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When we consider modern cults, the same logic appears to be operating time and time
again, with Jim Jones's People's Temple in Guyana or David Koresh's Branch Davidians in
Waco being two striking examples (cf. David G. Bromley and Edward D. Silver: 58). John
W. Morehead points out that the cosmic struggle element is standard in today's aggressive
religious sects (article), and so is the need to refer to a sacred text:
Their role in battle is symbolized by various scriptural or authoritative imagery that confirms
for them the nature of the divine struggle. The ideology then provides the appropriate moral
justification for violent acts against civilians who would not ordinarily be seen as combatants
and appropriate targets for destruction.
Let us recall in this connection the above-cited passage from The Matrix where Morpheus
tells Neo that everyone in the out-group is the enemy. The scriptural equivalent in this war
is the prophecy that drives Morpheus. Since there was a godlike individual who woke up
from the Matrix and predicted his own return in the guise of The One (Neo), the struggle of
the rebels in the Wachowski film shifts from the political sphere to the
transcendental/cosmic one. Thus, anyone standing in the way of the rebels is preventing
something sacred from being accomplished, which justifies all violent acts against innocent
people in the out-group.
Two attitudes toward the out-group seem to be combined in The Matrix. On the one hand,
the unawakened population of the Matrix is the unquestionable enemy, a threat that must
be dealt with decisively. This would be epitomized by Neo's well-known request that Tank
provide him and Trinity with "guns, lots of guns." Such a position corresponds to that of
the Japanese Aum cult, for example, regarding which John. W. Morehead writes:
From within the mindset of terrorist ―cultures of violence‖ the world is already a hostile
place, and the groups themselves, and those they represent, are the ones under attack.
What those on the outside view as terrorism and unprovoked aggression, those perpetrating
the acts consider self-defense.
This difference of perspective is well illustrated by agent Smith who asks Neo to help in
bringing "a well-known terrorist to justice." To Smith, Morpheus is a terrorist while to the
rebel group Morpheus is a heroic liberator.
The other attitude toward mainstream society is a paradox inherent not only in aggressive
religious cults but also in many 19th and 20th century revolutionary movements. This is
well illustrated by the lyrics of the Russian version of the Communist International: "The
whole world of violence shall be destroyed by us down to its foundations, and then we shall
build our own world..." (my translation:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/culture/russian/html_pages/internatsional.html). As Herbert L.
Rosedale indicates with respect to the Aum cult,
In a recent work dealing with Aum Shinrikyo, Robert Lifton has commented on how the view
of that cult was manifested in the apocalyptic goal of ―destroying the world in order to save
it,‖ and the group‘s action in killing innocent non-believers was viewed as altruistic murder
that benefited both the victims and their perpetrators.
Morpheus's position is similar in that he too seeks to save the deluded population of the
Matrix but considers every sleeping individual as a foe at the same time (see above).
The disdain with which the out-group is viewed by the rebels in The Matrix is suggested by
the term "coppertop." This is how Switch calls Neo in the car when she points a gun at him
and tells him to lift up his shirt for debugging. Unawakened humans are treated like
batteries by the machines, and the evil of that attitude is indisputable. But Switch seems
to share in this dehumanization, demonstrating not compassion for the enslaved but a
sense of haughty superiority. This social exclusivism can be traced back from the modern

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 74
cult to the Book of Revelation. To quote Adela Yarbro Collins, "The dualist division of
humanity in the Apocalypse is a failure in love. [...]One's enemies, including large
numbers of unknown people with whom one supposes oneself to be in disagreement, are
given a simple label, associated with demonic beings, and thus denied their full humanity"
(170). After the events of 9/11 this assessment rings more true than ever:
In-group morality [in Al Qaeda] was emphasized there is no moral obligation to those
outside the Ummah, or indeed to other Muslims outside the group. [...]Secularists and
disbelievers are not even considered living. Mahmud Abouhalima, involved in the first World
Trade Center bombing, described non-religious individuals as moving ―dead bodies‖
(Christopher M. Centner).
Neo and Trinity have a stone-faced attitude toward murdering innocent security men in The
Matrix. They kill as if they were part of an action cartoon with no emotion, no regret, no
sense that (and this might have been somewhat mitigating) this murder is a horrible
necessity. Trinity especially tends to move like a machine as she shoots people at
pointblank range, puts knives in their foreheads and mutilates men who are convinced they
are fighting dangerous terrorists the way real-life police officers would risk their lives to
protect innocent civilians from... Al Qaeda! In The Matrix Reloaded the same approach to
murdering unknowing security people is observed. After captain Niobe attacks and
neutralizes a couple of policemen, her head shoots up in a jerky motion as if to stress the
idea of a superhero's job well-done. Equally disturbing is the way in which a power plant
is blown up right in the middle of a city in The Matrix Reloaded the implicit countless
civilian victims within the explosion radius are discounted by the film as not even worth
thinking about.
Christopher M. Centner's above-cited reference to "in-group morality," which amounts to
the willingness to "trash" anyone in the out-group, is a position typical of aggressive cults
and terrorist organizations with cult-like elements. This can be linked to Lawrence
Kohlberg's discussion of moral development stages across cultures. Kohlberg outlines six
stages through which a human being can progress in his or her conception of what is right
and wrong. The first two stages are pre-social in that they make the creation of stable
social units impossible and characterize mainly young children or psychopaths. Thus, stage
one is about the simple avoidance of punishment while stage two is the conception of other
people only in terms of what they can give in exchange for something (Lawrence Kohlberg:
17). It is only with stage three that a rudimentary social structure can emerge — on the
basis of in-group and out-group morality. The in-group tends to be a smaller interest
group, like a tribe, where justice is defined in terms of approval from the in-group. Such a
position makes the creation of larger social structures problematic because the members of
the in-group identify with a narrow range of goals rather than a broad social system that
incorporates many interest groups or "tribes." (cf. Lawrence Kohlberg, p. 18-21)
The members of Morpheus's rebel group appear to function at the level of Lawrence
Kohlberg's third stage, and in this connection the parallels with cultic thinking appear very
prominent. Since this morality violates that of mainstream society and age-old traditions,
cults tend to focus on the figure of a charismatic leader in order to bolster their shaky
ethical systems. In fact this goes back to medieval millenarian sects that normally
centered around a prophet-like person or propheta (Cohn 43). Such a leader declared all
conventional norms invalid and sanctioned violence meant to usher in the Millennium.
Modern cultic leaders function the same way, e.g., Jim Jones and David Koresh claimed
divine status and absolute trust as well as the absolute right to rule the in-group as they
saw fit (cf. David G. Bromley and Edward D. Silver 44: 58).
In The Matrix Morpheus is undoubtedly a prophet-like leader modeled on John the Baptist
(see above). His superhuman nature is suggested in a scene from The Matrix Reloaded