basketball coach teaching a basketball player how to master fadeaway shots by saying "just make them!") but teaching them exactly HOW they can master it (e.g. a basketball coach teaching a basketball player how to master fadeaway shots by "breaking his shot down" and going through each ineffective part of his shot with him and encouraging him). But we must remember that it is basically impossible to fulfill the commandments of Jesus if we remain in this physical world only. We must learn to live from another world that has extraordinary effects on this one in order to experience those effects. And that comes from learning from the "Morpheus"es that have experienced it themselves and who can likewise personally train those with less or no experience in it.

I am so grateful for my "Morpheus"es who have experienced the Matrix of the Kingdom of God first-hand and who have, after mastering things themselves, have taught me how to steadily master things in the Matrix myself. Dallas Willard, Jan Johnson, Richard Foster, and Frank Laubach have been my Morpheus"es, with the first and the last being the most helpful with my personality. Dallas Willard is truly like no other. You won't find too many people like him. He teaches you (with more practical help from Jan Johnson) how to live from all 5 dimensions of your being (thoughts, feelings, will, body, and social relationships) in the Kingdom of God, how to submit and grow in all these areas, and in turn, to produce visible effects in the physical world from the invisible Kingdom of God. The Matrix of the Kingdom of God is so awesome.

These Morpheuses have taught me how to practically remain in the world while not being of it, especially in a 21st century context (since advice would have to be modified somewhat to apply it to "the world" which takes different forms in different centuries [I'm sure Morpheus' tutorial to Neo would be somewhat different if Neo lived in China rather than America]). It is important to know how distractions can lure us right into the trap of the barrel of an agent's (demon's) gun.

As Dallas Willard writes in Renovation of the Heart about emotions:

"By contrast [to the person who is mastered by emotions/feelings], the person who happily lets God be God does have a place to stand in dealing with feelings - even in extreme cases such as despair over loved ones or excruciating pain or voluptuous pleasure. They have the resources to do what they don't want to do and to not do what they want. They know and deeply accept the fact that their feelings, of whatever kind, do not have to be fulfilled. They spend little time grieving over non-fulfillment. And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against them when appropriate.

Those who let God be God get off the conveyor belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin. They do not wait until it is moving so fast they cannot get off of it. Their aim is not to avoid sin, but to avoid temptation - the inclination to sin. They plan their path accordingly."

Moving on, we continue with John 3:1-8:

Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

In this scene, Neo experiences a "rebirth", but this is not a physical rebirth, just like how Jesus said that in order to enter the Kingdom of God you must be born of "water and spirit". When Neo falls into the water after he gets "unplugged", I think that signifies baptism somewhat. Speaking from my own experience of living from the Matrix of the Kingdom of God (It's been roughly 2 and a half years), the "rebirth" hasn't always been a pleasant/happy ride. There are times where it's rough. But then I am being transformed to the point where life doesn't necessarily always have to be pleasant/happy. I mean, it's the Matrix! The adventure of all the ups and downs of fighting for Zion vastly outweighs the comforts of an ignorant life of friends revolving around "central perk" (I have nothing against the show friends, although "central perk" here illustrates what "the world" is like in North America).

I also think the narrative-framework of the Matrix helps me understand Luke 9:23-24 better.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

Before, I understood the content of what Jesus said, but not necessarily what he meant. It didn't really make sense to me and I couldn't comprehensively understand the heart of what he was getting at. But the movie the Matrix helped me understand it a bit more (and also experiencing it first-hand myself). Before Neo entered the Matrix, he was a computer programmer living a "normal" earthly existence. He had to give up that lifestyle and "deny it" in order to enter into the Matrix. If he were to "save" that "normal" lifestyle, he would never be able to experience a truly fulfilling/abundant life. Whereas if he gave up and "denied" that "normal" lifestyle in the physical world, he would be able to experience a truly fulfilling/abundant life.

