I believe it's that the Architect that eventually ends up screwing up
everything, given that every system he's made keeps forcing massive
errors. I mean, sure, a lot of people use your system, but that
doesn't make your more intelligent than someone that can make a stable
one.
The Architect and Oracle are probably best considered as two
idealogical differences at the core, and the Brothers used physical
appearance and "powers" as a way to show exactly how different they
are. But I'm doubtful either of them are truely more foolish than the
other.
The Architect seems intelligent - he knows everything that there is to
know, can spout words that some dictionaries don't bother keeping,
watches
everything. He sits on a throne, far above the petty squabbles of mankind, with an unbreachable wall between them and he.
But you get closer and then you discover that, while he knows
everything, he understands nothing. Much of his word choice is "off".
His television screens, watching thousands of possibilties, are
overwhelmingly incorrect - for every correct prediction there are
dozens of wrong ones. And, as the Brothers are sure to point out,
Choice eludes him - as a perfect machine, he has only purpose, and is
unable to even comprehend ignoring that purpose, of any result that
isn't a simple equation of different measurable desires and chemicals.
The Architect embodies knowledge, but his is a world where only the
most basic assumptions, those were are reactionary rather than
though-out, can be learned. Knowledge like a textbook, or a
calculator, or an encyclopedia. Words without meaning. Knowledge
without learning. Knowing what can be done, but not what should
First perceptions of the Oracle are likewise misleading. Every
prediction she gives makes little sense when first provided, and her
results, as we see in the movies, are as wrong as they are correct.
Only a vaguely off-kilter viewpoint could
ever see the Prophecy as being something she
knew
would happen. In fact, she says herself she never could predict it.
She smokes - a truely foolish action, or at least it's considered as
such in our day and age (I'll leave the tirade against that for another
day). She is a homemaker : a trait unfortunately given a very negative
outlook in our current society. When she bakes cookies, she actively
focuses on them.
An entity claiming to know the future can't predict when cookies will be done?
But while her predictions aren't correct, they aren't wrong, either.
And while she has the same ability to measure the present as the
Architect can measure the future, she is functional despite that
handicap. She doesn't mind cigarette smoke. She understands most choices.
She represents understanding, the importance of choice. While she knows nothing, she can tell what should happen.
Think in terms of cookies. The Oracle could never know when cookies
were going to be done. But she could know when someone would be by to
see them or to eat them. The Architect could predict exactly what
would make them best, the most efficient way to make them, and exactly
when they'd be done... but he can never know when he should.
Message Edited by Gattsuru on 05.30.2006 11:46 PM
