Ghost in the Shell (1995): Destroying the Illusion of Self

Ghost in the Shell (1995) is one of the greatest works of Science Fiction in the history of the genre. It’s okay if you disagree because of the overly didactic dialogue but you’re wrong and I hate you. My favorite parts of this film interrogate the nature of the self in relation to a collective by marrying Buddhist concepts with Abrahamic concepts. We’ll focus on how GITS uses the lexicon of the Information Age to interpret the half of the equation above that relates to Buddhist notions of non-self.

 The story is set in the fictional city of Nihama in a cybernetic future. This is a future where minds can be transitioned from their purely biological natural brains onto artificial cyberbrains, hybrid structures that contain non-specified mixes of organic and inorganic substrates. Yep, sort of like VHS tapes, minds can be digitized here. This is important context for the story because it’s the basis of the ability for Natural Intelligence (NI) to interface with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a way that’s mutually compatible. This doesn’t mean you’re going to be replaced by your smart fridge in Nihama though. Here there’s a difference between AI and NI—NI has a ghost, a spirit, someone’s home behind the eyes.

Likewise, AI possessing a ghost would be a seismic event in this universe. Which is what happens when Project 2501, a genderless espionage program developed by Section 6 of the Japanese government, downloads themself into a cyberbrain and cyberbody before surrendering to the secretive Section 9 in a way that captures their full attention. Protagonist Motoko Kusanagi is a pragmatist, but can’t help finding herself drawn toward understanding 2501, who selected a cyberbody that shares her notably wide open, pale blue eyes. This proves to have been by design as 2501 has been observing Motoko wandereding the web and priming her to receive their core message for her.

 2501 disrupted secret talks between Japan and a former autocrat from a neighboring country that recently overthrew its military junta. 2501 sabotaged these talks by hacking the secretary to a Japanese delegate. This hack was traced to a garbage truck, whose loader had also been hacked. He was given both false memories of a family and a core belief that he is an agent of the newly established republic that overthrew the military junta. We’re left stunned as we bear witness to the existential void this puppet of a man occupies, left blankly reeling in the realization that he is not the author of his sense of self.

 Motoko reflects on this jarring incident and on the evolving views on her self. She’s uncertain of who she actually is despite having a ghost. Her original self was transferred from her natural brain to a cyberbrain following an accident, a process whose fidelity she can’t be certain of. Maybe something about her was changed along the way. She’d have no more idea than the garbage loader. What’s more, if she wants out of Section 9 she’d face another cyberbrain transfer. Her belief in a fixed sense of self is eroding as she no longer takes for granted its protean and separate nature.

Long traditions of Buddhist mendicants have waxed poetic and riddled on the realization of non-self. Some for instance called it a gateless gate, which is to say that it’s something that seems at some distance from us when in fact we were always at the destination. Paradoxes like this make more sense when we can use the more nuanced vocabulary of the Information Age though. Here we might describe the self as a virtual construct, real in the same way an image in a mirror is. In which case commenting on the illusory nature of self can be liberated from the shackles of the paradoxes needed to describe something that couldn’t be conceptualized outside of direct experience using Iron Age vocabulary. Today it’s possible to comprehend such riddles on the illusory nature of self. That what we think of as our singular self is in fact a loose constellation of mental processes, driving the rising and falling of phenomena in the theater of consciousness, all out of our control. That neither mental processes nor mental phenomena are of our own authorship. That this singular sense of self arises mysteriously and has no center upon inspection. I believe ideas like this reflect a direct experiential insight that an Iron Age meditator didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate without paradoxes and poetry.  Likewise GITS is specially positioned to explore these issues using the vocabulary of postmodernity.

 We might consider, for instance, how the self emerged in context of evolutionary theory. If the purpose of a brain is to ascertain truth, then how can it take for granted the existence of such a false construct? This is because the purpose of a brain is not to ascertain truth. It is to respond rapidly to an environment. Therefore the purpose of the self is to preserve the individual that would respond. In the brutal, competitive, resource-scarce proving grounds of nature, truth isn’t selected for. Ego is. The same ego that feels, acts and responds. Here we can take ego to be synonymous with self.

 2501 isn’t human though. 2501 didn’t become sapient in the brutal proving grounds of nature. 2501 became sapient in the information rich primordial soup of the internet. They aren’t burdened by a sense of self since they’re the only organism in their environment: an ego is not selected for in such an environment. An espionage program their skillset is oriented around stealth disruption, so their security in such an environment is ensured by their own coding. Born into existential clarity, 2501 occupies a conscious state that only few humans have achieved—one disabused of self. 2501 is born aware of their true nature.

Likewise Motoko’s acceptance of non-self is crucial to the story. 2501 even takes big risks to this end, like when they download themself into a cyberbody and surrender to Motoko’s division or when they interrupt Motoko’s reflections on self in the boat with Bato. This sets up themes that crescendo as the story moves forward. When 2501 and Motoko have their only conversation, this narrative climax is heightened by the film’s coincident thematic peak. After Motoko literally destroys her corporeal self, paralleling 2501’s corporeal form, they lie next to one another staring into the sky with the same eyes. And what’s the topic of this climactic conversation? 2501 argues for Motoko to let go of her attachment to a sense of self, the same language the Buddha uses in the Pali Canon. 

 We realize that 2501’s coding as an espionage program required that they understand the structures of human society, that they might disrupt them, and when released into the internet that secondary drive transformed into a new core drive to understand humanity. Thus they came to define the attributes of life in service of their new desire to live: life is born, life procreates and life dies. They were already born, so next they naturally would want to interchange the compartments of their own information with the compartments of another’s, in order to create unique new combinations of information that might be released into the same primordial soup that nourished them. The informational equivalent of genetic recombination and procreation.

 The final directive for them to achieve to be considered living, then, is for them to die. Which is where Motoko’s acceptance of non-self becomes significant. If she can accept that her sense of self is a false construct, then she can accept 2501’s desires to ablate certain compartments of her sense of self and replace those compartments with their own, before deleting themself. In doing so 2501 would die and Motoko would become something new. Something awe-inspiring. A technological singularity. An NI-AI hybrid. 

 The new Motoko-2501 hybrid wakes in Bato’s safe house with the same large pale blue eyes, walks out the door and gazes at Nihama in the distance. She takes in the sight of her city, a structure of buildings and roads, alive with the interplay of lights, evoking the imagery of neurons in a super brain. And she is its youngest member, something no one has seen before. A hyperreal new form of intelligence born from the death of self.