Morpheus is not saying to Neo that "I'm going to be mean and won't let you into the Matrix unless you impress me by giving up your life 100% that would subjectively give me good feelings about you". He is basically describing the decision objectively. It's logically impossible to simultaneously fully live the life he lived before while fully living life in the Matrix at the same time. Morpheus is not being a jerk. He is just an intersection sign that shows two roads going in opposite directions that follow from it. One cannot be 50% "rebirthed" in the way that Neo experienced "rebirth" after taking the red pill. It's 0% or 100%. Jesus was not being a jerk too. He, like Morpheus, was just plainly laying out the options with their consequences.

Jesus always had the truth of God in his mind to interpret reality. The truths of the Kingdom of God were saturating his human mind 24-7. That's why he could always pick up a random everyday object in the middle-eastern culture that he was in and casually give illustrations about the Kingdom of God from them. Just like how if a young guy/girl likes another young guy/girl, whatever they see, they will somehow relate it to the target guy/girl that he/she likes. This is how Jesus was with the Kingdom. He constantly meditated on Scripture in his human mind. How was that like? I think it was like 1:03-1:06 of this youtube clip.

Metaphorically speaking that is. His interpretation of reality was always an interpretation using the paradigm of the invisible Kingdom of God upon the visible physical kingdom.

That enabled him to casually stop the attacks from the demons (agents), and even cause them to run away from him.

Oh yea, and he also resurrected from the dead just like how Neo did in the end of the movie. By the way, happy Easter everyone. The Good news of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God is not only the mere forgiveness of sins. Jesus coming to earth, dying on the cross, and resurrecting from the dead is good news because it allows us to get unplugged from the Matrix! The Good news is that we get unplugged from the Matrix not only after we die, but even right now in this present moment. As Dallas Willard said, "if you want to get into heaven, don't wait t'il you die, start now".

Living from another world that has extraordinary effects on this one. Thanks for helping me understand the Kingdom of God Wachowski Brothers (directors of the Matrix).

thoughts on the election debate of April 12, 2011

I just saw the debate on youtube this afternoon. I thought I might post some of my thoughts.

For those who have not seen it yet, you can see it here



I'll say first of all that I'm not the biggest Canadian political junkie. I'm not the most avid follower of Canadian politics. I prefer to follow the politics of America, China (and around East Asia), and the middle east. I think that in relative comparison, Canadian politics is not that interesting. Nevertheless since I am a citizen of this great country (not sarcasm) I figure I ought to do my share of following in this 2011 federal election.

I'll admit right off the bat that crazily reading up on what each party stands for is not my utter most priority. I have other reading priorities(reading about Christian spirituality, the wisdom of different Christian denominations, psychology, biographies, history etc.). I do read the (very liberal) Toronto Star at work though, mostly because it's free haha. Man, the Star is so unabashedly liberal it doesn't even try to put up a veneer of surface-level neutrality. It's just blatantly left without apology. I read blow after blow against Harper. I don't know, something about Harper makes me like him. I don't know why. I think I'd like to meet him personally one day too. It's kind of mysterious too because I only read anti-Harper articles on politics haha.

All that to say, my personal take on what I weigh heavily in who I'm going to put my trust in is significantly swayed by assessing the character of each leader in each party. I realize a lot of things in this. I can't see their character behind closed doors when the cameras are off. I can't fully know what they honestly think about a lot of things. I can't judge the deepest depths of their heart (I have trouble judging the deepest depths of my own heart sometimes). But nevertheless, I do believe Jesus' words that whatever is stored up in people's hearts just flows out, or in the arena of politics, it "leaks" out in people. Superficial "social cosmetics" can only do so much, sooner or later the natural contents of what's in people's hearts leak out of people's word choice, speaking pitch, microexpressions on their face, and subconscious body language. I see this fact in myself, in my family, in my close friends, and in my acquaintances. I think Anthony Bloom (an eastern orthodox dude) has a lot of wisdom when he says that the human body is a barometer of the person's state of mind. While it doesn't have 100% correspondence to a person's state of mind, it nevertheless somewhat reflects what's going on inside of someone.

I sometimes read newspaper articles on political leaders, and hear tidbits of headlines of "drama" that occurred with the party leaders (i.e. Harper "rejecting" a girl in one of his rallies because she had a picture with Michael Ignatieff on Facebook), but I figure at the end of the day, the media a lot of the time puts such a spin on "facts" that it's so hard sometimes to filter through what's exaggeration, what's a lie, and what REALLY took place. And the media has it's own agenda a lot of the times. I don't need others to tell me the motives of actions of politicians. I just need to know the facts of what objectively occurred, then I can decide about motives myself (which I'll be cautious about anyway, because I know I know very little and can know very little if I've never met them personally).

I've also learned (when I led a team of 5 Canadians in East Asia last year) all the heavy responsibility of leadership. It's so easy to point fingers and blame someone if something bad happened. Very simple. It takes less than 10 calories (I'm completely guessing haha). But I've learned that when one's in leadership, one just has to naturally take responsibility of all the negative things that happen under one's team. Sometimes it is one's own fault, but sometimes it's not, but nevertheless, the leader has to shoulder the responsibility and take the blame. For an outsider that does not know what really goes on in the team, frankly speaking, most of the time they don't really know what's going on. I'm not saying that people and leaders shouldn't be held accountable, I'm just saying that unless one has truly reliable inside information, it's nearly impossible to accurately assess the root of issues by looking at the superficial symptons. Since I've only tasted a little bit of this "leader shouldering responsibility and covering for blame within his team" phenomena, I can hardly imagine what political leaders go through when something goes wrong in their team. Like all the "scandals" that happened in each party recently. It's so easy to point the finger, and come up with a make-shift blame-inviting-framework to make sense of the "facts" when frankly speaking, a lot of people don't know what the heck is actually going on. I'll say frankly that I have no idea, for the most part, what the character of the middle east dictators are like. I'm not saying that the revolutions aren't justified at all, or that governments shouldn't be held accountable, but I'm just saying that I've never been an "insider" to fully understand what the heck is going on. There are personality factors, cultural factors, subcultural factors, historical factors, personal history factors, interpersonal-history-within-the-team factors, social dynamics/chemistry within the team factors, psychological factors, biological pressure/physiological fluctuation factors(different moods during different times of the day that affect social dynamics), spiritual factors, amount and type of education received factors, best-friend-influence factors, personal habits/lifestyle factors, self-deception factors. If I don't 100% fully understand all of these factors influencing my own life, how the heck can I fully understand what goes on inside of Mubarak, or Gadhafi? Am I just going to fully rely on what a foreign reporter, who has probably never spoken to them personally, thinks? Same thing to a lot of Canadian reporters writing condemning articles bashing certain party leaders when they've never even had a substantial conversation with the leader themselves.

All that to say, I'm not going to fully trust the media when I try to assess each leader. I want to hear from the leaders themselves. No leader is going to say "I am for the destruction of Canada" or "I want Canada to continue regressing economically". All leaders are going to say something positive along the lines of "I believe my party can competently lead in power for the next few years" and "I believe our policies and proposed plans/bills are capable of making Canada a better place". One of the keys for me is how they say it. What is the tone of their voice? what is their word choice in their message? What are the microexpressions on their faces like? Does their body language below the neck show calm-confidence in what they say? Of course I can only learn so much about them in a public debate, but I think I can learn more about them by observing them directly rather than having a newspaper reporter ascribe a biased pre-committed/interpretive framework on the politicians for me. It is like a father trying to find out if his son lied to him about something. If the father wants to find out the truth, he should not rely on what other third-party-people report about what the son said. The father should ask his son about the truth and not exclusively focus on the contents of what the son says, but how he says it. Any son can say "I didn't steal from the cookie jar" or "I didn't steal money from your wallet". The father would be wise to analyze how the son says the contents rather than rely on 3rd party information that relays the exact same contents of what the son suspected of lying said. The father should not focus exclusively on the contents that comes out of the son's mouth, but see whether his overall behaviour is in natural congruence in the flow of the son's speech, to see if there's any on-the-spot behavioural inconsistencies that lead him to believe that his son is lying. A roughly similar attitude takes place in how I want to assess the characters of the politicians. And for me, the characters of the politicians matters a lot, not just their "brilliant" political plans on paper. Their characters will trickle downwards to each sector/level of society and have a profound influence. Laws and legislation can change behaviour, but not character. It takes character to change character. Character is contagious. Not only on a social level, but I believe on a spiritual level one's character somehow mysteriously affects those in his circle of influence in ways we won't fully understand in this life.

With all that said, I have to say that I was impressed by Harper's overall character throughout the whole debate. By seeing his response to things as well as his lack of response to things, I was very impressed by how he remained calm and composed in the midst of all the verbal cross-fire going on. All the other leaders were angry and letting their emotions fuel their refinely coated venom. Harper was an exception. The other 3 were mudslinging. Ignatieff and Duceppe, especially, got pretty angry. Layton seemed somewhat angry and viewed the other leaders with contempt. I think that Harper remained respectful and refused to join the mudslinging session. I have to say, his lack-of-emotional-response with his consistent "emotionless stare" towards his accusing opponents when they each taunted him made me laugh out loud literally repeatedly. hahaha. I can't get enough of that. Once again, I reiterate that I have tasted a bit of the burden of leadership in leading only a team of 5 for a year. Harper has had to lead a team that has been in power for the past few years of an entire country. Even though I only led a team of 5, I felt the crushing burden of both justified and unjustified accusations aimed at myself as well as those I was responsible for looking after. After receiving just a dose of criticism from outside the team (other church leaders in EA, the school, dissatisfied people within the spiritual movement in our EA city) I can see how much of a good character is needed to withstand negative/critical accusations without responding back critically and sinking down to the accuser's level. It truly takes strength to not only turn the other cheek on the outside, but on the inside. And in this debate Harper had to take simultaneous heat from all 3 party leaders aggressively triple-teaming him nonstop. And although he wasn't perfect, he for the most part did not sink low to the level of mudslinging, name-calling, personal insults, and fuel the antagonistic fire of interpersonal enmity in the debate. I truly have respect for Harper in this regard. I am not a political expert, and admit that I don't have the political background to comprehensively assess whether or not his proposed plans/promises are wise for the country long-term, but I have to say that I'm really impressed by his character. He's either a really good actor, or a man with a solid character. His body language and microexpressions on his face show that he didn't seem bothered to a significant degree, or respond with fire against fire, or in this case respond with arrogance against arrogance.

I have to say that the closing remark of one other political leader truly gave away his lack of confidence in his party. Of course political leaders are highly trained to modify their macro-facial expressions, so that is the last place to look when assessing a politician's confidence. But man! This politician's body language really gave away his lack of confidence in either his party, himself, or his arguments in the debate! I don't know exactly what his lack of confidence was attributed towards or what caused it, but I did see it present in his final speech in the debate.

Also, from a purely a political standpoint, I was impressed by the skill of conceptual framing from the leaders. Over these years, I have learned more and more about the skill of framing an issue in debates for political reasons. This is different from purely philosophical debates (for example about the existence of God), where the debaters (at least ideally) have arguments with identical definitions of terms that enables their arguments to "run on the same tracks and collide". In politics, it seems different. It seems that a lot of the times the "tracks" of an argument are shifted (intentionally) to make it seem that the arguments are running on "parallel tracks" that don't meet. This is not done unintentionally a lot of the time, but intentionally to impose another interpretive framework on the issue at hand. This is an art and it takes skill. I think 3 of the debaters (excluding Duceppe) were excellent at imposing an alternative interpretive framework on the issue at hand that allowed them to escape or counter uncomfortable "cornering" in arguments. This truly takes skill, and all 3 are brilliant at it (this is expected since all 3 climbed the political ladder so high).

My purpose for watching the debate was for several reasons. Learning about each party's policies/plans were only one of them. I was more interested in assessing the character of each party leader in what they did (and what they didn't do) on a moral level. I also wanted to see their great political skill of thinking on the spot to change an interpretive framework on the issue at hand to get out of tight spots. I was surprised that the leaders didn't use more imagery to coat their arguments, because I know how powerful imagery can be in persuasion.

What do others think of the debate?